Wikipedia's 100 Most-Linked-To Pages

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Mostlinked&limit=100&offset=0 [Published: 09-Aug-06 | Permalink | Category: Science seen]

Weird list:

Wikipedia's internal links (between pages within Wikipedia itself) are, predictably, mostly to do with how-to stuff for Wikipedia itself. And Wikipedia gets a lot of links: it's the 27th most-linked-to page in Wikipedia right now, while Wikimedia is 43rd with about half as many. Sprinkled among these are surprisingly high-ranking links to individual countries that probably indicate the geographical biases, cultural saliences and spoken language among Wikipedians (when I looked today, United States is the 14th most linked-to article within Wikipedia; heading down, United Kingdom 32nd, England 39th, Canada 40th, France 46th, Australia 47th, Germany 54th, Japan 61st, India 75th, London 93rd (!), and Europe 95th -- you have to go to 136 to find the next city, New York). Population density is 45th, Census 62nd, and Per capita income 82nd - these are probably artifacts of this prevalence of what might be called geostatistical trivia in Wikipedia. This explains why United States postal abbreviations is 68th, Square mile is 80th, Km² is 84th, and US State is 85th. They are evidence of helpful-to-a-fault use of hyperlinks as explanatory glosses in other articles; the shock appearance of Screenshot at 79th results from this same enthusiastic overhyperlinking ("metalinking"?). The Geographic coordinate system is 60th and the United States Census Bureau is 89th (tens of thousands of referring articles) - I think that's Power Cable, Nebraska and all the rest squirting wikijuice right at them.
Then there's the wikilovefest directed at All About Copyright: (Fair Use is all the way up at 5th probably due to its appearance on so many of the how-to pages, United States copyright 8th, Copyright infringement 9th, Copyright 12th, --and aren't those two in an interesting order!-- Public domain 26th, Trademark 49th, and Logo 50th). This hardly reflects the prominence of copyright issues in the wider world. Wikipedia and copyright seem to go together, so much so that the Wikipedia entry is top hit on Google right now ahead of the US Copyright Office homepage. Most people get their copyright info from Wikipedia, and some do their first infringing there.
Another subset that may spring from biases and saliences or, perhaps, may be associated with copyright (or, to be charitable, may just be innocently prominent): Album is 48th, Single (music) 51st, Record label 70th, and Music genre 76th. Supporting the bias-salience argument is the fact that the Internet Movie Database is 78th. Or is that just credit for venerability?
Reflecting the topicality of Wikipedia, individual years get a lot of links, proportional to their proximity to the present: 2006 has over 100,000 links and is 28th, 2005 is 30th, 2004 36ths, 2003 42nd, 2002 55th, 2001 56th, 2000 58th, 1999 72nd, 1998 87th, 1997 92nd, and 1996 96th. The trend continues, more or less, until dates become meaningless: the earliest I could find was 3671 BC, the start of the Hebrew calendar.
A few other big-hitters indicate what crops up a lot in Wikipedia articles: Biography is 37th, English language 64th, Marriage 74th, World War II 86th. Is that "life" or what?!
Controversy lurks on the list too: White (U.S. Census) is currently 100th and Race and African-American are in the top 200.
I was surprised that, after IP address at 38th the next computer reference came as late as 103rd: Computer and video games. The top sciencey thing is Scientific classification at 128th.

What's the lesson? I think it might be that the hyperlinked world is a small world and an echo chamber. Is this what Ted meant?

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