Wikipedia talk:Random

Hidden links
What are the hidden links on this page? And what is that Special:Random/Glork /Transwiki /Wikibooks? → C Teng   [talk]  23:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

How does one restrict to a category or pages that fall under a wikiproject?
See Help_talk:Special_page/Archive_1 for this still unresolved request. -- OlEnglish (Talk) 21:41, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You can do this now using my randomlink.js script. I added a link to it in the See also section. —GregU (talk) 09:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Excellent! Thank you. -- &oelig; &trade; 20:34, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Using randomlink.js from bookmarks
Greg, Is there a way to further refine this to a subgategory, say Biology? and better yet to have not as Javascript but something that can be bookmarked?

Allow me to copy paste form a discussion:

The Special:Random Feature is very useful as a bookmark/homepage for the curiously-minded. However on absolute random the articles are generally not fun. Is there a way to further refine the random search, to improve the quality of this special?

Something that could confine the random to

Random:Featured_Articles (not as javascript but as a special that could be used when set as a users homepage/bookmark etc)

or

Random:Category/SubCategory:Engineering

You can limit it to a category, but that works best when there is a single flat category, which is unusual. Or if multiple levels of categories, the tree should be evenly distributed and all articles should be at the bottom level, which is also unusual. So I think it is better to do by WikiProject, even though that also has problems with clustering (picking certain random articles more often than others).

You can't do it totally from your bookmarks—you still need a couple lines of configuration added to your monobook.js page: With that in place, the following bookmarks will work:
 * Featured article
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles?random_hops=1


 * Biology article
 * javascript:void(location.href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:WikiProject_Biology?namespace=1&hidelinks=1&limit=250&random_hops=1&from="+Math.floor(24000000*Math.random))

—GregU (talk) 14:24, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * There's also http://tools.wikimedia.de/~dapete/random/enwiki-featured.php for random featured article. -- &oelig; &trade; 01:32, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Random articles under specified categories.
http://toolserver.org/~erwin85/randomarticle.php -- Jeandré, 2010-08-23t14:17z

Pattern
Can anybody tell me the pattern from which Special:Random finds and loads. -- Extra   999  (Contact me  +  contribs) 11:18, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Good question. You might have better luck asking at WP:VPT. And if you do eventually get an answer, please link to it from here so I may learn this as well. -- &oelig; &trade; 15:18, 3 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I have asked there, thanks. -- Extra   999  (Contact me  +  contribs) 06:35, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I noticed a pattern too. Specifically the random articles tend to be articles about villages in Iran, Poland, and Romania. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 03:38, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Move?

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus. harej 02:33, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Random → Help:Random —
 * Reads more like a help page than a wikipedia page. :| TelCo  NaSp  Ve :|  03:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment it seems more like a Mediawiki page... MediaWiki:Random ? 76.66.203.138 (talk) 05:18, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The MediaWiki namespace functions as a way to customize the interface messages, not provide information on Wikipedia features. Note MediaWiki:Randompage already exists. -- &oelig; &trade; 15:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. No need. It's a general information page as well as serving as a portal for users to be able to browse random pages in other namespaces. It's always been a project space page and should stay as one. -- &oelig; &trade; 15:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose per Ol.-- Extra   999  (Contact me  +  contribs) 15:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - The project namespace or Wikipedia namespace is a namespace consisting of pages with information or discussion about Wikipedia. The Help namespace contains information intended to help use Wikipedia or its software. Some of the Help namespace pages are intended for readers of the encyclopedia; others are intended for editors, whether beginning or advanced. Some of the pages in the Help namespace are copied from Meta-Wiki. There is a large amount of overlap between the Help namespace and the Project namespace (pages with the Wikipedia: prefix). For this reason redirects and hatnotes are often set up between these two namespaces. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 13:16, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Support - The Wikipedia:Random page contents clearly are intended to help use Wikipedia or its software (look at how many times forms of the word "use" is used on the page). Wikipedia:Random certainly is not about Wikipedia as the page contains nothing "about" Wikipedia. It is a general information page to help use Wikipedia. It is not a general information page about Wikipedia. If the page is serving as a portal for users to be able to browse random pages in other namespaces, then it is intended to help use Wikipedia or its software and is not about Wikipedia. The Wikipedia:Random page originally was a redirect to Special:Random and then was changed to a redirect to Help:Special page, until an annomous user change the page. Guys, :| TelCo  NaSp  Ve :|  got this one right. I support the requested move. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 13:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

questions...
Are Featured Articles and the like included in or excluded from the Random Button? What about articles that might be NSFW? Kingturtle = (talk) 05:45, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I presume all articles in mainspace are included.. I don't see any reason why any should be excluded. There's also a separate Random featured article tool. -- &oelig; &trade; 07:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That is what I presume too. But I've never gotten either a feature article or an unsavory article using the random button. So I wanted some confirmation. Kingturtle = (talk) 09:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * How often do you use it? I very frequently do random page patrol and I always get a nice variety, and have gotten a GA a couple times, but not an FA yet. Sometimes I get really unusual or funny results too, it can be quite fun. Special:Random/User can give very interesting results sometimes too. -- &oelig; &trade; 09:36, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I got the same article twice within four clicks
It was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Pure chance? Or was something else at work? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MeatyDoughnut (talk • contribs) 10:24, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Bad aim. "Current events" is the blue link directly above "Random article".--Remurmur (talk) 20:43, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

firefox browser. cache. check_doc_frequency
In firefox about:config I have browser. cache. check_doc_frequency set to 2 : never check (always use cached page)

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.check_doc_frequency

Usually to override this one preses shift+ctrl+r or just F5 a few times and eventually you get the new page.

The random page button redirects to an article which renders the firefox user without a means to reload the redirect, I have to write a script or use an extention.

I understand there are ways to set headers, not sure how that would work or if it could in this case.

Forced-downloading xml in javascript I always append a random string to the url, something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random#nocache=$randomstring

Then could possibly discard the "#nocache=etc" hash in the redirect process rather than preserve it.

I'm mostly refering to the button in the left side bar.

One could detect the cache configuration and append the string to the url only when some kind of browser cache is active but I don't think people care if the url is always uglyfied, you don't get to see it anyway.

84.106.26.81 (talk) 23:23, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Missing information about other purposes of a random article
Shouldn't the Project 1page mention 2 other uses for the Random article feature.
 * Because of that feature, each article will be viewed by a lot of people who are not experts in the subject that the article is about. As a result, there will be an effort to make the article understandable to every body, not just experts in the subject.
 * It ensures that a very short badly written article won't gain an unusually small number of views from not being very searchable and then the large number of views causes the article to be expanded really well to be a good long article, which in turn brings even more attention to the article and more links from other web pages to it, which makes it extremely searchable, which in turn brings even more attention to the article expanding it further making it a better article. Blackbombchu (talk) 23:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Random interesting article
I've been trying to get some interest in adding a button that generates a random article - but endeavors to make it be an "interesting" article (and yes, I'm aware of the difficulties with the definition of that word!).

I know from what I see here - and in the top half dozen Google hits for "Wikipedia random article" that many, many people hit "Random article" in an effort to broaden their minds, and to find something serendipious to read. Sadly, as Wikipedia has grown, we have more and more "database" articles about things like freeways, Japanese Railway stations, Pokemon cards, episodes of "The Simpsons" that don't fill the need - which masks articles like Coconut crab that people tend to find fascinating (world's largest land-arthropod, kept by children as pets!)

Anyway - please join the conversation at: Village_pump_(idea_lab)

SteveBaker (talk) 13:37, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Also allow browsing random articles from a selected category/ area
Such as, someone fascinated with Oceans, would wait for random articles on oceans, or someone interested to read biography of Painters, could be distracted by unwanted articles. Obviously, random article helps to discover pages, but still, addition of such a feature would be highly helpful.

RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 11:36, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this would be a cool tool to implement for readers. For yourself, if you want to get it working, you can use something like . &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 05:12, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Keyboard Shortcut
The article that the keyboard shortcut alt+shift+X will generate a random page. However, I tried it and nothing happened. Can someone tell me what is going on? I was using Chrome by the way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheZestyEel (talk • contribs) 20:54, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I was going to ask if anyone knows why the Random Article shortcut tooltip says alt+shift+x, when alt+x works as well (no need for it to be a capital X). Perhaps it is to be compliant with other systems. I am using Chrome. Mechachleopteryx (talk) 23:58, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Ideas for a more useful random article tool for readers
You are invited to join the discussion at Requests for comment/2020 left sidebar update. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 05:21, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Sad lost comment from WT:Special:Random from 2010
The Special:Random Feature is very useful as a bookmark/homepage for the curiously-minded. However on absolute random the articles are generally not fun. Is there a way to further refine the random search, to improve the quality of this special?

Something that could confine the random to

Random:Featured_Articles (not as javascript but as a special that could be used when set as a users homepage/bookmark etc)

or

Random:Category/SubCategory:Engineering —Preceding unsigned comment added by Psylabs (talk • contribs) 17:45, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, what this person said. jp×g 07:58, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, with Special:RandomInCategory. — Qwerfjkl  talk  11:50, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm trying to set my new browser tab to something interesting and random. This is all too confusing and should be simpler. Dave C.talk 02:19, 8 December 2023 (UTC)