From the «endless rabbitholes [citation needed]» department:
Title: Wikipedia Searches Reveal Differing Styles of Curiosity
Author: feedback@slashdot.org
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2025 10:00:00 +0000
Link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/01/11/0427258/wikipedia-searches-reveal-differing-styles-of-curiosity?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Wikipedia's massive dataset helped researchers identify three styles of
curiosity -- "busybody," "hunter," and "dancer" -- based on how users navigate
its pages (see: wiki rabbit hole). These curiosity styles reflect broader
social trends and highlight curiosity's role in connecting information rather
than merely acquiring it. Scientific American reports: In this lexicon, a
busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics.
A hunter, in contrast, searches with sustained focus, moving among a relatively
small number of closely related articles. A dancer links together highly
disparate topics to try to synthesize new ideas. "Curiosity actually works by
connecting pieces of information, not just acquiring them," says University of
Pennsylvania network scientist Dani Bassett, cosenior author on a recent study
of these curiosity types in Science Advances. "It's not as if we go through the
world and pick up a piece of information and put it in our pockets like a
stone. Instead we gather information and connect it to stuff that we already
know." The team tracked more than 482,000 people using Wikipedia's mobile app
in 50 countries or territories and 14 languages. The researchers charted these
users' paths using "knowledge networks" of connected information, which depict
how closely one search topic (a node in the network) is related to another.
Beyond just mapping the connections, they linked curiosity styles to
location-based indicators of well-being, inequality, and other measures. In
countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, people
browsed more like busybodies. In countries with lower scores on these
variables, people browsed like hunters. Bassett hypothesizes that "in countries
that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a
constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this
hyperfocus." The researchers also analyzed topics of interest, ranging from
physics to visual arts, for busybodies compared with hunters (graphic). Dancer
patterns, more recently confirmed, were excluded. Editor note: This article was
published on December 24, 2024, based on a study published in October, 2024.

[image 2][2][image 4][4]

Read more of this story[5] at Slashdot.

Links:
[1]: http://twitter.com/home?status=Wikipedia+Searches+Reveal+Differing+Styles+of+Curiosity%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F01%2F11%2F0427258%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter (link)
[2]: https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png (image)
[3]: http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F01%2F11%2F0427258%2Fwikipedia-searches-reveal-differing-styles-of-curiosity%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook (link)
[4]: https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png (image)
[5]: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/01/11/0427258/wikipedia-searches-reveal-differing-styles-of-curiosity?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed (link)