Talk:Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon/Archive 1

Archive 1

Star Links

Delighted to see a Bacon number of 8! As you probably all know the Virginia site has a similar program called Star Links, which allows you to link any two actors (Kevin Bacon doesn't have to be involved). Has anybody ever got an 8 on that? My best was a 5 (but I had to use Lassie to get it!) Adam

(Next day) Apparently Reese Witherspoon has a William Rufus Shafter number of 9. (I need to get a life!) :-) Adam

I think Christopher Lee is either first or second as the person who can be connected to the most people with this thing. He's been in more films and probably worked with more actors than anyone else in the business (I think he's even in the Guiness Book for this). I think that his recent appearances in blockbusters (LOTR, Star Wars, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) has greatly increased this, having worked with so many actors in these films increasing the number. Morhange 01:01, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Not a proof

Here is an example, using Elvis Presley:

  1. Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit (1969) with Edward Asner
  2. Edward Asner was in JFK (1991) with Kevin Bacon

Therefore Elvis Presley has a Bacon number of 2.

But that doesn't prove Elvis Presley has a Bacon number of 2. Maybe there is a movie with both of them, then the Bacon number is 1. --Abdull 12:19, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

---

It stated it was an example, not a proof, Abudll.

.. I do wonder what Kevin Bacon thinks of this, however...

-e-

---

Maybe we could generalise the forward-linking example to any kind of virus, or just use something different than a disease... It seems a bit distasteful.

---

Akbar Abdi doesnt have a Bacon Number of 11, he has a Bacon number of 4:

Akbar Abdi was in Ali and Danny with Nick Robinson

Nick Robinson was in Vatel with Uma Thurman

Uma Thurman was in Where the Heart Is with Maury Chaykin

Maury Chaykin was in Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon

Reeve vs. Steiger

The page has been edited to indicate that Christopher Reeve, not Rod Steiger, is the best center in IMDb - a claim also appearing on the page for Bacon number. I assume this information comes from IMDbPro, which calculates Bacon numbers and perhaps similar statistics for other actors. Can anyone verify that Reeve currently has the lowest number? This seems odd, since he doesn't even make the top 1000 best centers on the Oracle of Bacon list [1]. --Ben Zimmer 19:07, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I've responded on Talk: Bacon number. Everyone, please respond there so we can keep discussion in one place. --C S (Talk) 01:28, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

That would be Christopher Lee, not Christopher Reeve. Reeve isn't close. The current leader, though, is Dennis Hopper. The place to type in someone's name is [2]. The 1000 best centers list that has Steiger on top is [3]. Dennis Hopper is currently ahead of everyone else in the top 20 of that list. I didn't bother to go beyond that. I'm not sure how to cite that as a source. Is that supposed to count as original research and thus off-limits? If I posted it on my blog, I could cite it as me claiming this is true, but I don't know the general convention on that sort of thing here. --Parableman 02:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I've copied over your comment to Talk: Bacon number. Please continue discussion (and see my response) there. --C S (Talk) 01:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The center of the Hollywood universe

The article says, "...the Center can and does shift", then proceeds to name the person who is the "center". Why name the "current" center if it's constantly changing. I have changed the section so that it doesn't have such as a nonsequiter. Ward3001 19:59, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Kennedy to Bacon in 2 steps

Maybe I didn't read the rules closely enough, but even I can do this in two steps, and I'm not a big player of the game. Regardless of whether this meets the criteria for including deceased people in the game, I think this is much cooler. :)

1. Kennedy "shook" Tom Hanks' hand in Forest Gump, thanks to clever CGI.
2. Hanks was in Apollo 13 with Bacon.

<>< tbc 21:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Non-actor version of the game

Some purist Wikipedian is likely to delete this section because it doesn't relate to improving the article, but I think it'd be fun to play it outside the film industry. I'm friends with the brother of Kevin Bacon's college roommate. So I have a Bacon number of 3. Now, thanks to the wonders of Internet technology, you all have Bacon numbers of 4. :) <>< tbc 21:45, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm one of those Wikipedians tempted to delete such comments, but this one is too irresistible to respond to, so I'll relax my standards. The reason it's not much fun to play the game outside the film industry (i.e., appearing in a film with someone) has to do with statistical probabilities. The "six degrees" theory basically states that every person in the world is separated from every other person in the world by no more than six degrees. Although the theory is unproven, my guess is that the probability is very high that most of us are connected by six degrees or less; and that's for everyone in the world. If you narrow it down by, let's say, geographical restriction (such as living in the same country) the number of degrees very likely decreases. So if you live in the same country as Kevin Bacon, there's likely a high probability that you are separated from him by no more than three or four degrees. The chances that you have met someone who has had a brush with fame is very high. So being connected by three or four degrees may seem impressive, but it really isn't. The interesting challenge is to find out how you are connected to Kevin Bacon (or to any famous person). Congratulations to tbc for figuring out his path! Here's my path: I know Caitlin Wachs, who starred with Bacon in My Dog Skip. Caitlin has a Bacon number of one, giving me a Bacon number of 2, and all of you a Bacon number of 3. Has anyone out there ever met Bacon? If so, let us know and we'll all have Bacon numbers of 2. Ward3001 22:47, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Photo

Since there's some disagreement, I thought I'd set up this topic for discussion. We only need one photo, so having two photos is only temporary for purposes of comparison. I think "Kevinbacongfdl.PNG" (currently the top photo) is a better photo than "Kevin Bacon by David Shankbone.jpg" (the bottom photo). I invite others to express their opinions. Ward3001 21:21, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• My reasons for supporting the photo I shot: 1. When it is right-justified, it faces the article and not away; 2. the color and resolution are sharper; 3. Bacon is visible, without sunglasses and windblown hair; 4. it was taken in 2007 just a few months ago; 5. Since the article is about Kevin Bacon's association with other actors, it seems more pertinent to have a photograph of him at a film festival. --David Shankbone 21:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Popular culture

I am a big supporter of WP:V and WP:CITE, and as my contribs show I am not bashful about adding maintenance tags where warranted. However, the statement, "By the 2000s, the game was familiar enough to be referred to in popular culture", is followed by two examples that illustrate this fact. A {fact} tag is inappropriate. No citation needed for the obvious. Finell (Talk) 17:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree that this is "obvious", but I'll listen to additional viewpoints on the talk page here. (If it's obvious, it would seem to me that finding a citation for the statement would be easy.) "Copyedit" isn't an accurate description of that particular edit, at any rate. Rray 17:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Please, Rray, have some regard for your fellow Wikipedians, and some respect for the viewpoints of others. I see, here and on your Talk page, that others have taken exception to your approach.

I thought that eliminating the paragraph break would make the point sufficiently clear, and I had no idea that anyone would consider this a controversial edit. And, to the contrary, it is not always easy to find a citation for the obvious: scholars tend to write on the un-obvious, for reasons that should be obvious. Verifiable citations of examples that support a statement are citations in support of the statement itself. I left intact the many other appropriate maintenance tags, including the {cleanup} tag. I do see another unnecessary {fact} tag for a statement of the obvious in the lead, so I will remove it as well. Finell (Talk) 17:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any interest in an edit war, so I'll refrain from reverting your edits. I disagree with your opinion about the appropriateness of the {{Fact}} tags. Your viewpoint is valid, although your unilateral approach to reverting my edit rather than discussing it and finding a consensus is disappointing. Your comments about my regard for other Wikipedians and respect for the viewpoints of others were uncalled for. I would have preferred to just discuss the issue itself without an attack on my regard for other Wikipedians. I would suggest that I was the one who suggested a conversation on the topic, and I was perfectly civil with you during the conversation. I hope you'll show me (and other editors) the same consideration in the future. Rray 19:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me? You immediately, "unilaterally", undid my removal of the tag and did not suggest any "conversation on the topic". I started this discussion topic here to explain what I did and why. Finell (Talk) 21:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

This is what happened, in order: You changed my edit and called it "copyediting" in your edit summary. I changed it back, thinking you had possibly deleted the {{Fact}} tag by mistake while copyediting. (Deleting a {{Fact}} tag isn't copyediting, and had you been clearer in your edit summary, I might not have changed it back immediately.) You started a discussion of it here, sure, but you also immediately reverted my good faith edit again before it had been discussed. Changing it back during a discussion that's still ongoing seems unilateral and immediate to me, but maybe not to you - you're entitled to your opinion. My intention, like yours, was just to improve the article. Just because we disagree about a specific edit doesn't mean that hurling insults at me by accusing me of having no regard for my fellow Wikipedians is somehow appropriate. That didn't sound to me like you were assuming good faith or being civil, but maybe you intended it to come across differently. If you review no personal attacks, you'll see a guideline that says, "Comments should not be personalized and should be directed at content and actions rather than people." You could have easily discussed your disagreement about my edit here without accusing me of having a lack of regard for other Wikipedians here. But at any rate, your preference here seems important to you, and it's not particularly important to me, so I'll leave it be. Rray 22:02, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, hopefully everyone has calmed down, a month later. Anyway, for what it's worth, I agree with Finell that a citation needed tag is inappropriate. For example, the fact that Kevin Bacon is in credit card commercials based on this premise is a good indicator that the general public is aware of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. It's a judgment call, to be sure, but in my judgment, the claim that this is a generally known game should not be controversial. --C S 10:48, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

That tag was removed already, and I don't plan to re-add it. But the guideline suggests that "all material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source." Seems clear that since I challenged it, a citation would be needed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources#When_to_cite_sources. Rray 13:01, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge from Bacon number

As per the discussion on talk:Bacon number, I've merged that article into this one. Tevildo (talk) 13:18, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Userbox?

I can't figure out how to do it, but there's a userbox for "this users Erdős number is x" can someone do one up for this user's Bacon number? :) Legotech (talk) 07:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

External links and See also section

I deleted some unencyclopedic and barely relevant material from these sections today. I invite anyone who disagrees with these edits to discuss them here before reverting my edits. Edit wars serve no one. Rray 05:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

• One reversion is not an edit war. I restored the link to "Implementation of The Kevin Bacon Game Online" without the words "Nice looking", as the words, rather than the link, was your explanation for reverting it again. A link to a website that plays the exact game that the article discusses is not "barely relevant".
• As for the Omnipelagos link, it's based on the same concept, just broadened to include topics in addition to Kevin Bacon. If the criteria for removing an external link is that it is not specifically the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Game", then the Oracle of Bacon link would also need to go because you can link actors who are not Kevin Bacon on that website. I'll wait to see if there are additional objections to Omnipelagos before restoring it.
• Regarding removal of Small world phenomenon from the "See also" section, please indicate a policy or guideline page that forbids including a wikilink in "See also" that is also linked in the main body of the article. I've seen it done hundreds of times. I'm not referring to redundancy in the main body of the article; I agree there should not be redundancy there. I want to know where the policy is stated that it can't be in both the body of the article and in the "See also" section. Ward3001 15:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

• You're correct. One reversion isn't an edit war. My comments regarding that were premature and probably thoughtless. I apologize.
• I think restoring the link is fine. The wording of the link was indeed the problem. I could have probably fixed that without deleting the link. Perhaps I was being overzealous again. I apologize.
• Regarding the Ominpelagos link, I'm not sure how many links to websites that broaden the concept of the game would be appropriate. A link to a resource that discusses various implementations of the concept would be more appropriate than multiple links to various websites which actually implement the concept, but I don't know that one exists.

If such a resource were available, that might make sense. But I don't know of one either. And if the number of external links to related games gets too large, then we can deal with it. Ward3001 15:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I see your point. I tend to think that "less is more" as it relates to external links, but if you re-add the link, I won't revert it again. Rray 20:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

• There is no policy that forbids this afaik, but redundant links aren't the norm that I've seen here. (I don't think I said my deletion was based on policy, but if I did, I was probably wrong. The deletion was based on discretion, not policy.) Since the link is already available earlier in the article, why would it be important to include it a 2nd time? Is it somehow so important to this article's topic that it warrants the additional emphasis? I don't think that it does, but I'm open minded to hearing opinions about why it might warrant additional emphasis.. Rray 15:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I've seen plenty of links in both the body of the article and the "See also" section; I don't think that is outside the norm. The reason it's important to put it in "See also" is because that is a quick summary of other articles related to the topic. I think many readers (myself included) quickly read an article or only read certain sections, then jump to the "See also" section for related pages, or just out of curiosity. I don't think you should have to read the entire page to find related articles. Ward3001 15:57, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The norms for the articles I edit and am interested in might well be different from the norms for the articles you edit and are interested in, and that's okay. We can just discuss the appropriateness of including the link in the See also section of this particular article. I understand your point about being able to find related articles, but you *don't* have to read the entire page to find related articles in this instance. The link to Small world phenomenon is included in the first few words of the article. It's hard to imagine that someone would miss it. Rray 16:21, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I still think it belongs in "See also", even if you have to delink it earlier, although I think that degree of redundancy is quite acceptable. Sometimes a bit of redundancy is not a bad thing, as long as it's not overdone. "See also" should be the place in the article where you're most likely to find links to other articles, regardless of where the first reference is in the body of the article. That's the sole purpose of "See also". Ward3001 16:28, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I did some checking, and despite my preferences, it seems that there are some guidelines that support your position: WP:GTL#See also. We'll leave it as you have edited it. I suppose my concerns should go on the Talk page for the guidelines. Ward3001 16:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for finding the link to the policy. I think the argument you'll hear will be that users probably don't have problems finding related articles because the in-body links are underlined and blue. You don't even have to read the article to find them, you can just glance through the article and look for links. I lean toward agreeing with that viewpoint myself, but good luck with the discussion there. And thanks for the discussion here. :) Rray 16:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I would like to know if it would be acceptable to add an external link to a page called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon's Bed which is a variation on the classic movie game, except with celebrity relationships. The site allows you to enter any two celebrities and then tries to join the two through the various relationships they've each had (i.e. who they've dated, married, hooked up with, etc.). --Bnbalestri (talk) 21:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Similar links that are not related directly to Bacon numbers have been deleted. See discussion immediately above. The reason is that there are many such games that have evolved from the Bacon game. Including all of them is not feasible (and some would argue irrelevant to the article), and if one is included, then all should be included. You might create a new page for the game you're referring to. Ward3001 (talk) 23:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Erdos' Bacon number?

From the Erdos Number project: http://www.oakland.edu/enp/related.html

"Paul Erdös himself has an official Bacon number of 4 ... However, we have recently discovered that this is bogus, because the link, named Gene Patterson, is not the same person in N is a Number as in the film Box of Moonlight, where the link supposedly lies. Thus it remains an open question as to what Paul Erdös’s Bacon number is." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 17.201.20.251 (talk) 02:44, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

IMDB states that it IS the same Gene Patterson, from Gene Patterson's filmography page. The site linked above at Oakland.edu also doesn't cite any source for the claim that it is not the same person. ---Puff (talk) 09:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Hitler's Bacon Number?

Didn't they do that recently on the daily show and come up with 6? Not sure if that's really notable other than being kind of funny though, so I'll leave it to others to add it if so. On Thermonuclear War (talk) 03:10, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Hardly encyclopedic. Please restrict discussion on this talk page to improving the article. Ward3001 (talk) 03:23, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Gloria Swanson and Chris Farley

Charlton Heston was in "Airport 1975" with Gloria Swanson and "Wayne's World 2" with Chris Farley. Ryan Reeder (talk) 11:59, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

False link, or no longer valid?

The reference to the photography book [4] is coming up with an unregistered domain name. I'm not sure if someone has changed the reference, or if the website is no longer valid (this pc isn't running particularly fast, making rooting back through the history a pain). Can someone supply a valid link/reference? Stephen! ^Coming... 16:20, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Calculating Bacon number

Well, math was never my strong suit. So would a Bacon number of 0 mean that the actor is Kevin Bacon? --KQ

Yes, by definition, Kevin Bacon (uniquely) has a Kevin Bacon number of 0. 3.14 (talk) 02:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

until the day that his clone is revealed as having had acting training and appears in films. 66.80.6.163 (talk) 22:33, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

No, that would still leave only Bacon himself with a Bacon number of 0. Bacon's clone would have no Bacon number whatsoever until he (the clone) works in a film with someone with an existing Bacon number, say n (if there should be multiple people with a Bacon number, n would be the smallest existing Bacon number among them), in which case Bacon's clone's Bacon number would become n+1. 3.14 (talk) 03:42, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

The article says the calculation is a "shortest path algorithm" but actually a better algorithm is the breadth first search. Here's a reference: [5]. Dispersedoubt (talk) 16:40, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Not devised by 3 college students

6 degrees of Kevin bacon was mentioned on an episode of the Jon Stewert Show on MTV. This was aired in 1993.

The article says that the name was suggested by a producer when the students were on the Daily Show, implying that they created it and the show popularized it.

Bullshit. First off, the John Stewart Show is not the same thing as The Daily Show. The John Stewart show was a show on MTV, and was already canceled several years before he went on to do the Daily Show. Secondly, if the game was "invented in 2001" then "The Air Up There" was far from Bacon's most recent film. He'd done 12 other films between that one and the year 2001 alone. Finally, this game was around long before 2001 (check the internet archive and you can find websites dedicated to it as far back as the mid-90s). And this very article states that the game was referenced in an episode of "Mad About You"...a show that ended its run in 1999. Anyone claiming to have invented this game in 2001 is pulling your leg. I officially submit that the section be removed. Not to mention that the game was not invented because somebody supposedly noticed how many movies Kevin Bacon was been in. It was invented more just to show how to link to any particular actor. Kevin Bacon's name was chosen because, "Kevin Bacon" (almost) rhymes with "Separation." Hence the pun on the originating phrase, "Six Degrees Of Separation." bmb8609

The "game" was around a long time. I remember a film student friend of mine (Derek Cianfrance - you can Google him) playing/talking about it in 1996 at the University of Colorado in Boulder. --David Shankbone 00:04, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

This is anecdotal so I've got no citation, and thus no way to reference this in the actual entry, but the game was already making the rounds of drama and theatre departments by 1991. The CMU drama students that were most of the cast in a City Theatre Company (Pittsburgh, PA) production of the one-act play "Steel Kiss" in 1991 played it nearly every night in the green room. I was the resident sound designer and engineer there at the time and remember it well. We brought it to the University of Pittsburgh Theatre Arts department within days of first learning about it.

John Guare's play, "The Six Degrees of Separation", premiered on Broadway late in 1990 after a short run somewhere else earlier that year. The Pittsburgh academic community was playing "The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" a few months later. Coincidence, I think not. The play popularised the 6-degrees concept, someone in the theatre community came up with the "Kevin Bacon" thing, and from the theatre community it made its way into popular culture. 1990 was pre-commercial Internet so the transmission vector of the meme was most likely from a highly mobile, nearly self-contained, subculture: Theatre People. By 1994, it had been bouncing around for 3 years. Bacon's interview comment from 1994 was a result of the game, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, this qualifies as original research/eyewitness report so there is no way for me to correct the grossly incorrect actual entry for this subject. --Michael.p.albert (talk) 01:05, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia variations

My sister told me of the funniest variation of this game: the Wikipedia version. We were discussing Wikipedia, and she said that she and her friends had done a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon variant using his Wikipedia page. Someone would shout out a topic, and using only the page's hyperlinks they had to link to that topic. They got to "polar bears" in 37 steps, though I'm guessing someone could beat that fairly handily. (By the way, my sister is two degrees from Kevin personally, having recently met a makeup artist who worked with Kevin on a movie. Oh, sure, it's not a filmography, but I had to add that.)--Raulpascal 16:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I have subsequently been told by my sister that I am on crack; she has never met someone who worked with Kevin Bacon. Disregard the last. However, I've found that if you hit the "random article" link, then use the hyperlinks in the article to work your way to Kevin Bacon, you will get nothing accomplished at work.--Raulpascal 14:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly what a friend of mine came up with over summer: Six Wikis to Kevin Bacon. Start with the "Random article" link and work your way to Kevin Bacon in 6 steps or less. His most prized accomplishment is going from a school district in the back country of Sweden to Bacon in only 5 wikis! And you're right, he got very little done at work this summer! :) Coredumperror 02:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I've played the same game on Wikipedia at work for years since most other websites are blocked. You hit the "Random Article" button on the side, and count how many pages it takes you to get to Kevin Bacon's page. The only rules are that you cannot use the search box and you can't go back. You'd be surprised how many people I know actually know about this game. I think it would be educational(well, about as educational as having a page referring to the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game itself) to include a paragraph about variants of the original game, as I have heard there are other variations as well, including a road trip game, where one person starts with a celebrity, and you go around the car, each person shouting out a celebrity that links you closer to Kevin Bacon. I've also heard of a Google/Search engine version, but I am not clear what the rules/ gameplay is on that variant.--Odie1344 (talk) 18:13, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Here is what you're referring to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikirace --76.21.236.172 (talk) 20:02, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

what is a "film role"?

Do television documentaries count as films? McKay (talk) 01:55, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Just a question: - Is it possible to consider "background actor" (clearly visible and recognisable but not credited)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:760:2007:4406:0:0:0:A7 (talk) 11:26, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

My impression is that there are varying definitions, e.g., The Oracle of Bacon allows you to switch on a number of options. A similar question has been asked at Stackexchange, see [6]. A user answers by pointing to two books, and apparently quotes one of them. Relying on the user provided quote the answer is that for the "canonical" Bacon number television work does not count, but "background actor" do count. I do not have access to these books. — fnielsen (talk) 16:40, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Hattie McDaniel

My brother won't play this game with me anymore. He thought he could stump me with Hattie McDaniel. She was in Gone With the Wind with Vivian Leigh who was in A Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando who was in The Island of Dr. Morow with Val Kilmer who was in Top Gun with Tom Cruise who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon. Eric Cable  !  Talk  02:02, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Oracle of Bacon changes

Note: The Oracle of Bacon doesn't use IMDB data any more, instead pulling data from Wikipedia. This means that a great deal of information is missing (the criteria for Wikipedia being a bit different to those applied for inclusion in IMDB). Not sure when this changed but to quote from the site, "Every couple of weeks the Oracle downloads every English-language article from Wikipedia. Using an open-source script, we produce a JSON file with 128,000 films and 358,000 actors and actresses." If accurate, this is a much smaller set than the 800,000 mentioned in the article.

Arivne (talk) 01:01, 14 January 2019 (UTC)