On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 at 09:42, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
There is a phenomenon in Wikipedias in smaller languages: There activity level of people who actually know the language of the wiki and make meaningful text contributions is relatively low, and the activity of people from other wikis who make various technical edits that don't require the knowledge of the language is relatively high.
Now, I've written "relatively low" and "relatively high", but these are just my anecdotal impressions. Has anyone thought of a way to quantify this more precisely?
It won't answer the question fully, but you can narrow down the results by looking at babel templates to see which languages they self-rate as being proficient in, or otherwise, on their home project(s).
I try to act as a "helpful stranger" on non-English projects, for instance by adding images and {{Authority control}} templates. This is usually well received, but there are a couple of projects where the former at least is apparently not welcome, and I've recently been blocked (with no warning; my talk page ink is still red), with no talk page or email access, on Lithuanian Wikipedia. In 2015 I was accused of "vandalism" and "trolling" there.
Happy to discuss my experiences - good and bad - off-list, if that will help your research.