There are 3 phenomena acting simultaneously against the number of visits to
small projects: The bilingual effect, the size effect, and the Google
effect. For Catalan case we estimate a penalization factor of 8.3 (that
means that visits are 8.3 times less that what they should be). It comes
from: 1.2 bilingual factor (visits lost because people also understand other
languages, even if they have the opportunity to read the article in their
mother tongue, they also read it in others). 2.5 size factor (visits to
other projects because readers don’t find what they were looking for in
their mother tongue). And 2,77 Google factor. (Visits lost because Google
directs people to other tongues projects). The only positive factor is the
bilingual one. We are working hard to correct the others. For other projects
those factors can be very different but the concept can be there.
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:40:06 -0700
From: Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from? Q&A
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<849f98ed1001160140h20c69f6fxa5a7a22d4b81eb37(a)mail.gmail.com>
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Sociolinguistic situations around the world are very complex I think. In
especially former European colonies, of which Kenya is but one example, the
language of the former colonial power often has a unique position in
society.
It is not surprising to me that the English Wikipedia is so popular
compared
to any other in Kenya, but it is quite a bit more surprising that Korean,
Romanian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Iranian, etc. users prefer the English
Wikipedia.
Mark
On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:25 AM, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com
wrote:
Dear Erik,
Maybe there is a dirty Polish word looked up by many Polish pupils,
and when they Google it they come to eu.WP because a Basque word
accidentally is alike? :-)
I am looking now for the interest in the native / the English
Wikipedia in specific countries. It might be important how localized
the software in general is. If you live in, say, Kenya, and your
computer has Windows in English, the Internet Explorer and everything
is oriented to English, and you google your home town in an English
language Google, it is probable that you will get the Wikipedia
article in English and not in Swahili.
Kind regards
Ziko