Hi Gh-Wikipedians
Asaf, a WMF staff published statistics about the number of active *editors* (not edits) of
a given language Wikipedia *per country*. Although its just a snapshot (1 month) and can’t
tell much, some here might find it interesting too. It is at
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Asaf_(WMF)/Geowiki>
Cursorily looking at the data on West Africa only, below is what I observed:
On “Active”editors (5+ edits per month)
The English Wikipedia happens to be the most edited in West Africa and is edited in all 18
countries with Nigeria and Ghana having [30-40] and [110-120] "active
contributors”respectively, every other country has [0-10] number of Engligh language
countributors. For other languages besides English, there are [0-10] number of
contributors if they exist at all in any of the 18 West African countries. Interestingly,
Senegalese contributors edit 10 different Wikipedia's; this is followed by Mali and
Benin contributing to 9 Wikipedias and Cote D'Ivoire 8. All four countries are
francophone. See image at
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0jCIl911eXaWGQ4X211cVh0Vkk/view?usp=sharing>
On “Very Active” editors (100+ edits per month)
There aren't more than [0-10] very active contributors to any language in any country
in the region. English and French are the most edited languages with English contributions
coming from 7 countries including francophone countries; Togo, Benin and Cote
D'Ivoire, whiles French "very active" contributions come from 5 countries
including Anglophone countries; Nigeria and Ghana. See image at
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0jCIl911eXaQzFKTnFxcC1jWWc/view?usp=sharing>
Benin, Nigeria, Cote D'Ivoire and Togo register very active editor contributions on 4
different Wikipedia's. In Ghana, very active contributors are found on English, French
and Japanese Wikipedias.
My take on the data
The three officially recognized User groups in the region appear to be doing relatively
better than the rest. Another country that is doing well but not yet a user group (and
should be looked out for), is Benin. Considering their small population, they have an
equal number of “active” editors as Ghana and on top of that they surpass us in number of
“very active” contributors. Also, I’m personally surprise to see contributors to languages
other than English, French, and Arabic in the region. Languages such as Esperanto, Hebrew,
Far Eastern, and Turkish made it into the list, some of them “very active” editors.
I'm curious to learn more about who these editors are. In all, no single country seem
to have stood out in any big way, maybe we may need to investigate more data from the past
or even looking forward into the future to see how these numbers would behave.
Best Regards
-Masssly