Analyzing Wikidata Transclusion on English Wikipedia

Abstract

Wikidata is steadily becoming more central to Wikipedia, not just in maintaining interlanguage links, but in automated population of content within the articles themselves. It is not well understood, however, how widespread this transclusion of Wikidata content is within Wikipedia. This work presents a taxonomy of Wikidata transclusion from the perspective of its potential impact on readers and an associated in-depth analysis of Wikidata transclusion within English Wikipedia. It finds that Wikidata transclusion that impacts the content of Wikipedia articles happens at a much lower rate (5%) than previous statistics had suggested (61%). Recommendations are made for how to adjust current tracking mechanisms of Wikidata transclusion to better support metrics and patrollers in their evaluation of Wikidata transclusion.