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Comment by gdl | Hacker News Reader

It seems too eager to go through year and day pages, and doesn't always hit the optimal path:

  Mike Godwin -> Godwin's law -> Adolf Hitler

it gives:

  Mike Godwin -> 1956 -> 1889 -> Adolf Hitler

Also strange is that the "1956" it follows is in the text of, but not linked from "Mike Godwin".

Either way, I like the Web 2.0-style Hitler drawings :-)

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I would concur about the date thing. It makes it a lot less fun when your path looks like:

  Polycephaly -> August 18 -> Adolf Hitler

When I was able to get their manually by:

  Polycephaly -> Freak Show -> Cannes Film Festival -> France -> Germany -> Hitler

I think just dropping dates from contention, apart from any other contextual algorithm improvements, would put a lot of the fun and discovery back in to it.

I agree wholeheartedly. Not only is it far too easy to link dates to Hitler, but dates are also likely to be connected to other dates, thus getting even further way from a real connection to the original page and giving two chances at the heightened chance of a hit that dates have. I tried "Mark Zuckerberg", and the path from him to Hitler was:

  December 5th -> 1889 -> Adolf Hitler

When there's a perfectly obvious connection at:

  Jewish -> Adolf Hitler

(which did exist in October 2008, just so nobody else wastes their time checking)

Jewish -(redirect)-> Jews -> Adolf Hitler. Both are 3 but December is first in alphabetical so it was the first one recorded.

I find it viscerally painful to see the casual association.

6000 years of culture and all you can think of is some delusional scumbag.

There might be 6000 years of culture, but this app finds degrees of separation(i guess) between wikipedia articles and adolf hitler(that is its purpose). So the association isn't casual and in relation to Adolf Hitler its pretty on topic.

"3000 years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Cofax, you're goddamn right I'm living in the past!" - Walter Sobchak

First thing that popped in my head. Yeah, here come the downvotes.

FWIW, it pisses me off that this Hitler character is so closely identified with Jews. Must every mention of Judaism be associated with this monster, and vice versa?

On The Internet? Yes.

Disclaimer: I am a young german.

Apparently yes, jewish associations and/or Israel remind us all the time about it. The only other thing about Jews I know are the terrible crimes they do in Palestine. But obviously that's not what they shout from the rooftops.

Holding all Jews accountable for the actions of Israel is almost as conscionable as holding you responsible for Hitler's actions, or holding me responsible for Bin Laden's. I.e. it's utter bullshit.

Misunderstanding: I simply meant that every time I hear the word "jew" (for example in the news) it is either about the holocaust or Israel.

While it could be a subset of Israel, various forms of Zionism also come to my mind. It's interesting how the Israeli PR is so effective in some cases (like in US government) and so ineffective in others. Of course I have to remind myself that P(bad person | jewish) isn't significantly different from P(bad person | not jewish), we're all human.

Not every mention of Judaism is associated with Hitler, so I'm not sure why you ask. Most of the times I hear Judaism mentioned, it is not in the context of Adolf Hitler. I think you're the first person I've ever heard draw a universal connection between the two.

As for Hitler, he is most famous (at least in America) for his violent hatred of the Jewish people, so it is likely that mentioning him will bring it to mind. I mean, what are we supposed to think of? Complaining that Hitler is associated with Jews seems like saying, "Good grief, every time I mention Picasso, people think of Cubist art!"

To keep things in perspective: this is a thread about a "cute" rendering of Hitler, complete with innocent Anime eyes, and the mention of Jews is done in a jovial, playful manner, almost game-like.

We're not talking about an internet meme here, we're talking about mass murder of innocent people, not too long ago. There are still living survivors. So excuse me if I refuse to play along, and slap my knees all the way to the cemetery.

Yes, please take away all dates!

its because its using an older record of Godwin's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Godwins_law&ol...

where it actually doesn't actually link to hitler. I would like to update the records but it takes forever to upload 5gb of entries into app engine :)

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