If you've ever looked something up on Wikipedia and been overwhelmed by the sheer amount on information on whatever topic you've looked up - so much so that it makes it even more confusing to find the answer you were looking for all along - a lifehack posted on the subreddit /r/LifeProTips on Feb. 16 is about to make Wikipedia a lot simpler. No, really: with only a word substitution in the URL for the online resource, you can find versions of Wikipedia entries that read as if they were written for a five-year-old.
The variation of the popular online encyclopedic resource, which may or may not be more accurate than its print cultural predecessors, is called "Simple Wikipedia" for a reason: users can access it by replacing "en" with "simple" in the URL address (i.e., "https://simple.wikipedia.org" instead of "https://en.wikipedia.org").
Compare and contrast the results for Spider-man. The first lines for the general Wikipedia entry read:
"Spider-Man is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics existing in its shared universe. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko, and first appeared in the anthology comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962) in the Silver Age of Comic Books."
The Simple Wikipedia version of the first two sentences states:
"Spider-Man is a fictional superhero in the Marvel Comics universe. He is a character made by writer and editor Stan "the man" Lee and artist and co-plotter Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 in August 1962. The idea was that he would be an orphan being raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben as an ordinary teenager."
Or how about these Simple Wikipedia bullet points, which highlight a quick rundown of the comic's characters:
Versus this:
Another example? Here is the entry for Wikipedia's Harry Potter page:
And here's the Simple Wikipedia version:
While Simple Wikipedia doesn't necessarily have as much content as its parent site does (my search for "Supergirl," for instance, turned up nothing), the streamlined tidbits of information are undeniably easier to digest.
The only issue? As the word "simple" suggests, the Wikipedia subsidiary leaves out chunks of info for the sake of consolidation, which means that if you're looking to verify one particular fact, you're better off using the original site.
Source: Reddit | Wikipedia
