Customized Wikipedia Interface

February 11, 2008 4:27 PM

I'm trying to make finding information in my field a little easier and would like some sort of index to appropriate Wikipedia articles on the various subjects. Is there any way to quickly and easily do this? Webapps that can help automate the process? Ideally, I'd like to integrate this into a wordpress or drupal blog, but that isn't a deal breaker.
posted by Gideon to computers & internet (4 comments total)

This isn't an "index", but depending on what you want an index for, this might suffice. It's an easy way to get directly to a page:

First, install Firefox.

Second, add the following bookmark into your "Quick Searches" bookmark folder:

• Name: Wikipedia
• Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go
• Keyword: wiki

After doing that (and you only have to do it one time), then whenever you want to go to an article's page, just type "wiki <subject>" into your browser's address bar.

For example, if you want to look up stuff on Le Pétomane, type:

wiki le petomane

into your browser's address bar, hit return, and voilà.
posted by Flunkie at 5:32 PM on February 11

Well, I'm trying to create a sort of index of appropriate pages - ideally in some sort of fluid or automated way.

For instance, I'm focusing on Religious Studies.... I'd have a link to that, but also to Structuralism, or to Max Weber, and perhaps to Buddhism... The goal then would be to almost have an index of things that are in that field and listed out to help those who don't exactly know what they're looking for.
posted by Gideon at 1:15 AM on February 12

Well, of course there are category pages, like the one that lists articles related to Buddhism. And there is a tool here that deals with category intersections - finding articles that are in both of two categories.

You also can use the "What links here" link (left side of the screen) to find all articles that link into a given article. So, for example, here's a list of articles that link to the Max Weber article. (Articles are listed in the order in which they were created - oldest first - and that's not changable, if you're curious.)
posted by WestCoaster at 11:25 AM on February 12

Thanks!

Maybe I'm not being clear though... What I'm wanting is a sort of external interface that I can customize. Something I can host on another webpage, for instance.

I guess I was hoping this was something others may need and there was some sort of snazzy web 2.0 program to help me out with this. I'm wanting to build this into a blog that covers the topic and so I can't just make a giant list of hyperlinks in any particularly useful way.
posted by Gideon at 1:54 PM on February 12