New York-based developer Isaac Jemal has unveiled a new website called WikiTok. It allows users to vertically scroll through an endless stream of Wikipedia articles, similar to the interface of the video-sharing app TikTok.
According to the author, this is a great way to accidentally stumble upon interesting information, learn something new, and spend your free moments without reaching for an addictive social media app. Although, to be fair, WikiTok is addictive in its own way, but without the intrusive algorithm that tracks your actions and pushes you to the lowest common denominator content. It’s also exciting because you never know what’s going to appear next in the feed.
WikiTok works through mobile and desktop browsers and provides visitors with a random list of articles from Wikipedia in a vertically scrolling interface. Contrary to the name, which echoes TikTok, there is currently no video. Each entry is accompanied by an image taken from the corresponding article. If you see something you like, you can click «Read more» and the full Wikipedia page on that topic will open in your browser.
The feed is currently random, and Jemal has so far resisted calls to automatically tailor the article stream to the user’s interests based on what they are interested in.
«I’ve had a lot of people write to me and even create issues on my GitHub asking for some crazy WikiTok algorithm,» Cemal told Ars. «And I had to make a strong statement like we are already ruled by ruthless, opaque algorithms in our daily lives; why can’t we have at least one small corner of the world without them?»
Cemal created WikiTok in a very short time. He started his project at 12:30 am, and with the help of AI coding tools such as Claude by Anthropic and Cursor, he finished the prototype by 2 am and published the results on X. Later, someone announced WikiTok on ycombinator’s Hacker News, where it topped the site’s daily news list.
«The entire project only takes a few hundred lines of code, and Claude wrote the vast majority of it,» said Jemal. «AI helped me get the project up and running very quickly and just take advantage of the initial viral tweet with a scrolling Wikipedia query,» said Jemal.
Cemal has published the WikiTok code on GitHub, so anyone can modify or contribute to the project. The web application currently supports 14 languages, article previews, and article sharing on both desktop and mobile browsers. New features may appear when they are added by other developers. The project is based on a technology stack that includes React 18, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Vite.
«I don’t have any grand plans for some crazy monetized hyper-computational TikTok algorithm,» said Jemal. «This is an anti-algorithmic project, if anything.
Source: arstechnica