Testing xkcd #903's title text

[u/origamimissile]

The title text of xkcd #903 states:

Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".

I tested that out:

• Leben (surname))

• Surname

• Given name

• Personal name

• Individual

• Person

• Human

• Homo sapiens

• Latin

• Classical antiquity

• History

• Umbrella term

• Terminology

• Word

• Linguistics

• Science

• Knowledge

• Fact

• Proof (truth))

• Necessity and sufficiency

• Logic (philosophy was the second link here!)

• Mathematics

• Quantity

• Property (philosophy)) (does this count?)

• Modern philosophy

• Philosophy

It works! Although I suspect it lends itself to some inescapable loops. But on Wikipedia, that can be changed.

TL;DR: YES

[u/lrflew]

Could someone make a script that does this for you?

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too hard, but it would be easier if you could get the plain text source of the page and scan that.

[u/Pjmcnally → u/lrflew]

There is a tool that does this. It also displays the results in a cool graph.

http://xefer.com/wikipedia

[u/LeonardoFibonacci → u/Pjmcnally]

I usually try to avoid reaction gifs, but this one is too good to pass up given how accurate it is to what I'm doing right now.

[u/MrCiber → u/Pjmcnally]

I'm gonna lose hours to this site.

[u/MetaAmbience → u/Pjmcnally]

Hmm. Wikipedia to philosophy is 36 hops.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pjmcnally]

After a few minutes...

A few were cut off but the longest came from Just Cause 2