The Significance of Hitler’s Wikipedia Page
https://bizzoony.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/the-wikipedia-hitler-game/
In class we talked about how connected the world is with the 6 degrees of separation. We also talked about strong hubs and authorities. This article brings in both of these concepts to create the “6 clicks to Hitler” game.
The premise of the game like the Wikipedia game that was introduced in class: find the target page in the shortest amount of time and clicks. Except this time the end goal is to always end up on Adolf Hitler’s Wikipedia page. After many people made countless tries, the online community has concluded that you should be able to get to Hitler’s page within 6 clicks. Common strategies include looking for European countries, World War II, April 20, and any date between 1939 and 1945.
With so many pages all leading to Hitler’s page, it would make Adolf Hitler’s Wikipedia page a strong authority. We learned in class that a greater number of strong hubs leading to the authority leads to a higher authority score. Those hub’s scores are increased with a greater number of strong authorities that the hub leads to. Hitler’s page, having leads from strong hubs such as World War II, Germany, other major countries, key historical figures, and more, would naturally be a strong authority.
If we assumed that the Hitler Wikipedia page is in a single strongly connected component, it would have a very high equilibrium page rank. However, with the sheer number of pages that it is connected to, it is very unlikely that a single strongly connected component would exist, and thus there would not be an equilibrium.
Taking a step back, we can see how the concept of hubs, authorities, and page rank of Hitler’s Wikipedia page accurately reflects the impact that Adolf Hitler has had in our history. A similar approach can be taken with other historical events too: if the Wikipedia page is a strong authority, it probably was a very significant event or person.