Rules and Diversity of Wikipedia's Growth

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to show a law of Japanese Wikipedia's growth by analyzing rules and diversity. For this purpose, we analyze the distributions of the frequencies of hyperlinks. First, on Wikipedia's whole data, there are the same distributions of hyperlinks' frequencies on anytime every year. It means that Wikipedia keeps the distributions' rule, although it grows dramatically in number of articles. Second, on data of each categories, there are a variety of hyperlinks' distributions. It means that Wikipedia makes the diversity of its growth in each categories, although it keeps the distributions' rule as a whole. In conclusion, the coexistence of the rule of whole data's distributions and the diversity of each categories' distributions can be regarded as a law of Wikipedia's growth. This study suggests a new viewpoint of the construction of knowledge on digital media through the analysis of Wikipedia as a growing encyclopedia.