A study led by Young-Ho Eom of the University of Toulouse used links across 24 language editions of Wikipedia to examine which historical figures receive the most attention and how that attention varies by language, place, period and gender. The researchers found that prominent figures were disproportionately male, born in Western countries and born after the 17th century. Individual language editions also tended to highlight figures from countries where those languages are spoken.

The rankings depended heavily on how influence was measured. Using PageRank, an algorithm that gives weight to incoming links from important pages, the researchers initially found Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus at the top across languages. Linnaeus developed the scientific naming system still generally used for organisms, and countless Wikipedia articles about species link back to him. His result illustrates how the structure and subject coverage of the encyclopedia can shape a ranking.

To account for this effect, the team combined PageRank with CheiRank, a measure based on outgoing links, to produce a ranking called 2DRank. By that measure, Frank Sinatra ranked first in English Wikipedia, followed by Michael Jackson and Pope Pius XII. Across all 24 editions, Adolf Hitler ranked first, followed by Jackson and Madonna. A separate study using references between academic works had previously identified Karl Marx as history’s most influential scholar, underscoring how different methods can produce different results.

Meanwhile, the Internet Archive is working to preserve web references through its “No More 404” effort. Its crawlers archive new pages and the pages they cite, preserving versions available when the references were made. The archive hopes these copies can replace broken links or serve as companion links, allowing readers to see the material the original authors intended to reference.