Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop

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Oh wow, to me the history section feels like Civilopedia (in a good way). I can't explain why.

Somehow the format makes me feel like its easier to learn here than the intimidating encyclopedia theme of wikipedia. It's interesting to consider the effect that presentation of information might have on learning. We know that physical books are said to be better for learning (I have heard people go up by an entire grade if they use them), but maybe there is something to be said for themes, too.

This is really impressive. It's exactly what I imagined the original Microsoft Network in Windows 95 would have been like.

And so The Microsoft Network wasn't a program you loaded like CompuServe. It was part of the OS, with folder icons that looked just like real folders. It was a kind of version of the Web where you could browse online data the same way you browsed your file system. This is what made it cool.

It was as if the data was suddenly free of the shackles of being displayed in a program. Data wasn't just a web page, or a program showing its own internal databases. The Microsoft Network made it look like the data was right there, and you could click it and drag it around! For a brief time, back in 1995, it felt like we were on the verge of the true object-oriented web, a world filled with open data and free from the tyranny of the walled gardens.[1]

It also reminded me what an excellent job Wikipedia does with their hierarchical classification which you don't see when you're often only searching by article name.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260129143542/https://www.coder...

Knowledge doesn’t neatly align to a nested hierarchy. Especially written knowledge.

Language is an imperfect means to convey knowledge, and people store that knowledge in subjective and highly personal ways.

You may mentally recall balloons within “entertainment” or “party”, whereas I might store that knowledge under “horror”.

Add onto that the massive focus on using graph theory to scale social networking technologically, and you effectively lose any motivation for rigid hierarchy.