Best of Wikipedia?

April 30, 2008 2:44 PM

I know there is a "Best of Craigslist" site. Is there something similar for Wikipedia?

Lately I've been having some dull moments at work and have found that browsing Wikipedia is educational and helps pass the time. In doing so, I've found some articles that are unexpectedly great. Is there some sort of central resource for the best of Wikipedia? If not, what articles would you recommend as "hidden gems"?

posted by anastasiav to computers & internet (13 comments total)

For a while, there was a Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense page, which got so large that around 30 extra pages were made to archive humorous edits. I think the pages are still archived on Wikipedia somewhere.
posted by LSK at 2:52 PM on April 30, 2008

The article on the front page is usually some kind of extra-good article, and will have links to previous featured articles below the excerpt. Or you could just go here and pick and choose whatever ones you want.
posted by LionIndex at 2:55 PM on April 30, 2008

Here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Best_of_BJAODN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:More_Best_of_BJAODN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Even_more_Best_of_BJAODN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Yet_more_Best_of_BJAODN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Still_more_Best_of_BJAODN

And the full archive: http://bjaodn.nicholaswwilson.com/wiki/Main_Page
posted by LSK at 2:56 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Not necessarily the answer you're looking for, but the Random Article link on the left column of Wikipedia is always a good time-waster if you haven't already been clicking that over and over.
posted by seldomfun at 2:56 PM on April 30, 2008

Yup. Can't remember the details, but they have this category system for the good stuff, "Good Articles", "Featured Articles", etc. Dig around a bit on Wikipedia and you'll find them; if I remember, I'll post linkage when I get home.
posted by WCityMike at 2:57 PM on April 30, 2008

Maybe or maybe not an answer to your question, but I enjoy Wikidumper, which is a 'best' of the articles up for deletion. I think many could disagree about what makes a factual Wikipedia entry the 'best.' But in my warped mind, the best are the super esoteric articles. Here they are.
posted by uaudio at 2:58 PM on April 30, 2008

There's also an unofficial blog of neat stuff on Wikipedia
posted by adamrice at 3:42 PM on April 30, 2008

Wikipedia: Unusual articles. This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a little unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are a bit odd, whimsical, or something you would not expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica.
posted by OutlawedYeomen at 3:53 PM on April 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

The "Unusual articles" page that Outlawed Yeomen is incredibly entertaining, and far closer to the funny/weird "Best of Craigslist" style you want than the more encyclopedic Featured Articles and the, well, bad jokes and other deleted nonsense of Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense.

PS: Contributers to the BJAODN pages that felt stifled by Wikipedia's pedantic environment eventually started their own Wiki dedicated to satire and humor -- Uncyclopedia. That's definitely worth a look as well, though the quality varies wildly from sheer brilliance to utter crap.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:05 PM on April 30, 2008

Here's the Featured Articles page. These have been reviewed as the best articles on the site.
posted by chrisamiller at 4:47 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

And this is Good Articles, which don't meet the featured criteria and may never but do meet some less stringent requirements.

What you probably want is Portal:Featured content, which points to featured articles as well as lists, pictures, and even sounds.

The Wikipedia Commons, a cross-project repository for free content like public domain or GFDL photos that draws from the other Wikipedia language projects, is basically all featured or quality content on its front page.

Most of the larger other-language Wikipedias have their own way of featuring their better articles. French, for instance, has Articles de qualité.

The wikipedia tag at del.icio.us has some stuff, as does reddit. Wikirage is a system that tracks editing frequency of articles in real time. The stuff on the front page -- featured articles -- show up a lot. It's ultimately more of a current-events tracker, though.

There are also a number of Wikipedia-related blogs. Wikipedia Blog (which adamrice pointed to above) is the only really regular one I know of. Some prominent Wikipedians have blogs, like the infamous Kelly Martin, but pointing out good stuff is less frequently done compared to discussing behind-the-scenes politics.
posted by dhartung at 5:34 PM on April 30, 2008

There are a bunch in this Metafilter post!
posted by mattbucher at 7:34 PM on April 30, 2008

StumbleUpon has a stumble Wiki feature. You will randomly stumble to wikis that other people recommended, and that also fall within your interest lists.
posted by ian1977 at 4:13 AM on May 1, 2008