Shout out to this Wikipedia bot that you absolutely should've followed three months ago

By Fusion Staff  |  September 8, 2015 | 5:34pm
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Every Wikipedia page deserves love, especially the ones that share names with other pages. @wikishoutouts is doling out that love.

@wikishoutouts is a Twitter bot that’s been up since mid-June, and was made by Jeff Sisson. Sisson made the bot based on a suggestion that there should be a Twitter account that turned Wikipedia disambiguation pages into George Wallace-style shout outs.

For reference, Wallace’s shoutouts read like this:

Disambiguation pages are Wikipedia’s way of “resolving the conflicts that occur when articles about two or more different topics could have the same ‘natural’ page title.” You’ve probably run into a Wikipedia disambiguation page before: They delineate articles that would have the same title, and describe each article is about. For example, here’s the disambiguation page for “tailor,” which can refer to the profession, the kind of fish, and the character from a Heinrich Hoffman children’s book:

The bot just takes those pages, which are already lists, and turns them into shoutouts. It’s incredible because the grammar of disambiguation pages is a perfect fit. Just look at these.

Even the strange little syntax hiccups the bot makes are funny.

I cannot stop reading this Twitter feed. I will spend my life reading it. You should too.

This is a perfect tweet:

You should really be following @wikishoutouts. This has been a public service announcement.

Correction: This article previously stated the account is 4 months old instead of 3 months old. We apologize for being terrible at math.

Ethan Chiel is a reporter for Fusion, writing mostly about the internet and technology. You can (and should) email him at [email protected]

 
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