Why We Read Wikipedia

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Why We Read Wikipedia
Authors
Philipp Singer
Florian Lemmerich
Robert West
Leila Zia
Ellery Wulczyn
Markus Strohmaier
Jure Leskovec
Publication date
2017
DOI
10.1145/3038912.3052716
Links
Original Preprint

Why We Read Wikipedia - scientific work related to Wikipedia quality published in 2017, written by Philipp Singer, Florian Lemmerich, Robert West, Leila Zia, Ellery Wulczyn, Markus Strohmaier and Jure Leskovec.

Overview

Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the Web, with millions of users relying on it to satisfy a broad range of information needs every day. Although it is crucial to understand what exactly these needs are in order to be able to meet them, little is currently known about why users visit Wikipedia. The goal of this paper is to fill this gap by combining a survey of Wikipedia readers with a log-based analysis of user activity. Based on an initial series of user surveys, authors build a taxonomy of Wikipedia use cases along several dimensions, capturing users' motivations to visit Wikipedia, the depth of knowledge they are seeking, and their knowledge of the topic of interest prior to visiting Wikipedia. Then, authors quantify the prevalence of these use cases via a large-scale user survey conducted on live Wikipedia with almost 30,000 responses. Authors analyses highlight the variety of factors driving users to Wikipedia, such as current events, media coverage of a topic, personal curiosity, work or school assignments, or boredom. Finally, authors match survey responses to the respondents' digital traces in Wikipedia's server logs, enabling the discovery of behavioral patterns associated with specific use cases. For instance, authors observe long and fast-paced page sequences across topics for users who are bored or exploring randomly, whereas those using Wikipedia for work or school spend more time on individual articles focused on topics such as science. Authors findings advance understanding of reader motivations and behavior on Wikipedia and can have implications for developers aiming to improve Wikipedia's user experience, editors striving to cater to their readers' needs, third-party services (such as search engines) providing access to Wikipedia content, and researchers aiming to build tools such as recommendation engines.

Embed

Wikipedia Quality

Singer, Philipp; Lemmerich, Florian; West, Robert; Zia, Leila; Wulczyn, Ellery; Strohmaier, Markus; Leskovec, Jure. (2017). "[[Why We Read Wikipedia]]". International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee. DOI: 10.1145/3038912.3052716.

English Wikipedia

{{cite journal |last1=Singer |first1=Philipp |last2=Lemmerich |first2=Florian |last3=West |first3=Robert |last4=Zia |first4=Leila |last5=Wulczyn |first5=Ellery |last6=Strohmaier |first6=Markus |last7=Leskovec |first7=Jure |title=Why We Read Wikipedia |date=2017 |doi=10.1145/3038912.3052716 |url=https://wikipediaquality.com/wiki/Why_We_Read_Wikipedia |journal=International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee}}

HTML

Singer, Philipp; Lemmerich, Florian; West, Robert; Zia, Leila; Wulczyn, Ellery; Strohmaier, Markus; Leskovec, Jure. (2017). &quot;<a href="https://wikipediaquality.com/wiki/Why_We_Read_Wikipedia">Why We Read Wikipedia</a>&quot;. International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee. DOI: 10.1145/3038912.3052716.