Thanks Jane for the comments and suggestions.

Correct me if I misread your comments/suggestions, Jane. 

(1) Did you suggest measurements that are observable *inside* Wikipedia/Wikimedia websites?

(2) If so, does it mean that your suggestion of measuring the current state of a language version as "a combination of the state of its content and community" describes only the *internal* state of that version?

(3) When you said "zero-state", did you mean the state where the number of articles in a given language version is zero?

Your suggestions appear to me deal with a measurement of the current state of a language version. The use of "zero-state" suggests the equal grounds for any language version to develop on the Wikipedia platform.

However, my call for help focuses on the current external state out there external to Wikipedia platform. In this context, the term *baseline* suggests some languages are already *more equal* than the others because of the availability of language users and content out there. Since Wikipedia depends on reliable published secondary sources, some languages are *expected* to be more developed than the others. What I want to do is to come up such *expectation values* so that researchers and community members can see which language versions perform better/worse than expected, in comparison to other languages.

While I can agree that on the Wikipedia platform, any language may have equal groundings when they start from zero. It is my contestation that some languages are already *more equal* than the other. 

In other words, I want to construct sensible baselines *against which* the development of language versions can be better understood. Such baselines thus should capture external factors that are likely to condition the development. Normalization of development metrics using such baselines can then control these external factors to see which language versions underperform even when the external availability content and users is not an issue. It can also help to see which language versions outperform even when the external conditions are not that great. 

Hence, I really appreciate your suggestions as potential indicators of the (internal) development state of a language version of Wikipedia, but they do not appear to capture factors that are external to Wikipedia.

Best,

2014-07-08 10:09 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell <jane023@gmail.com>:

Well as I see it, the state of any language version is a combination of the state of its content and community. Going back to the zero-state, in order to have permission to start a language version, there must be a "list of 10,000 important topics" that has to be registered somewhere (sorry, no idea where). This list for the English wikipedia includes an entry for the singer Michael Jackson, one of the many articles that gets lots and lots of page hits daily. Perhaps this is the case for all other languages in the world (I have no idea), but I would assume one measurement going forward from the zero-state would be the number of changes over time involving this list in the specific language, such as

1) The list itself (do these topics ever change?)

2) The average number of edits and page views of those pages in the specific language

3) The average number of blue links per page on those pages in the specific language

4) The average number of editors *ever* contributing per page on those pages in the specific language

5) The average number of active editors contributing per page on those pages in the specific language

...

Other important measurements could be the number of active editors over all, the number of edits appearing in the recent changes list per day/month/year, the number of pages created or deleted per day/month/year...

On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 9:27 AM, Han-Teng Liao (OII) <han-teng.liao@oii.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear all,  

     Your suggestions are needed on the ways in which one can construct some sensible baselines, most likely based on data sets *external* to Wikipedia projects, of *expected* Wikipedia language versions development.

      Such baselines should ideally indicate, given the availability of language users and content (some numbers based on external data sets), a certain language version should have expected number of articles/active users. 

      As previous research has suggested that Wikipedia activities need mutually-reinforcing cycles of participation, content, and readership, it is expected that the development of a Wikipedia language version is conditioned by the availability of (digitally) literate users and (possibly digitized) content/sources. 

     So the assumption is:

Wikipedia Activities = Some function of (available users and content)

      For example, the major non-English writing languages in the world such as Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, etc., may have different numbers of Internet users and digital content. These numbers indicate the basis on which a Wikipedia language version can develop.

      One practical use of this baseline measurement is to better categorize/curate activities across Wikipedia language versions. We can then better come up with expected values of Wikipedia development, and thus categorize language versions accordingly based on the *external conditions* of available/potential users and content. 

      Another use of this baseline measurement is to better compare the development of different language versions. It should help answer questions such as (1) whether Korean language version is *underdeveloped* on Wikipedia platforms when compared with a language version that enjoys similar number of available/potential users and content.

     The current similar external baseline data is probably the number of language speakers. My hunch is that it is not good enough in taking into accounts the available/potential users and content, especially the digitally-ready one.

      So I welcome you to add to the following list, any external indicators (and possibly data sources) that may help to construct such base line.

 

==Indicators==

* Internet users for each language (probably approximate measurement based on CLDR Territory-Language information and ITU internet penetration rates.

* Number of books published annually in different languages (suggested data sources? Does ISBN have a database or stat report on published languages?)

* Number of web pages returned by major search engines on the queries of "Wikipedia" in different languages, excluding results from Wikimedia projects.

* Number of scholarly publications across languages (suggested data sources?) 

* Number of major newspaper publications across languages (suggested data sources?) 

 

    Please share your thoughts! 

-- 

han-teng liao

"[O]nce the Imperial Institute of France and the Royal Society of London begin to work together on a new encyclopaedia, it will take less than a year to achieve a lasting peace between France and England." - Henri Saint-Simon (1810)

"A common ideology based on this Permanent World Encyclopaedia is a possible means, to some it seems the only means, of dissolving human conflict into unity." - H.G. Wells (1937)

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