[HN Gopher] WikiTok
___________________________________________________________________
WikiTok
Author : Group_B
Score : 690 points
Date : 2025-02-04 18:40 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wikitok.vercel.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (wikitok.vercel.app)
| duxup wrote:
| I like the idea, but one thing about Wikipedia is that with
| technical or granular topics it approaches things in a focused
| way. A specific molecular biology term's page isn't there to
| explain exactly how it fits into a larger biology topic. It makes
| random pages difficult to glean information from.
|
| Even wikipedia articles I understand, more on computer topics,
| fall into the category of "the only people who understand this
| page are people who ... already understand it / don't need to
| read this".
|
| Granted sometimes the social media context is kinda opaque, but
| usually "man fall down it funny" is pretty universal.
| myself248 wrote:
| Math articles are excruciatingly bad on this. I find myself
| setting the language to "simple english" and it helps.
| duxup wrote:
| Wikipedia math articles all remind me of what i learned in
| High School, that math is absolutely the worst to learn from
| someone who "just gets it" as often those folks have no
| concept how someone else might not "just get it". I suspect
| the wikipiedia articles are written by folks who "just get
| it".
| wwweb wrote:
| A wiki (or any encyclopedia, for that matter) is not meant
| to be an introduction or a HOWTO.
| duxup wrote:
| I can understand that. Having said that some topics
| (history) are surprisingly easy to pick up articles with
| lots of background and etc. If you look up a battle
| you'll get a short history of the war, days before the
| battle, explanations why say a given soldier might
| struggle and etc.
|
| Other topics are almost dictionary level simplistic.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I'm around calc 2 level, and spent some time learning ANN
| architectures, but it's taken a very long time to increase
| my ability to parse the more arcane topics since
| graduating.
|
| For example, this[1] is something I'd like to be able to
| just glance over and know all the applications and
| appreciate the beauty... but it's very hard to prevent my
| eyes from glossing over. Maybe someone has a youtube video
| on the topic that makes it easier to catch up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp_space
| layman51 wrote:
| Some other commenters have offered the idea of an algorithm to
| steer the randomness of the articles. I wonder if an algorithm
| would help with this issue of having random articles be too
| technical for you even though you are interested in the larger
| topic.
| TZubiri wrote:
| >"the only people who understand this page are people who ...
| already understand it / don't need to read this".
|
| That is provably false
| duxup wrote:
| I like to think of it as amusingly "dramatic" rather than
| false. ;)
|
| Way back when I was in college and the internet was new-ish.
| There were a few places you could ask math questions. A
| classmate of mine found that if he just asked a question
| online he would never get any responses. So what he would do
| is add some false generalizations in his question.
|
| In doing that he would be inundated with people answering his
| question, even if just to prove him wrong.
| TZubiri wrote:
| I don't think it's relevant in this case. But it's a well
| known internet law
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| Maybe pairing this with an LLM could be useful here?
| arrowsmith wrote:
| How is this different from Wikipedia's own "random article"
| feature?
| j3s wrote:
| it looks and feels completely different, for one thing
| guessmyname wrote:
| Your question doesn't quite make sense.
|
| It sounds like you're suggesting the two web pages are
| identical, just on different domains, but they're obviously
| completely different.
|
| A better way to phrase your question would be: _" Why would a
| TikTok-style (infinite scrolling) website for browsing
| Wikipedia articles appeal to today's internet users?"_
| pockmarked19 wrote:
| > Your question doesn't quite make sense.
|
| Agreed, yet it is the standard question most people throw out
| for any unfamiliar idea. God forbid they have to form a
| single thought to grok something...although more charitably
| it is a form of "why should I care?".
|
| Your rephrasing is a bit different, it discards the selfish
| aspect of the question which I think is not correct.
|
| Funnily though, anyone asking why they should care probably
| shouldn't care yet.
| pockmarked19 wrote:
| Nice to know HNers don't read past the first word. Can't
| say I am surprised.
| LVB wrote:
| It's a reasonable question, and one I had myself. Of course
| the UX is different, but that is self evident and we don't
| need to be pedantic. What's not obvious is whether this is
| wrapping the existing RandomPage API, filtering it, doing
| some sort of prediction/recommendation, etc.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > we don't need to be pedantic
|
| You must be new to HN
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Even more pedantically, parent's account is more than ten
| years older than yours or mine, and has ~50% more karma,
| so perhaps not :)
| redcobra762 wrote:
| The question is fine; once you stop interpreting the words
| literally, you can clearly infer the question to be about
| substance rather than numerical identity.
|
| > How is this (meaningfully) different from Wikipedia's own
| "random article" feature?
| f1shy wrote:
| Good question: i had that thought for a second. But the I
| realized that for me, Incan imagine killing time here, but not
| in the random page. It is an image and a short text which
| allows to decide fast if it is interesting or not.
|
| I used to take a technical dictionary, and read random articles
| when bored. So I tried with random wiki, but just didn't work.
| I will try this and I can already say, it will work.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Great idea, but it's too random and not one really liked reading
| about people. This app needs likes, comments and algorithm.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Plenty of people like reading about other people...
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I don't use TikTok, but I can easily spend an hour or two playing
| with the Random button on Wikipedia. Thanks!
| aizk wrote:
| Hi! I'm the dev here! I built this on a whim at after seeing
| someone ask for it on twitter. It was 12:30 at night but I
| couldn't pass down the opportunity to build it.
|
| The code is very simple, there's no backend at all actually, I
| believe because wikipedia's api is very permissive and you can
| just make the requests in the frontend. So you just simply
| request random articles, get some snippets, and the image
| attached!
|
| I used Claude and cursor do 90% of the heavy lifting, so I am
| positive there's plenty of room for optimizations. But right now
| as it stands, it's quite fun to play with, even without anything
| very sophisticated.
|
| Here is the source code. https://github.com/IsaacGemal/wikitok
| tomieinlove wrote:
| Congrats! Tomie here, this is absolutely great!
| preciousoo wrote:
| I remember seeing that tweet, I thought it was the craziest
| coincidence ever when I saw this on the front page. I guess
| it's not haha
| aizk wrote:
| As soon as I saw the tweet, I realized the opportunity was
| there waiting for me. And also, twitter's algorithm is REALLY
| good at pairing the right tweets to one another, so many
| people saw those two tweets side by side, which added to the
| humor.
| blast wrote:
| What was the tweet?
| aizk wrote:
| https://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137
| varjag wrote:
| This is great! Thanks for sharing it.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| Wow this is surprisingly addictive :)
|
| Nice job whipping up something so simple, yet elegant, so fast.
|
| This is what I love about LLM tools like cursor, it makes the
| effort to just try and build something so low, you can just try
| it one night, and can make cool things that might not have been
| built otherwise.
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| This is freaking really cool, I'm at work browsing HN instead
| of doing actual work, but I'll look into it more later, but the
| "killer feature" I think would be to add audio narration do
| this, or a quick summary, I would scroll that all day...
|
| Awesome job!
| larodi wrote:
| Kudos for the anthropological experiment. Indeed makes you
| wonder what's there about the sliding that makes it so
| entertaining.
|
| I suggest you add some sort of summary that flows, so to add
| certain level of animation. Some articles have actual sound and
| animations to them.
|
| Great inspiration!
| bazmattaz wrote:
| This is awesome. I can imagine you likely are not interested in
| building one but this site could hugely benefit from a
| recommendations algorithm.
|
| For example an algorithm could understand how much a user
| really enjoys a certain article and then starts sending the
| users down a rabbit hole of similar and tangential content.
| Designing, building and maintaining an algorithm like this
| though is no small feat.
| aizk wrote:
| I would not be surprised if Claude + Openai's reasoning
| models could develop a simple rudimentary algorithm that
| would work. Of course it wouldn't be as sophisticated as
| something like TikTok and would require a lot of fine tuning,
| but it's definitely possible.
| Aeolun wrote:
| You are joking right?
| smus wrote:
| why would it be a joke?
| andrewmutz wrote:
| It would be cool to add an algorithm that learns my interests
| and suggests relevant articles
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Love it!
|
| One of the rare website i added to my android homescreen. Maybe
| someone has a good idea for a nice favicon.
| aizk wrote:
| I added a dark wikipedia logo as the favicon, which should be
| good for now.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| Shoutout to APIs that do not enforce CORS preventing requests
| be made from FE without a need for a BE. There's so many toy
| apps I started building that would have just worked if this was
| more common, but they have CORS restrictions requiring me to
| spin up a BE which for many one-off tools and personal tools
| just isn't worth doing and maintaining. Same with OAuth.
| aizk wrote:
| The only caveat I feel is that the speed of the API is
| definitely not comparable to something more purpose built for
| this kind of scale, but overall I'm happy as it works well
| enough that I don't have to think about it too hard.
| mikedelfino wrote:
| I think Github Actions could be used for scheduled builds,
| so that the initial load would have random articles right
| in. Further requests could then be made in advance so users
| would not notice any delay from the API.
| aizk wrote:
| Do you have any examples of that I can look at as a
| reference? I'm used to github actions just being my CI/CD
| build step checking tool.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I kind of miss the era of JSON-P supported APIs. Feels like
| such a weird little moment in time.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| use firebase cloud functions free tier
| jumploops wrote:
| Shameless plug for Magic Loops -- we run code in isolated
| MicroVMs and students love our lack of CORS enforcement, as
| the APIs they build can be easily integrated into their
| hackathon projects :)
| aizk wrote:
| Tell me more?
| egonschiele wrote:
| nit: same-origin policy is the restriction. CORS isn't the
| restriction, it's the thing that helps you. CORS is the
| solution, not the problem.
| tasuki wrote:
| There's many services to solve this pain point. I've used
| https://allorigins.win/ in the past.
| qudat wrote:
| Many platforms can enable proxying through their service to
| avoid CORS issues: https://pico.sh/pgs#proxy-to-another-
| service
| nathansherburn wrote:
| A great way to get around this is with an edge function from
| deno deploy.
| echelon wrote:
| Next steps: ingest these offline and process them into quick 30
| second videos with the most salient facts. TTS narration,
| additional images. Generate stock video using the images in the
| API and perhaps text-to-video. That would be a killer app.
|
| Bonus: come up with a heuristic or model to filter out or de-
| rank universally uninteresting articles.
| rererereferred wrote:
| Very nice! I wonder if it would be possible to see articles
| related to a topic. Maybe using the hubs as a starting point
| and then following the related links in each article?
| xhrpost wrote:
| Wonder what it would take to add a simple algorithm to this. Part
| of what makes short media apps (dangerously) addictive is that
| they eventually learn what you like and feed you more of that. An
| app like this with such an algo could help with the stickiness
| (and presumably get us away from the other apps at least for a
| little bit). "Oh this person likes science stuff, let's feed them
| more, oh they specifically like stuff related to quantum
| mechanics, let's place a summary paragraph from a related page
| topic in there."
| aizk wrote:
| On one hand I am thinking about what a very basic algorithm
| would like (maybe even just categories I might do) and maybe
| how it would make people happy.
|
| On the other hand, I'm not sure exactly the details of
| wikipedia's api TOS. Also as it stands this website is entirely
| in the frontend at the moment, and I'm enjoying just
| scaffolding out what I can with limited a more limited set of
| tools to speak.
|
| I realize now the suffix "tok" implies a crazy ML algo that is
| trained every single movement, click, tap, and pause you make,
| but I don't think I really want that.
| codingdave wrote:
| It should be possible to keep this all front-end, even with
| some basic algorithm for the searches - just use
| localStorage. That keep things simple and resolve privacy
| concerns, as people own their data and can delete them any
| time.
| keerthiko wrote:
| browser-store and cookies, among other tools, provide nice
| front-end-only persistent storage for holding things like
| recommendation weights/scoring matrices. maybe a simple
| algorithm that can evaluate down from a few bytes stored in
| weights might be all the more elegant.
| layman51 wrote:
| About the "Tok" suffix, I also think that while it has the
| algorithm connotations, it also has been used a lot to
| describe communities that have formed on TikTok. For example,
| BookTok (where some bookstores have started to pay attention
| to how people on TikTok can make some books popular again
| seemingly on a whim) or WitchTok.
| aizk wrote:
| Update - I chatted with some devs at wikipedia, and they
| confirmed I'm not hitting their servers hard, which is great.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Compared to default wikipedia traffic this should be a drop
| in a bucket right?
| aizk wrote:
| Probably? I have no frame of reference, I've never done
| giant distributed systems before. I just noticed that
| earlier version had some slowdowns but I think I was just
| improperly fetching the images ahead of time.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| That's what I was thinking this might have already. Maybe this
| could get insights from the articles linked from the ones you
| like too? Sort of like https://www.sixdegreesofwikipedia.com/
| marci wrote:
| RHAAS
|
| Rabbit-holing as a service
| belinder wrote:
| tvtropes did it first
| aizk wrote:
| Oh I just looked, sadly tv tropes doesn't have an API. I'd
| love to work off their data but that would be a bit more
| involved.
| TZubiri wrote:
| The relatedness of articles is already baked in with blue wiki
| links too. So it shouldn't be too hard to make something that
| just looks for neighbors.
|
| Now, something that learns that if you like X you might like Y,
| even if they are disconnected. Is closer to the dystopic ad
| maximizing algorithm of TikTok et al.
| ya1sec wrote:
| it starts with sourcing - finding a massive set of interesting
| pages, then going through and giving them tags. planning on
| adding this to my web discovery app as well:
| https://moonjump.app/
| mvieira38 wrote:
| This would eventually collapse to people reading articles they
| do not actually like (i.e. get happiness from reading), I
| think, maybe tragic history facts or something like that? The
| truth of social media harm is that it's more about humans than
| the algorithms themselves. Humans just tend to engage more with
| negative emotions. Even IRL we tend to look for intrigue and
| negative interactions, just look at the people who stay with
| toxic partners even with no financial ties, or even friend
| groups who turn into dysfunctional gossip fests. The only way
| to avoid this is by actively fighting against this tendency,
| and having no algorithm at all in an application helps.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| For each 10 seconds of reading, increment the tags on the
| current article as "favoured". Then, poll randomly from those
| tags for the next recommended article. Add some logarithms of
| division to prevent the tags from infinite scaling.
| epolanski wrote:
| Can you tell that YouTube reels engineers? Because their Algo
| is a disaster where I'm only fed Sopranos and NBA content. I
| don't hate it, but god I have so many subscriptions (civil
| aviation, personal finance, etc) that I never ever see on my
| feed.
| pjs_ wrote:
| This is awesome but it needs to autoscroll the full page. It
| needs to have the same completely instant dopamine hit that
| TikTok gives.
| amelius wrote:
| Maybe use AI to turn a wiki topic into something explained by an
| influencer in 30 seconds.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| This, plus an AI generated voice reading a TikTok-creator style
| catchy summary, plus TikTok's actual algorithm for surfacing
| content would actually make a decent app I believe.
|
| EDIT: Also the name should be WikTok instead of WikiTok.
| ptojr wrote:
| I second this! A voice-over would be very nice
| mikedelfino wrote:
| At this point, you could create short videos with relevant
| images and accompanying audio, post them on TikTok, and profit.
| qwertox wrote:
| I consume the internet mainly on an old-school monitor, not on a
| tablet. When the browser is maximized, all the images are
| pixelated.
| MitPitt wrote:
| Text could also be more compact
| aizk wrote:
| Right now it's 85% usage on mobile. Also, I don't really find
| the pixelated images to be that detracting on desktop (though,
| I'm a small macbook, ymmv on a giant 4k display). I haven't
| tested on a screen that large.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| RandomWiki maybe?
| a1o wrote:
| This is awesome, great work!
| thomasreggi wrote:
| "tok" as a suffix for short form video is unhinged
| aizk wrote:
| Personally I see it as implying two things - Infinite scrolling
| - Heavily curated algorithms
|
| Although in this instance, it's just selecting from wikipedia
| randomly
| tgv wrote:
| Like -gate as a suffix for a scandal?
|
| Anyway, it beats all the other names mentioned and suggested
| here. It rhymes with tiktok, and it even has "ik" in the first
| part. It's immediately understandable. Don't try to apply
| logic.
| reustle wrote:
| Great job on on the quick execution!
|
| Could you detect when on mobile and link to the mobile wiki page?
| rickcarlino wrote:
| Can you please add Korean? This looks like such a great tool for
| discovering language learning reading material. Great work!
| TZubiri wrote:
| Sounds like the sort of thing you could add yourself if there
| were some source
| notfed wrote:
| https://github.com/IsaacGemal/wikitok
| srameshc wrote:
| I just admire how some people can build simple things. I see so
| many from simple games to visualizations to many other kinds on
| HN here. Hopefully someday I will be able to think of something
| simple and showcase here.
| brianstrimp wrote:
| Extra bonus for just putting it out there with a Github link.
|
| Instead of landing page, login, "just $4/month or $20/year"
| with a "Show HN" and everybody patting them on the back for a
| "successful launch".
| CafeRacer wrote:
| Me: what a stupid idea Also me after 30 minutes of doom
| scrolling: cool
| barrenko wrote:
| It would work maybe if connected to an AI that would just start
| spouting the article immediately, or the summary.
| roegerle wrote:
| I love it.
| 65 wrote:
| I've been meaning to write a content algorithm where a random
| Wikipedia article is fetched, then calls the YouTube API to serve
| a video about the subject, and the algorithm learns based on how
| much you watch the video.
|
| But if anyone wants to tackle that, it'd be really cool.
| zavg wrote:
| I think that the project has a potential.
|
| I am a big fun of Wikipedia and sometimes TikTok (a "guilty
| pleasure"). I would be happy to have an app/web site like this
| but with
|
| - more smart feed based on your activity/attention (was mentioned
| in other comments);
|
| - maybe more fancy way to present information (not sure if it is
| feasible to implement). Currently just a text snippet and image
| do not seem like super engaging.
| matthest wrote:
| Brilliant. Someone should do this same concept but for short-form
| essays.
|
| So like Twitter, but with 3-4 paragraph essays.
| ya1sec wrote:
| Awesome. I have a project with a similar tik-tok-esque philosophy
| for serving all sorts of noncommercial content from the web. The
| interface is one button and a random page is embedded in an
| iframe. I use random wikipedia pages as a fallback in case my
| algorithm returns a dead page.
|
| I call it moonjump: https://moonjump.app/
| sgt wrote:
| I tried that and I was immediately taken to "the best place in
| the world to have herpes". I didn't click.
| ya1sec wrote:
| hahahha. try the search engine - it uses the marginalia API
| and will select a random result to embed. maybe don't search
| for herpes though.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Pretty nice! Reminds me of StumbleUpon.
| ya1sec wrote:
| Yeah, pretty similar to StumbleUpon. Right now the links are
| sourced from a handful of are.na channels and some other
| collections of content. I plan on warehousing this data and
| tagging it such that users can configure categories of sites
| that they'd like to stumble upon. HN submissions are mixed
| into the algorithm as well.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Cool. I immediately recognized the melonking loading gif.
| russian_bot wrote:
| Feature request to be able to like different pages so i can
| bookmark and return to them later
| OracB7 wrote:
| Great site! The only improvement I would ask for is automatically
| opening the articles with the Wikipedia app, if installed.
| whiteborb wrote:
| In the same vein, Wikijumps (https://wikijumps.com/) lets you
| browse based on article connections.
| beardyw wrote:
| This is just great. A real keeper.
|
| Only criticism is I get a poor presentation of the Wikipedia page
| on my phone if I follow the link. Haven't worked out why yet.
| Even selecting desktop gives me something better!
| danhds wrote:
| Someone built something similar using Lovable: https://preview--
| wiktok.lovable.app/
| mehh wrote:
| Nice site @aikz
|
| Hope you don't mind, but as others are pointing at wiki type
| sites, I'll plug my own (also using Vercel and cursor)...
|
| https://ont.fyi it's a work in progress ... feedback wanted (no
| matter how painful), focusing on enabling adding in your own data
| at present, lots of ideas and work to be done
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I have no idea what this is or if I should even click on it. Can
| we please have a description somewhere first?
| tolerance wrote:
| I don't know how to feel about the visceral reaction that I have
| to the action of swiping my thumb in a movement that I can trace
| from where I guess is a team of tendons somewhere parallel to my
| wrist and the little fat part of my palm I like to refer to as
| "my drumstick", from the bottom of my phone's screen until the
| tip of my thumb is just at my general line of sight, all of this
| in one natural motion. No sooner is this action complete am I met
| when an entire block of information above my thumb, square in my
| line of sight.
|
| In one stroke the location of a place, the type of place it is,
| its size, its distance from somewhere else, its history, read
| more, or swipe again. And another block. And another. And there's
| something about this process that is visually disruptive and
| kinetically unsettling.
| lucaslazarus wrote:
| This is great! Now all that's left is plugging this into some
| text-to-speech and a subway surfers/minecraft parkour background
| brokensegue wrote:
| just leave this here https://www.tiktok.com/@wikipedia
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Is this some sort of location based thing? First thing I saw when
| I opened it was Thompson, ND. It's a small town like 70 miles
| north of me
| tgv wrote:
| Great idea. My only suggestion would be a less random article. I
| got a ton of US place names, which can be a downer. The avg
| tiktokker expects something funny or interesting within 30s.
|
| NO recommendations. That would remove the charm.
| aizk wrote:
| Looking into it more, the random isn't exactly random
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#random
| CameronBanga wrote:
| If you like this, check out Information Superhighway on a variety
| of Apple devices. Same concept, with a nice UI. I like widget
| support too, to get random articles on my Home Screen.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/information-superhighway/id149...
| juancaruiz wrote:
| Cool
| corruptio wrote:
| I need it to loop subway surfers on the side. To keep my
| attention.
| novaomnidev wrote:
| This is such a good idea. Kind of reminds me of the spirit of the
| old site stumbleupon
| mannycalavera42 wrote:
| bring back stumbleupon!!!! crying in walled garden
| aizk wrote:
| Oh wow maybe I should think about that
| aeropasta wrote:
| FeatureReq: use THAT{tiktok gal] voice to automatically
| transcribe audio
| ConanRus wrote:
| Sorry, but I don't see any dancing girls, so this app is not for
| me I guess
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(page generated 2025-02-04 23:00 UTC)