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Ask HN: What's with the random Wikipedia links in new

5 points by zoezoezoezoe ↗ HN
Hi all, occasionally, in my free time, I browse hacker news, specifically, new posts, and quite often I see links to wikipedia articles, something remotely on topic, but often not. Today there's a link to [Third place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place) and [Dark Matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter) and I'm always very confused as to what they are doing here, like why are people posting them?

6 comments

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bhaney
I don't understand your confusion. People are posting them because they find them interesting and think other HN readers will as well, which is the point of the site. Are you implying that Wikipedia articles can't have interesting content, or that you personally don't find any of the posted ones interesting and don't believe anyone else would either?
zoezoezoezoe
I mean, I suppose that's fine. idk, I've always kind of thought that hacker news was meant to be a technology adjacent news site, and I always felt that the wikipedia links seemed out of place to me.
bhaney
At the bottom of every page here, there is a link to the HN guidelines. The first guideline is on "What to Submit." It does not give me the impression that the articles you're referring to are out of place here.
mtmail
I enjoy them but they rarely get enough upvotes to get large audience. I think some users use a browser toolbar where sharing a link is just the click of a button.