Lamprecht Daniel, Lerman Kristina, Helic Denis, Strohmaier Markus
Knowledge Technologies Institute, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria.
Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
New Rev Hypermedia Multimed. 2017 Jan 2;23(1):29-50. doi: 10.1080/13614568.2016.1179798. Epub 2016 May 12.
In this work we study how people navigate the information network of Wikipedia and investigate (i) free-form navigation by studying all clicks within the English Wikipedia over an entire month and (ii) goal-directed Wikipedia navigation by analyzing wikigames, where users are challenged to retrieve articles by following links. To study how the organization of Wikipedia articles in terms of layout and links affects navigation behavior, we first investigate the characteristics of the structural organization and of hyperlinks in Wikipedia and then evaluate link selection models based on article structure and other potential influences in navigation, such as the generality of an article's topic. In free-form Wikipedia navigation, covering all Wikipedia usage scenarios, we find that click choices can be best modeled by a bias towards article structure, such as a tendency to click links located in the lead section. For the goal-directed navigation of wikigames, our findings confirm the zoom-out and the homing-in phases identified by previous work, where users are guided by generality at first and textual similarity to the target later. However, our interpretation of the link selection models accentuates that article structure is the best explanation for the navigation paths in all except these initial and final stages. Overall, we find evidence that users more frequently click on links that are located close to the top of an article. The structure of Wikipedia articles, which places links to more general concepts near the top, supports navigation by allowing users to quickly find the better-connected articles that facilitate navigation. Our results highlight the importance of article structure and link position in Wikipedia navigation and suggest that better organization of information can help make information networks more navigable.
在这项工作中，我们研究人们如何浏览维基百科的信息网络，并调查：（i）通过研究整个月内英文维基百科中的所有点击行为来进行自由形式的浏览；（ii）通过分析维基游戏来进行目标导向的维基百科浏览，在维基游戏中，用户需要通过点击链接来检索文章。为了研究维基百科文章在布局和链接方面的组织方式如何影响浏览行为，我们首先调查维基百科中结构组织和超链接的特征，然后基于文章结构以及浏览中其他潜在影响因素（如文章主题的普遍性）来评估链接选择模型。在涵盖所有维基百科使用场景的自由形式浏览中，我们发现点击选择可以通过对文章结构的偏向来进行最佳建模，例如倾向于点击位于引言部分的链接。对于维基游戏的目标导向浏览，我们的研究结果证实了先前研究中确定的缩小和放大阶段，即用户首先受普遍性引导，之后受与目标的文本相似性引导。然而，我们对链接选择模型的解释强调，除了这些初始和最终阶段外，文章结构是对所有浏览路径的最佳解释。总体而言，我们发现有证据表明用户更频繁地点击位于文章顶部附近的链接。维基百科文章的结构将指向更一般概念的链接置于顶部附近，通过允许用户快速找到有助于浏览的连接性更好的文章来支持浏览。我们的结果凸显了文章结构和链接位置在维基百科浏览中的重要性，并表明更好的信息组织有助于使信息网络更易于浏览。
