Researchers led by Young-Ho Eom at the University of Toulouse analyzed links across 24 major language editions of Wikipedia to explore which historical figures receive the most attention and whether that attention varies by gender, era and location. They found that prominent figures were predominantly men born in Western countries after the 17th century. Each language edition also tended to emphasize people associated with the places where that language is spoken.

The rankings depended heavily on how the researchers measured importance. Using PageRank, an algorithm that weighs incoming links according to the importance of the pages supplying them, they found that Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus ranked first across languages. His position reflected a feature of Wikipedia: many articles about species link to Linnaeus because he named them or helped establish the system used to classify organisms.

The team also used CheiRank, which measures outgoing links, and combined the two methods into a measure called 2DRank. By that measure, Frank Sinatra ranked first in the English-language edition, followed by Michael Jackson and Pope Pius XII. Across all 24 editions, Adolf Hitler ranked first, followed by Jackson and Madonna. The differing results illustrate how rankings can be shaped by the structure of the data and the method used. An earlier study of references among academics, for example, identified Karl Marx as the most influential scholar.

Separately, the Internet Archive is working to preserve web pages and the pages they reference. Its crawls aim to retain versions of linked material as it appeared when an article was written, even if that material later changes or disappears. The archive hopes these preserved versions can replace broken links or accompany live ones, allowing readers to see what authors originally referenced. Its broader goal is to address broken links across the web.