Authors:
Paraskevi Tzekou
1
;
Sofia Stamou
2
;
Nikos Kirtsis
1
and
Nikos Zotos
1
Affiliations:
1
Patras University, Greece
;
2
Patras University and Ionian University, Greece
Keyword(s):
Wikipedia, External links decay, Measurements, Quality assessment.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Data Engineering
;
Digital Libraries
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Searching and Browsing
;
Symbolic Systems
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
;
Web Interfaces and Applications
Abstract:
Wikipedia is a unique source of information that has been collectively supplied by thousands of people. Since its nascence in 2001, Wikipedia is continuously evolving and like most websites it is interconnected via hyperlinks to other web information sources. Wikipedia articles contain two types of links: internal and external. Internal links point to other Wikipedia articles, while external links point outside Wikipedia and normally they are not used in the body of the article. Although there exist specific guidelines about both the style and the purpose of the article external links, no approach has been recorded that tries to capture in a systematic manner the quality of Wikipedia external links. In this paper, we study the quality of Wikipedia external links by assessing the degree to which these conform to their intended purpose; that is to formulate a comprehensive list of accurate information sources about the article contents. For our study, we estimate the decay of Wikipedia
external links and we investigate their distribution in the Wikipedia articles. Our measurements give perceptible evidence for the value of external links and may imply their corresponding articles' quality in a holistic Wikipedia evaluation.
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