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This isn't useful at all and doesn't even make sense, ironically since "sense" is the first listing.

Title is also completely wrong. It isn't 93.4 % of pages, it is 93.4 % of pages in certain categories (primarily dealing w/ philosophy)

Beyond that, are "sense" or "Perception" the name of a category of pages and the percentage the percentage of pages in that category that lead back to "philosophy" or are they individual pages?

If they are individual pages, you shouldn't have a percentage, you should simply have a yes/no. If they are categories, how could the percentages possibly be the same for different categories? And how could this large number of pages all form a loop?



> 93.4 % of pages in certain categories (primarily dealing w/ philosophy)

Per the article, this was from an entire database dump of wikipedia.

> Beyond that, are "sense" or "Perception" the name of a category of pages and the percentage the percentage of pages in that category that lead back to "philosophy" or are they individual pages?

> If they are individual pages, you shouldn't have a percentage, you should simply have a yes/no. If they are categories, how could the percentages possibly be the same for different categories? And how could this large number of pages all form a loop?

Those are individual pages. The percentage refers to the percentage of other wikipedia pages which eventually reach them, by following the first link in the page. The loop is formed when by following the first links in pages beginning at an article you eventually return to that article; it is, obviously, possible to enter the loop from other pages.

I encourage you to go to wikipedia and play around with following the first link in each article (not in parenthesis or italics) for a bit, as it seems like actually going through that process would alleviate your confusion and lack of understanding.


Thanks for the correction. Totally misunderstood the article.

I still find it incredible and hard to believe that 89.60% of Wikipedia articles end up at Modern Philosophy.


I think you're not understanding the problem here. Did you read the relevant XKCD? The 93.39% is of all pages. So, 93.39% of pages will eventually reach the Sense article. Of those 93.39% of pages that reach Sense, 100% of them will reach Perception, Philosophy, etc. because there is a big loop that contains those pages.


To be fair, this phenomenon was fairly well-know amongst wikipedians long before Randall publicized it.




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