The Wikipedia Effect is the tendancy for inquisitive people to become caught in an endless series of pages on the popular open-encyclopedia, "Wikipedia", to which they are forced to read every single page they've opened.
This tends to happen thanks to Wikipedia's inter-linking model, which links important words in a particular article, to an entire article on that word. The trend can then easily cascade from there, ending in dozens of pages that a user finds interesting.
"Don't you just love The Wikipedia Effect? It sure is a good way to stave off boredom."
100👍 15👎