Sinatra Is Still #1

The most important person in the English-language world is Frank Sinatra, according to an analysis of Wikipedia articles led by the University of Toulouse's Young-Ho Eom. Number two is Michael Jackson, and number three is Pope Pius XII. Eom arrived at this somewhat surprising conclusion by using methods borrowed from Google to analyze Wikipedia pages and determine which individuals have the most important articles linking to them. Taking all 24 major language editions of Wikipedia into account, Eom's team carried out the same study and came to a more plausible conclusion: Adolf Hitler. (Even then, Michael Jackson takes the second slot, and Madonna is in third place.) The point of the study wasn't strictly to determine who the most important people are on Wikipedia, but instead to discover if the online encyclopaedia was skewed in the level of attention it gives to various figures, either by gender, time, or location.