Sunday, May 3, 2015

Wikipedia Ranking Applied to Soaps

This was inspired by a "Radio Times" article about television shows in general that I saw on a "Doctor Who" fan site. As this is a soap blog, I did the research for the genre of soap operas. The results are based on worldwide answers and include both daytime and nighttime series that may or may not air in the United States.

To look up topics on your own or to see how the list changes over time visit http://wikirank.di.unimi.it/index.html I've just done the top 20 shows though there are currently 337 soap operas on wiki that were ranked.

Table One with Harmonic and Indegree information


Harmonic centrality references links to a show page in this example. Basically it would seem that this references, which shows have the most link so any page for a cast member links directly to that page along with secondary pages. This is basically what is "most" important based on what is done on wiki. Indgree references direct links only no (2nd or 3rd degree links.) That's how come the lists aren't identical.

PageRank references the links that come from sites that aren't wikipedia. Page views are which pages have been visited most in the last year. Since the news about Twin Peaks coming back and then maybe not coming back, it was the third most soap opera page viewed. Before this situation, I doubt it would have been as high as some of the other shows that are still currently in production.

Anyway, I hope this has been enlightening or at least interesting. Page views IMO is the one that can change the most quickly as if a show becomes more popular to people visiting wiki, it will jump up in the numbers. PageRank is just how many people write about a soap and link to the wiki account on it. I never link to wiki for soap things, and I doubt I'm the only one who doesn't. Harmonic centrality and indegree are interesting if you are into how wiki handles soap opera topics.









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