Collaborative thesaurus tagging the Wikipedia way

TL;DR

This paper analyzes Wikipedia's category system, revealing it as a hybrid thesaurus combining collaborative tagging and hierarchical classification, with unique structural and statistical properties that distinguish it from other systems.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison and analysis of Wikipedia's category system, highlighting its hybrid nature and structural characteristics.

Findings

Wikipedia's category system is a hybrid thesaurus.

It combines collaborative tagging with hierarchical indexing.

Structural analysis shows unique properties of the system.

Abstract

This paper explores the system of categories that is used to classify articles in Wikipedia. It is compared to collaborative tagging systems like del.icio.us and to hierarchical classification like the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). Specifics and commonalitiess of these systems of subject indexing are exposed. Analysis of structural and statistical properties (descriptors per record, records per descriptor, descriptor levels) shows that the category system of Wikimedia is a thesaurus that combines collaborative tagging and hierarchical subject indexing in a special way.