Wiki Link Dot Txt Statistics

What can we tell about wiki by looking at home pages?

On his home page, WardCunningham says:

• Ward, is there any chance that http://c2.com/wiki/links.zip will ever be updated? -- AdewaleOshineye
  • http://c2.com/wiki/links.txt is updated nightly. It has a little less information in it, but at least it is current. -- WardCunningham

Here is some Smalltalk code I wrote to look at the most linked-to pages from people's home pages. The results follow.

I assumed people linked to pages they like from their home pages, and that the results would show "popular" wiki pages. The results do show popular wiki pages. The results also show that in addition to linking to popular pages, people describe themselves on their home pages. Imagine that... :)

Suggested Next Steps:

• Code that finds the home pages which are most similar (most shared links) to your own home page.
• Code that finds biggest home pages.
• Code that looks for lists of favorites (big home pages with five or more "common" favorite pages.

---

 "coded in workspace of VisualWorks® NonCommercial, 7.2 of November 3, 2003"
 "I previously manually downloaded links.txt to my computer"

 cut := 100.
 ignore := OrderedCollection with: 'CategoryHomePage'.

 filename := Filename named: 'c:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\My Downloads\links.txt'.
 lineStrings := filename readStream contents tokensBasedOn: Character cr.

 pages := lineStrings collect: [:each | each trimSeparators tokensBasedOn: Character space].
 homepages := pages select: [ :each | each includes: 'CategoryHomePage'].

 pageCountBag := Bag new.
 homepages do: [ :each | pageCountBag addAll: each ].
 pageCountDictionary := pageCountBag instVarAt: 1.
 pageCountCollection := pageCountDictionary associations.

 pageCountFilteredCollection := pageCountCollection reject: [ :each | ignore includes: each key ].
 pageCountSortedCollection := (pageCountFilteredCollection asSortedCollection: [ :a :b | a value > b value ]) asOrderedCollection.
 topPageCounts := pageCountSortedCollection copyFrom: 1 to: cut.

 topPageCounts addFirst: (Core.Association key: 'Number of Wiki home pages' value: homepages size).
 topPageCounts addFirst: (Core.Association key: 'Number of Wiki pages' value: pages size).

 stream := WriteStream on: String new.
 stream cr.
 topPageCounts do: [ :each | 
 stream space.
 each printOn: stream. 
 stream cr.
 ].
 stream contents.

---

 Number of Wiki pages->27339
 Number of Wiki home pages->3589
 ExtremeProgramming->300
 AreYouThere->252
 NewUserPages->131
 WikiWikiWeb->124
 OrphanPage->122
 RecentChanges->106
 WardCunningham->99
 WikiWiki->99
 JavaLanguage->94
 TourBusStop->92
 DesignPatterns->85
 PythonLanguage->82
 JustaProgrammer->79
 KentBeck->73
 CeePlusPlus->60
 WikiGnome->57
 OpenSource->56
 PairProgramming->52
 SmalltalkLanguage->47
 RubyLanguage->46
 UnitTest->44
 RealNamesPlease->44
 PerlLanguage->44
 HomePage->43
 WardsWiki->40
 ThoughtWorks->40
 UserName->37
 TextFormattingRules->36
 RecentVisitors->34
 RonJeffries->34
 FrontPage->34
 JavaScript->33
 CeeLanguage->33
 WikiName->32
 TestDrivenDevelopment->31
 JimCoplien->31
 MyersBriggs->31
 VisualBasic->30
 CategoryAuthor->29
 SoftwareEngineer->28
 ThankYou->28
 SunirShah->28
 DougMerritt->28
 StartingPoints->28
 WelcomeVisitors->27
 MyMyersBriggsTypeIs->27
 ComputerScience->26
 JavaUnit->26
 RichardDrake->26
 EddiesWiki->25
 OpenAuthor->24
 OffTopic->24
 JohannesGijsbers->24
 RecentChangesJunkie->23
 DavidCary->23
 VickiKerr->23
 PhpLanguage->23
 GangOfFour->23
 LaurentBossavit->23
 FrancisHwang->22
 FindPage->22
 SchemeLanguage->22
 PersonalWiki->22
 RandomPages->22
 WikiEngines->21
 RecentEdits->21
 CategoryCategory->21
 MoinMoin->21
 GoodStyle->21
 FreeSoftware->21
 QuickChanges->21
 LispLanguage->21
 AlistairCockburn->21
 WhyWikiWorks->20
 GemStone->20
 MeatballWiki->20
 WikiFarms->20
 JeffGrigg->20
 MarkIrons?->20
 OnceAndOnlyOnce->20
 AntiPattern->19
 MartinFowler->19
 WikiWeb->19
 MathQuizOne->19
 ExtremeProgrammingRoadmap->19
 UseModWiki->19
 StevenNewton->19
 ShaeErisson->19
 SemanticWeb->18
 WilliamUnderwood->18
 EarleMartin->18
 HelmutLeitner->18
 VisualWorks->18
 WalledGarden->18
 RalphJohnson->18
 WikiHistory->18
 BrokenLink->18

[Note: last hand-corrected 01 Oct 04]

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Some links on home pages are comment signatures. The list thus measures a combination of (1) pages that are popular, (2) authors' self-descriptions, and (3) how often someone signs comments on others' home pages. Prolixity can overwhelm popularity.

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See: TopTenHomePages