wiki-hole

Going to Wikipedia to look up a simple piece of information, and ending up spending several hours reading about things you didn't know existed.

Last night I went to Wikipedia to look up the history of the $2 bill, and ended up in a wiki-hole for 3 hours.

wiki-hole by Michael Noe, Dan Ohrtman January 27, 2006

wiki-hole

The infinite regress of looking something up on Wikipedia - similar to a philosophical "rabbit hole", a wiki-hole is when you cannot be satisfied with a single article and find that there is always at least one other article that must be read... ad infinitum.

I meant to just take a minute to look up Superman on Wikipedia, but was caught in a wiki-hole for hours.

wiki-hole by BaileyPoint March 21, 2011

falling into a wiki hole 

the situation where a person looks up information on wikipedia and begins clicking on the links embedded in the articles text to continue gathering more information out of curiosity and then doing so for each proceeding article to the point where the person either has lost all track of time or has forgotten the initial purpose of going onto the wikipedia site

I was looking up the date of the Pearl Harbor attack but ended up falling into a wiki hole and next thing you know, it was 2 hours later and I was learning about ancient feudal Japan.

falling into a wiki hole by bob2line May 15, 2012

wikihole

"Going down a wikihole" is a term used to describe the phenomenon in which one opens a wiki article about something cool, clicks on a link to another article about something ever cooler, and eventually comes up for air 6 hours or so later after having clicked on all manner of related cool wiki links. The word is based on "wiki" as in "wikipedia" plus "hole" as in rabbit hole, and is inspired by the notion that wikipedia offers its own highly seductive type of single-user rabbit hole. It is similar in meaning to "wikitrail" but implies a certain loss of control at some point.

Damn! It's already 2 a.m.! I just wanted to look up this one thing about coffee and ended up winding my way through a four-hour wikihole!

wikihole by Pennsylvania Dave July 11, 2011