On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 1:23 PM, C. Scott Ananian cananian@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks everyone for a fantastic metrics meeting.
I had two questions which I raised on IRC which didn't get a chance to be addressed. Briefly:
- Is the rise in global south page views specifically to *enwiki*, or
is it to local wikis?
Not actually an either/or. The answer seems to me to be "yes", i.e. all wikis -- that is, all projects, all languages.
It seems that our thinking about redirecting to localized content and the rise of mobile in the global south should be informed by these analytics. Are folks coming to enwiki because that's where the content and editors are?
Some definitely do. Another major factor, mentioned today, is that in some countries, mobile devices just don't come with good local languages support, and people are putting up with that and using what the device does give them, which are generally the major, colonial languages.
If so we might be doing readers a disservice by redirecting them to a local wiki without the content they are seeking. (Perhaps the Content Translation tool can help.) If our userbase in the global south is coming from mobile, than it is important to provide localized editing tools for mobile; less so if they are primarily English-speaking and can take advantage of the desktop editors of enwiki.
Remember that while "global south" is a shorthand label we use for convenience to group together a large number of countries, it's often quite misleading to generalize about it, *particularly* around language questions.
In Anglophone Africa, for example, most people are used to looking for information online in English and not in indigenous languages. But in Brazil, people consume information in Portuguese, but many (16%) also refer to the English Wikipedia (and intriguingly, 1 in 3 *edits* from Brazil is to ENWP!), presumably for its broader coverage or higher average quality. In Ukraine, 70% read the Russian Wikipedia and only 17% read the Ukrainian Wikipedia; interviews tell me this is largely due to device defaults, beyond the obvious different in size and average quality.
This page reveals some of those breakdowns: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBr...
Will investment in the Content Translation tool affect the balance between enwiki and local wiki pageviews going forward?
That would be one long-term effect to watch for, I think!
Thanks for digging up further info!
A.