214: The Problem with Wikipedia
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All of the articles at the bottom do exist on Wikipedia, although "Fatal Hilarity" has been renamed to {{w|Death from laughter}} and is not linked from Batman. Whether each of these articles can be reached from {{w|Tacoma Narrows Bridge}} is unknown and would make interesting challenges in {{w|Wikipedia:Wiki Game|the Wikipedia game}}. | All of the articles at the bottom do exist on Wikipedia, although "Fatal Hilarity" has been renamed to {{w|Death from laughter}} and is not linked from Batman. Whether each of these articles can be reached from {{w|Tacoma Narrows Bridge}} is unknown and would make interesting challenges in {{w|Wikipedia:Wiki Game|the Wikipedia game}}. | ||
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| + | Path for Batman: Tacoma Narrows Bridge --> Suspension Bridge --> Tower --> Scotland --> Wolf --> Mammal --> Hog-nosed bat --> Bat --> Batman | ||
The title text refers to two of the articles that were supposedly reached at the bottom. {{w|William Howard Taft}} was the 27th President of the U.S., in office from 1909 to 1913, who was notorious for being so overweight that he became stuck in the White House bathtub. A {{w|wet T-shirt contest}} "is an exhibitionistic competition typically featuring young women contestants at a nightclub, bar, or resort." Clearly the combination of these two would be rather bizarre. | The title text refers to two of the articles that were supposedly reached at the bottom. {{w|William Howard Taft}} was the 27th President of the U.S., in office from 1909 to 1913, who was notorious for being so overweight that he became stuck in the White House bathtub. A {{w|wet T-shirt contest}} "is an exhibitionistic competition typically featuring young women contestants at a nightclub, bar, or resort." Clearly the combination of these two would be rather bizarre. | ||
Revision as of 00:49, 15 November 2012
| The Problem with Wikipedia |
 Title text: 'Taft in a wet t-shirt contest' is the key image here. |
Explanation
This comic illustrates the "problems" of information abundance coupled with a dense web of hypertext links. Through most of human history, written media has been both slow and linear. Hypertext allows a new type of information consumption, through small chunks of information linked together in a web of related concepts, and by being digital, each new chunk can be retrieved quickly and effortlessly. Wikipedia applies this principle very strongly, and because it covers so many topics, it is common for a reader to skim an article about a topic they need or want to know about, and end up following a series of links out of curiosity. Since each new page also has several links, the overall navigation pattern resembles a tree that branches out, "exploding" in size with each new level of link-clicking, thus resulting in many wasted hours (three in this case) of reading stuff unrelated to the original goal, and lots of open browser tabs holding a wide variety of articles, which are seemingly unrelated, but have common "ancestors".
All of the articles at the bottom do exist on Wikipedia, although "Fatal Hilarity" has been renamed to Death from laughter and is not linked from Batman. Whether each of these articles can be reached from Tacoma Narrows Bridge is unknown and would make interesting challenges in the Wikipedia game.
Path for Batman: Tacoma Narrows Bridge --> Suspension Bridge --> Tower --> Scotland --> Wolf --> Mammal --> Hog-nosed bat --> Bat --> Batman
The title text refers to two of the articles that were supposedly reached at the bottom. William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the U.S., in office from 1909 to 1913, who was notorious for being so overweight that he became stuck in the White House bathtub. A wet T-shirt contest "is an exhibitionistic competition typically featuring young women contestants at a nightclub, bar, or resort." Clearly the combination of these two would be rather bizarre.
This comic is very similar to 609: Tab Explosion, which refers to a similar effect caused by another reference site, TVTropes.
Transcript
The Problem With Wikipedia:
[Lines Lead to] Suspension Bridge [and] Structural collapse
Three Hours of Fascinated Clicking Later
Batman [leads to] Fatal Hilarity
Cotton [leads to] T-Shirt [leads to] Wet T-Shirt Contest
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