Meaningful estimates of Wikipedia popularity.

[reddragdiva]

English Wikipedia Wikicharts for November 2007 (so far), intended for amusement purposes only. The numbers are a sampling of raw page hit count.

The hits on "Main Page" will be people just going to the site. The hits on "wiki" will not (I would guess) come from a society-wide fascination with editable websites, but because people have typed "wiki" into a search engine. I suspect a lot of the sex-related hits will be disappointed porn searchers.

The question is what "popular" actually usefully means. Raw page hits demonstrably isn't quite it. "Pages with most hits gone to by people looking for information" (whether starting from Wikipedia, a search engine or a link) is closer to what we're after, but there's the question of quantifying intent. When we ask what's "popular," what's the question we're actually asking?

(At least our charts are harder to rig than Conservapedia's.)

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Is this the same as asking how best to aggregate the information the referrer field gives you?

[reddragdiva]

No, data and people able to chew on it we're not short of at all. The question here is what (a) meaningfully defines "popularity" (b) how to then make that into numbers. That is: what's the question we're actually asking when we ask what's "popular"? (Post edited accordingly.)

[guerillamagilla.livejournal.com]

Proof that the majority of people really are stupid - 'youtube'!

There is some hysterical convergences there - Australia/Prison Break; America's Next top Model/Female Porn Stars; Adolf Hitler/Britney Spears.