User talk:K-Mile/Wiki Link Contest

Please discuss any concerns and ideas about this page here, thanks. K-Mile 11:17, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Contest motivation

I thought of the idea of this contest to encourage people to, in a fun and competitive way, explore more of Wikipedia than they do now. I think most users will stay in their select group of articles, and will not be active in say, physics AND music or politics. By getting users to explore other sections of Wikipedia, i think a more diverse Wikipedia will be the result.

The greatest concern is, that by rewarding people to follow links, is that users will create bogus links to an article so they can create a better chain of articles.

One of the possible solutions to that was to disqualify users that have editted the pages in the period that the current contest is active. The problem here is that users can simply log-out or create a different account (possibly on another computer) to suit there malicious needs.

As long as a solution to this problem is not found, unfortunatly this fun and encouraging way of exploring Wikipedia cannot be exploited.

-- K-Mile 22:33, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wiki Link Contest?

I thought of a nice idea to encourage users to browse through the Wikipedia pages:

A small contest, that requires users to 'click' through subjects to get from one subject to another, with the least possible stages.

For instance:

Get from: Tombstone, Arizona

To:

Cassini-Huygens Mission

This is how i did it, there are possible other (shorter, funnier) ways as well...

Tombstone, Arizona -> Gunfight at the O.K. Corral -> Discovery Channel -> List of Discovery Channel programs -> The Blue Planet -> Ocean -> Titan (moon) -> Cassini-Huygens Mission

It could be possible to post a new challenge every day/month/week, and the one with the shortest route wins that contest (and ofcourse, receives enternal fame).

I did not know where to post this proposal, so i did it here. Maybe i could make an article of it, but its not really an encyclopedia article ;-)

--K-Mile 12:35, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Nice idea. You've picked a tough one to begin with, though, because your end point is actually a redirect rather than the main article, so not much links to it. In terms of length (though it's rather dull) how about Tombstone, Arizona -> 2000 -> 2003 -> October 15 -> Cassini-Huygens Mission. -- ALargeElk | Talk 13:12, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Someone beat you to this - Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia :) Adam Bishop 13:13, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fun game, but you can't use dates or years or it is too easy! Pcb21| Pete 15:10, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• There should be a limit at six. You know, like six degrees of Wiki. Mike H 15:12, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)

• 6 Degrees of Wiki is not a challenge, it is just existing links. What i had in mind was that the shortest, and most original/funniest links would be mentioned on the page. And, the 2 endpoints are set for that contest, so it's not just that you can find any link, it must be the specified one. (And back again :)) Wiki Link Contest <- I Will put it here -- K-Mile 15:38, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• • Nice idea. You might also like the Wiki-link Game -- Solipsist 23:09, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Wiki Link Contest for some more rather critical discussion of this idea. Please keep discussion in the VfD subpage to the topic of whether or not the page should be deleted. Andrewa 01:02, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)