website design - How does a "random page" option help an application to succeed?

Some documentation applications, particularly wikis (including, of course, Wikipedia) have a Random Page function.

My question is - how important and useful is that? Is there any objective data available on how that affects the success of an application?

Answer

The following items make a random button more useful:

• The items are independent - i.e. are "consumed" individually


• Their relevance doesn't vary by orders of magnitude (averaged over users)


• casual exploration is a typical use case (is associated with leisure time)

Typical items are:

• encyclopaedias (including the dead tree editions)


• funny image / video collections


• Comics without a strong storyline


• Song lyrics


• Tip of the day