Good question: i had that thought for a second. But the I realized that for me, Incan imagine killing time here, but not in the random page. It is an image and a short text which allows to decide fast if it is interesting or not.
I used to take a technical dictionary, and read random articles when bored. So I tried with random wiki, but just didn’t work. I will try this and I can already say, it will work.
It sounds like you’re suggesting the two web pages are identical, just on different domains, but they’re obviously completely different.
A better way to phrase your question would be: "Why would a TikTok-style (infinite scrolling) website for browsing Wikipedia articles appeal to today’s internet users?"
It’s a reasonable question, and one I had myself. Of course the UX is different, but that is self evident and we don’t need to be pedantic. What’s not obvious is whether this is wrapping the existing RandomPage API, filtering it, doing some sort of prediction/recommendation, etc.
The question is fine; once you stop interpreting the words literally, you can clearly infer the question to be about substance rather than numerical identity.
> How is this (meaningfully) different from Wikipedia’s own “random article” feature?
Agreed, yet it is the standard question most people throw out for any unfamiliar idea. God forbid they have to form a single thought to grok something…although more charitably it is a form of “why should I care?”.
Your rephrasing is a bit different, it discards the selfish aspect of the question which I think is not correct.
Funnily though, anyone asking why they should care probably shouldn’t care yet.
