The Wikipedia Adventure

In today's day and age, it is an understatement to say that we have a wealth of information at our fingertips. Need something to eat within walking distance? Urbanspoon or Yelp! can help. Trying to buy a car? Cars.com provides specs, reviews, tips, and personalized comparative analysis for most automotive models... ever. Reading The Great Gatsby? Here are the SparkNotes. Need to know about something  about small-scale American chicken breeders? One google search and voila, you've got yourself a directory of hatcheries by U.S. state. For pretty much any question a person could fathom, there is an online answer and his or her disposal-- Pie easy. 

This phenomenon, however, is largely based on necessity. This is to say that, when someone wants a piece of information, they make an effort to collect it and then move on with their lives. What people pay less attention to is that internet's vast repository of knowledge affords us the opportunity to educate ourselves. This in mind I'm going to go ahead and speak to the general awesomeness (not mention time-wasting capacity) of the Wikipedia Adventure. 

So what exactly is a Wikipedia Adventure? Well, as you know, every Wiki article has a number of internal links to other wikipedia articles. For example, say you needed to look up Anne of Denmark for a project. The first sentence of her article reads as follows:

"Anne of Denmark (12 December 1574 – 2 March 1619) was queen consort of Scotland,England, and Ireland as the wife of King James VI and I.^[1]"

You become curious... what exactly is a queen consort? You click on the link to find out. From "queen consort", you click on "succession laws", which brings you to King John I, the Posthumous, which brings you to a list of the shortest reigning monarchs of all time. And so goes the Wikipedia Adventure

Now, I know for a fact that I'm not the only person to have done this, and odds are, you've been on your fair share of Wikipedia Adventures in your time as an internet user-- so why am I telling you all of this? For a few reasons:

1. To reaffirm the fact that we Wikipedia Adventurers are not alone.
2. To give a commonplace activity an official title. Next time you waste three hours surfing Wikipedia, you can justify it by saying that you went on a Wikipedia Adventure of epic proportions.  Sort of. 
3. To champion the idea of self-education. The thing I love about Wikipedia Adventures is that even though you're probably wasting time and diverting your attention from things that you really should be doing, at least you're learning something. Sure, Wikipedia is not the end-all be-all of information sources, but, in terms of intellectually furthering yourself,  going on a three hour Wikipedia adventure beats the shit out of watching three back to back episodes of VH1's Rock of Love.

So to finish up, here are a few tips on improving your Wikipedia Adventure experience:

• Start your adventure on the Wikipedia's main page. Here you'll find excellent fodder for your journey updated daily. This includes a featured article, a current news feed, a picture of the day, a "Did You Know?" section, and a review of "on this day in history"
• After you've completed your adventure, use your newly acquired Wikipedia knowledge in conversation. This will increase the chance that you retain this information in the long-term. After all, you never know when you'll need to whip out your understanding of serial killer psychology, or the fact that France's Capetian dynasty ruled the country for over 800 years. 
• Give yourself a time limit, and stick to it. As much as I love this activity, it's not something we can reasonably afford to do every day for hours at a time. An egg timer can help here.
• Finally, I cannot, in good conscience, write this without talking about the Wikipedia game. Here's how you play: 1. Find a friend who's either really bored, or has the patience to humor you. 2. Pick two topics that are completely unrelated, for example wind farms and Fight Club, the novel. 3. Using only Wikipedia links, connect the two. The winner can be judged either by time (personal best: Bill Clinton to cheese in 28.3 seconds), or by number of clicks (personal best: osteoarthritis to My Little Pony in 4 links).

xx dmd.