Wikipedia Narratives

A Wikipedia-based game or tool inspired by Mad Libs.

DATE.: December 2019.
CONTEXT.: Academic.
LOCATION.: Los Angeles, California, USA.
FORMAT.: Website.
THEMES.: Digital culture; electronic literature; play.

The Web is a sprawling metropolis of seven-lane roads and undergrounds and small dirt lanes, with “List of Big Brother 17 (American season) houseguests” and “University of Mpumalanga” living six or fewer connections away. Based on Wikiracing and Mad Libs, Wikipedia Narratives is a Wikipedia-based narrative tool to create stories that traverse the information highways.

The start page, with two buttons: “Let me make my own path” or “Choose a path for me”.

Building a chain. ‘Glipa maruyamai’ linked to ‘Beetle’ which linked to ‘Entomological warfare’, which can now link to any of options given below.

Writing a reverse Mad Libs based on that chain. The suggested links form a sentence that reads, “Glipa maruyamai involved Beetle told Entomological warfare is a type of Operation Big Itch involved Dugway Proving Ground told Dugway sheep incident.”

An edited version of the suggested sentence, reading, “Glipa maruyamai is a type of Beetle that is used in Entomological warfare the most famous examples of which was Operation Big Itch at Dugway Proving Ground leading to the horrifying Dugway sheep incident.”

The actual relationships between the articles. The title of each article is shown, along with the relevant paragraph and how one term relates to another.