Ask HN:How many of you nerds "read" wikipedia?

For awhile I had a bookmarklet as my homepage which would load a random page. Then it brought up a VERY inappropriate page (some weird Japanese fetish article) in front of inappropriate people.

Since then, no more random Wikipedia for me.

I read http://rosettacode.org/ from time to time, to get a feel for the various programming languages.

It's pretty rare that I head over to Wikipedia so I can read any random article, but I'll use it to satisfy the mildest curiosity about nearly any noun I interact with. For instance, I used BART for the first time on Thursday, and now I kind of want to know all about it. So off to Wikipedia.

I do this quite a bit, but unlike with a paper encyclopedia, it leads to exponential explosion of my "TO-READ" stack, as I keep middle-click-opening new tabs throughout the process of reading an article. Often I then eventually get to one of the tabs and have no idea what it is or how I got to an article on such a bizarre subject. Eventually I have to give up and close 40 unread tabs.

edit: http://xkcd.com/214/

This thread prompted me to subscribe to the Daily article mailing list. I'll give it a try for 30 days. I like getting information by e-mail because it lets me read it on my phone (oldschool Blackberry 8510c, $25 shipped via eBay) when I don't have access to a computer.

https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l

I was doing this earlier today -- pulled up some article on the French Directory and went through maybe 15 related pages.

My girlfriend is amazed that I have the patience to read a 10-page wikipedia article from start to finish. I think I got that because I started reading newspaper articles when I was very young (strongly recommended to all parents).

It seems I'm a bit different than most other people here that I open and read new tabs as they come up, rather than opening them in the background and coming back to them (like a call stack instead of a queue), which helps for maintaining context. The articles that I tend to get large stacks on are math articles. I think my stack-based approach came from starting on math articles, because you need to understand underlying referenced concepts before you can continue with the rest of the article. Most other subjects aren't so linear, not even historical subjects, because an individual tends to participate in several events, an an event impacts several individuals, and you get all sorts of back- and forward-references.

On a related note, I have read references books cover-to-cover, including a selective dictionary (one that only includes difficult words, not "the" and "door"). Textbooks with excercizes are far better for retention, but I always stop instead of doing the excercizes.

http://reddit.com/r/wikipedia is my nighttime reading

Studying Wikipedia is the best way to get up to speed on a subject quickly. It lacks scholarly depth but

It was simply assumed on my high school quiz bowl team that one read Wikipedia in his spare time. I've got around ten tabs open while I crash through data structures. Will it give the same depth as Knuth? Nope. But it dos give me a 80% understanding for 20% effort.

When I move, I am downgrading my internet connection at home because I spend too much time reading wikipedia.

my colleague reads math entries in wikipedia at least 4 hours a day. obscure optimization and nonlinear fitting methods.

it blows my mind. in the last 6 months he has learned a TON of material and I am very envious of the knowledge he's gained.

i want to learn what he has learned, and more importantly i want to WANT to pore over wikipedia math articles and try out the techniques, but its just not in me.

i learn when i have to and i force myself to. he does it because its fun. he'd do it even if it didn't help him or have any application to his work (frequently it doesn't). reading, testing, confirming new algorithms is his "guilty pleasure" in the same way some people can't stop playing starcraft.

kind of awesome really.

I've read many articles, but don't do it for the sake of reading. It usually accompanies other reading on said subject.

All of us.

I read Wikipedia. I follow links as I please. I sometimes visit the main page for the featured article or the "Do you know?" or the news articles. Now I am also a Wikipedia editor (as of April 2010).

I start with one tab and continue with only one tab. Going previous page is permitted but openning a new tab is not. For instance yesterday I started with google's wikipedia entry and spend approximately 2 hours. Now i know who wrote lex

I do. Honestly, how many of us don't? I use it to get a starting place on learning about anything I don't already know and sometimes as a place to look for sources of more information.