The wiki rabbit hole (or wiki black hole, [1] ) is the learning pathway which a reader travels by navigating from topic to topic while browsing Wikipedia and other wikis. The metaphor of a rabbit hole comes from Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , in which Alice begins an adventure by following the White Rabbit into his burrow. The black hole metaphor comes from the idea that the reader is powerfully sucked into a hole from which they cannot escape.
After learning or studying outside of Wikipedia, many people go to the online encyclopedia to get more information about what they watched, and then proceed to topics progressively further removed from where they started. [2] Films based on historical people or events often spur viewers to explore Wikipedia rabbit holes. [3]
Data visualizations showing the relationships between Wikipedia articles demonstrate pathways that readers can take to navigate from topic to topic. [4] The Wikimedia Foundation publishes research on how readers enter rabbit holes. [5] Rabbit hole browsing behavior happens in various languages of Wikipedias. [6]
Wikipedia users have shared their rabbit hole experiences as part of Wikipedia celebrations as well as on social media. [7] [8] Some people go to Wikipedia for the fun of seeking a rabbit hole. [9] [10] Exploring the rabbit hole can be part of wikiracing. [11]
A wiki is a form of online hypertext publication that is collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.
A web browser is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on a range of devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. In 2020, an estimated 4.9 billion people have used a browser. The most-used browser is Google Chrome, with a 64% global market share on all devices, followed by Safari with 19%.
RSS is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator, which constantly monitor sites for new content, removing the need for the user to manually check them. News aggregators can be built into a browser, installed on a desktop computer, or installed on a mobile device.
The Finder is the default file manager and graphical user interface shell used on all Macintosh operating systems. Described in its "About" window as "The Macintosh Desktop Experience", it is responsible for the launching of other applications, and for the overall user management of files, disks, and network volumes. It was introduced with the first Macintosh computer, and also exists as part of GS/OS on the Apple IIGS. It was rewritten completely with the release of Mac OS X in 2001.
Clifford Alan Pickover is an American author, editor, and columnist in the fields of science, mathematics, science fiction, innovation, and creativity. For many years, he was employed at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York, where he was editor-in-chief of the IBM Journal of Research and Development. He has been granted more than 700 U.S. patents, is an elected Fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and is author of more than 50 books, translated into more than a dozen languages.
The White Rabbit is a fictional and anthropomorphic character in Lewis Carroll's 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He appears at the very beginning of the book, in chapter one, wearing a waistcoat, and muttering "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Alice follows him down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Alice encounters him again when he mistakes her for his housemaid Mary Ann and she becomes trapped in his house after growing too large. The Rabbit shows up again in the last few chapters, as a herald-like servant of the King and Queen of Hearts.
Mozilla Firefox has features which distinguish it from other web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge.
A rabbit hole is a rabbit burrow.
Ars Technica is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games.
The red pill and blue pill represent a choice between the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in the contented experience of ordinary reality with the blue pill. The terms originate from the 1999 film The Matrix.
Microformats (μF) are a set of defined HTML classes created to serve as consistent and descriptive metadata about an element, designating it as representing a certain type of data. They allow software to process the information reliably by having set classes refer to a specific type of data rather than being arbitrary.
Microsoft TechNet was a Microsoft web portal and web service for IT professionals. It included a library containing documentation and technical resources for Microsoft products, a learning center providing online training, discussion forums, an evaluation center for downloading trialware, blogs for Microsoft employees and a wiki.
Alice in Wonderland is a dark ride in Fantasyland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Based on the 1951 animated Disney film of the same name, the attraction resides next to a second ride, the Mad Tea Party, based on a scene in that same adaptation.
The history of wikis began in 1994, when Ward Cunningham gave the name "WikiWikiWeb" to the knowledge base, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the wiki software that powered it. The wiki went public in March 1995, the date used in anniversary celebrations of the wiki's origins. c2.com is thus the first true wiki, or a website with pages and links that can be easily edited via the browser, with a reliable version history for each page. He chose "WikiWikiWeb" as the name based on his memories of the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" at Honolulu International Airport, and because "wiki" is the Hawaiian word for "quick".
Wikipedia Review is an Internet forum and blog for the discussion of Wikimedia Foundation projects, in particular the content and conflicts of Wikipedia. Wikipedia Review sought to act as a watchdog website, scrutinizing Wikipedia and reporting on its flaws. It provides an independent forum to discuss Wikipedia editors and their influence on Wikipedia content. At its peak, participants included current Wikipedia editors, former Wikipedia editors, users banned from Wikipedia, and people who had never edited. Though the site is still partially running, the last post was on 31 May 2012.
The Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA.org) is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization working in the area of scientific and cultural literacy. The organization was established in 1998 and incorporated in 2002, and has collaborated with museums, schools, nonprofit organizations, and public service projects.
Google Sidewiki was a web annotation tool from Google, launched in September 2009 and discontinued in December 2011. Sidewiki was a browser extension that allowed anyone logged into a Google Account to make and view comments about a given website in a sidebar. Despite the name, the tool was not a collaborative wiki, though the comments were editable by the author.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
Another Round is a culture podcast co-hosted by Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu. Debuting on BuzzFeed on March 24, 2015, Another Round featured interviews with guests such as writer and MacArthur Genius Ta-Nehisi Coates and U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as well as segments on topics ranging from race, gender to pop culture. BuzzFeed ceased production of the podcast in 2017.
"Down the rabbit hole" is an English-language idiom or trope which refers to getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. Lewis Carroll introduced the phrase as the title for chapter one of his 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, after which the term slowly entered the English vernacular. The term is usually used as a metaphor for distraction. In the 21st century, the term has come to describe a person who gets lost in research or loses track of time while using the internet.