A Wiki Walk is when you read something and an hour later through a series of clicks you realize you're reading about something completely different. Us tropers are especially prone to it.
Well, if you take a Wiki Walk on Wikipedia and turn it into a game, you get http://thewikigame.com/
NO. Don't click that link yet, you'll end up not reading the rest of this page.
At The Wiki Game, you are given two topics on Wikipedia. It is your job to get from one topic to the other in the least time, or fewest clicks, or another of the other game settings few other people play.
For instance, can you get from the Britney Spears discography page to the planet Mars page on Wikipedia?
Here's one path for that in nine clicks: Britney Spears discography → Recording Industry Association of America → Washington, D.C. → United States → Caribbean → South America → Continent → Earth → Solar System → Mars
The game types are:
- Speed Race: This is the one everyone plays most. You have 2 minutes to get from Wikipedia page A to Wikipedia Page B.
- Least Clicks: Try to get from Wikipedia page A to Wikipedia Page B in the smallest number of clicks.
- Six Degrees of Wikipedia: Try to get from Wikipedia page A to Wikipedia Page B in only six clicks.
- Five Clicks to Jesus: Wikipedia page A to Jesus in five clicks.
- No United States: You have 115 seconds to get from Wikipedia page A to Wikipedia Page B, but you MAY NOT visit the page United States as you do so. (See how it popped up in our Britney Spears/Mars example?)
You play the game in a window on the Wiki Game Page. This prevents you from using categories or other wiki tricks that would make the game too easy. You are permitted to open the destination wiki page in a tab so you can see what you're looking for, if that would help you.
Tropes in The Wiki Game:
- Easier Than Easy: Some subjects are really, really close. One was Akon to Snoop Dogg. Snoop is the third act listed in the sidebar's "associated acts". One click and you're done.
- Fanfare: You get one when you complete the run.
- Harder Than Hard: Some subjects you find you are utterly lost connecting, and you look over and see everyone else is just as lost as you.
- Last Lousy Point: When the page you are trying to get to is a very common concept like "sound" you can have a hard time because the word is coming up often on a page that is about a sound-related concept like "radio", but the word "sound" not wiki linked because even a moron knows what "sound" is and Wikipedia, like TV Tropes, tries to avoid the All-Blue Entry.
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Nintendo Hard: Often. The page you have to get to often has absolutely no relation to where you start.- For example, you may start at Barack Obama, and must get to tuberculosis.
- However, there are times where the goal page is actually quite easy to reach...but this seldom occurs.
- No Fair Cheating: When someone else completes the Wiki Walk, you are notified on the side and there's a link so you can see which pages they used. If you click that before you yourself have completed the Wiki Walk, you are told you aren't allowed to see until you're done. This can be annoying when you've given up and still have to wait 40 seconds for the game to end.
- Random Number God: Some subjects tend to pop up more often than others. You could swear the creators really like Snoop Dogg.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Because the interface does not accept all Wikipedia templates, etc, sometimes you can find yourself on a page which is a Dead-End Room with no links to click.
