Submissions:2025/Wikipedia as Play: Interactive Futures for the World's Knowledge
This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2025.
Title:
- Wikipedia as Play: Interactive Futures for the World's Knowledge
Type of session:
- Lightning talk
Session theme(s):
- Future of Wikipedia
Abstract:
As Wikipedia evolves beyond its traditional role as a reference destination, how do we welcome users who learn through play, discovery, and hands-on exploration? This lightning talk introduces interactive experiences that transform Wikipedia's rich metadata into engaging pathways for knowledge discovery. Wiki Title Jumble: Unscramble real Wikipedia article titles. WikiLinks: Group four Wikipedia articles by hidden relationships. WikiGuessr: Read a paragraph from any article and guess the geographic location. WikiCross: Guess two words where every answer comes from Wikipedia articles. Plus quick challenges: Wikipedia "Before or After" (historical timeline intuition), Infobox Guesser (identify articles from key data), and Contains Word (contextual prediction games). Each experience transforms a different aspect of Wikipedia's structure into active engagement. Together they suggest a future where Wikipedia becomes a dynamic, interactive landscape rather than a static reference library. I'll demonstrate these experiences live and discuss the technical approaches using Wikipedia's APIs and Wikidata. More importantly, I'll explore what these interactions reveal about Wikipedia's potential to serve diverse learning styles and engagement preferences. These aren't just entertainment, they're prototypes for Wikipedia's interactive future, where knowledge becomes something you experience rather than simply consume. Join me in reimagining how the world's largest knowledge repository can become a playground for curiosity and discovery.
Author name(s):
Wikimedia username(s):
Affiliated organization(s):
Estimated length of session
- 5 minutes
Will you be presenting remotely?
- I will present in-person
Okay to livestream?
- Livestreaming is okay
Previously presented?
Special requests: