Wikipedia is the largest source of free encyclopedic knowledge and one of the most visited sites on the Web. To increase reader understanding of the article, Wikipedia editors add images within the text of the article's body. However, despite their widespread usage on web platforms and the huge volume of visual content on Wikipedia, little is known about the importance of images in the context of free knowledge environments. To bridge this gap, we collect data about English Wikipedia reader interactions with images during one month and perform the first large-scale analysis of how interactions with images happen on Wikipedia. First, we quantify the overall engagement with images, finding that one in 29 pageviews results in a click on at least one image, one order of magnitude higher than interactions with other types of article content. Second, we study what factors associate with image engagement and observe that clicks on images occur more often in shorter articles and articles about visual arts or transports and biographies of less well-known people. Third, we look at interactions with Wikipedia article previews and find that images help support reader information need when navigating through the site, especially for more popular pages. The findings in this study deepen our understanding of the role of images for free knowledge and provide a guide for Wikipedia editors and web user communities to enrich the world's largest source of encyclopedic knowledge.
翻译：维基百科是免费百科全书知识的最大来源,也是网上访问最多的网站之一。为了提高读者对文章的理解,维基百科编辑在文章正文中添加图像。然而,尽管在网络平台上广泛使用,维基百科的视觉内容量很大,但在自由知识环境中图像的重要性却鲜为人知。为了缩小这一差距,我们在一个月内收集英国维基百科读者与图像互动的数据,并首次对维基百科与图像的互动情况进行大规模分析。首先,我们量化与图像的总体互动情况,发现29页视图中有一页的图像至少点击一个图像,比与其他类型文章内容的互动高出一个数量级。第二,我们研究与图像互动相关的因素,并观察在更短的关于视觉艺术或交通的文章中更经常点击图像,以及不太知名的人的生物图谱。第三,我们查看维基百科文章预览,发现图像有助于支持读者在浏览网站时需要的信息,特别是更受欢迎的页面。本研究中发现,我们对于最丰富的网站用户群了解了如何丰富世界图像的版本,从而提供世界自由的指南。
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