« Design Update, etc. | Home | Lighten Stress, With The Help of Video Games »

Fight Boredom With Wikipedia (and learn something too!)

Bored?

I often find myself sitting in front of my computer without anything to do. Of course there’s plenty to do, but sometimes I’m not in the mood to play a game, or write, or code. I just feel like being lazy. being lazy isn’t a bad thing, I dare say it can be a good thing from time to time – but usually boredom is an unwelcome visitor that generally squelches any sort of productivity you’ve planned for the day. Of course, being bored, and being in front of a computer with internet access can be a dangerous thing – so I’ll make it easy for you. Fight it, with Wikipedia.

For those who don’t know, and have also been living in caves with internet connectivity, Wikipedia is a web based encyclopedia. It is written in a collaborative fashion by (mostly) goodhearted folks from around the entire world. Together, these 75000 active contributors have thrown together an information treasure trove filled with over 10 million articles in 250 different languages. That’s certainly something to be proud of.

You may be asking yourself what that has to do with you and being bored, and you should. in my experience, I find the easiest way to combat boredom is through reading something. Really it doesn’t matter what it is. It could be a book, a magazine, the back of a baseball card, a D&D rulebook – anything. But because we’re in front of a computer and bored out of our minds, we are going to use the information gathered at Wikipedia to not only learn something – but to kill off those bored feelings you’ve been harboring! (You’re on my site, so you must be bored. Or lost.)

The Cure?

there are a few different ways that Wikipedia can assist you. At first, the methods labeled inside the list may not make sense; scroll down for descriptions.

• Random Article
• Pick a Topic
• Unrelated Items
• Sister Projects

Random Article

This is fairly self explanatory. Wikipedia offers a feature that allows the user to be taken to a randomly selected article. If you’re really bored – this could be good for you. Results are often extremely out there and there’s no guarantee you’ll run into anything interesting in the first couple of clicks, but the option is there – and it can be found in Wikipedia’s navigation menu that is housed under the logo on the lest side of the Wikipedia portal. Or you can use this handy URL I’ve snatched for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. the articles available depend on the selected language. This can be really fun, especially when you run into an interesting topic.

Pick a Topic

this option is admittedly fairly self explanatory as well. The general idea here, is that you pick a topic and search Wikipedia for it. Ideally you’ll want to pick something you aren’t quite familiar with, but are still interested in. This will allow you the important benefit of gaining knowledge, and that, after all, is what this exercise is about. For example, say you don’t know much about wood carving. You would perform a search, and probably end up at this page. Great! Now if you’re interested in the topic, now is the top where you would read the article – or whatever part of the article interests you.

It is important that you click any ‘in article’ links that seem interesting! For example, in the above mentioned wood carving page, the introduction mentions ‘tracery’ – and following the link will reveal more about the term. You’ll also want to make it a point to check out the External Links, and the articles listed in the ‘See Also’ category. I always have a lot of fun doing this.

Unrelated Items

This is actually quite similar to method mentioned above. However, it has one important difference. Instead of following links that relate to our article, we are going to follow any links that interest us. This is probably the most common way I use to browse Wikipedia. I’ll give you an example.

Using the above article on wood carving, we’ll click on anything interesting that comes up in the article, and then we’ll follow that article in the same fashion, clicking on, and reading anything interesting. In wood carving, the mention of tracery is used. The tracery article mentions Gothic Architecture – that looks interesting right? Sure! So click it! Perhaps you’ll follow the Gothic Architecture article to the article on Castles… If you get bored of castles you can head back to the original wood carving article and check out some other ‘in article’ links. Perhaps iconography?

You can probably see where I’m going with this. Pick an article and click on anything that strikes your fancy. The possibilities are quite endless, and there is the faint chance that you may learn something about whatever interests you. Exciting eh? Note: I take no responsibility for the abuse of tabs in your web browser!

Sister Projects

The Wikimedia Foundation (Read: the non-profit that brought us Wikipedia) also has a rather neat selection of ’sister projects’ that are just as useful and fun as Wikipedia. There are 9 other projects, excluding Wikipedia, and 8 projects, if you exclude the MediaWiki engine. Here’s an easy list for you. I heard somewhere that blog readers like lists…

• Wiktionary
• Wikiquote
• Wikibooks
• Wikisource
• Wikispecies
• Wikinews
• Wikiversity
• Wikimedia Commons

Descriptions of each available service is available straight from the horse’s mouth.

Cured?

Whew! That was a lot of writing. I hope I was able to help in putting your boredom to rest, or to at least have helped in holding it off for a while. Wikipedia is a great resource, even though some don’t think so – it’s almost always my ‘go to’ source for quick information. So next time you’re bored, point your browser to Wikipedia and see if you can’t learn something using the techniques I’ve provided, or the resources Wikimedia has created. Thanks for reading.

Similar Posts:

None Found