Consider the redirect: A missing dimension of Wikipedia research

Benjamin Mako Hill; Aaron Shaw

doi:10.1145/2641580.2641616

Consider the redirect: A missing dimension of Wikipedia research

Benjamin Mako Hill^*, Aaron Shaw

^*Corresponding author for this work

Communication Studies

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Redirects are special pages in wikis that silently transport visitors to other pages. Although redirects make up a majority of all article pages in English Wikipedia, they have attracted very little attention and are rarely taken into account by researchers. This note describes redirects and illustrates why they play an important role in shaping activity in Wikipedia. We also present a novel longitudinal dataset of redirects for English Wikipedia and the software used to produce it. Using this dataset, we revisit several important published findings about Wikipedia to show that accounting for redirects can have important effects on research.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages	F5
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450330169
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/2641580.2641616
State	Published - 2014
Event	10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014 - Berlin, Germany Duration: Aug 27 2014 → Aug 29 2014

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014

Other

Other	10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014
Country/Territory	Germany
City	Berlin
Period	8/27/14 → 8/29/14

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software

Access to Document

10.1145/2641580.2641616

Cite this

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title = "Consider the redirect: A missing dimension of Wikipedia research",

abstract = "Redirects are special pages in wikis that silently transport visitors to other pages. Although redirects make up a majority of all article pages in English Wikipedia, they have attracted very little attention and are rarely taken into account by researchers. This note describes redirects and illustrates why they play an important role in shaping activity in Wikipedia. We also present a novel longitudinal dataset of redirects for English Wikipedia and the software used to produce it. Using this dataset, we revisit several important published findings about Wikipedia to show that accounting for redirects can have important effects on research.",

author = "Hill, {Benjamin Mako} and Aaron Shaw",

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language = "English (US)",

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Hill, BM & Shaw, A 2014, Consider the redirect: A missing dimension of Wikipedia research. in Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014. Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp. F5, 10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014, Berlin, Germany, 8/27/14. https://doi.org/10.1145/2641580.2641616

Consider the redirect : A missing dimension of Wikipedia research. / Hill, Benjamin Mako; Shaw, Aaron.

Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2014. p. F5 (Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2014).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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AU - Shaw, Aaron

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - Redirects are special pages in wikis that silently transport visitors to other pages. Although redirects make up a majority of all article pages in English Wikipedia, they have attracted very little attention and are rarely taken into account by researchers. This note describes redirects and illustrates why they play an important role in shaping activity in Wikipedia. We also present a novel longitudinal dataset of redirects for English Wikipedia and the software used to produce it. Using this dataset, we revisit several important published findings about Wikipedia to show that accounting for redirects can have important effects on research.

AB - Redirects are special pages in wikis that silently transport visitors to other pages. Although redirects make up a majority of all article pages in English Wikipedia, they have attracted very little attention and are rarely taken into account by researchers. This note describes redirects and illustrates why they play an important role in shaping activity in Wikipedia. We also present a novel longitudinal dataset of redirects for English Wikipedia and the software used to produce it. Using this dataset, we revisit several important published findings about Wikipedia to show that accounting for redirects can have important effects on research.

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PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc

Y2 - 27 August 2014 through 29 August 2014

ER -

Consider the redirect: A missing dimension of Wikipedia research

Abstract

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