Hi Amir,
Some variables that you might also want to look at are:
Relative status of language - I have heard from more than one source that part of the Indic language problem is that people who can write in English and an Indic language usually prefer to edit English.
Different types of Internet access. Despite the best efforts of our mobile team wikipedia is basically a broadcast medium on smartphones. So the ratio of PCs to tablets to mobiles is going to be crucial, a language where smartphones are the main way to access the Internet will all things being equal support far less editing than a language where a substantial proportion of speakers have PC access.
My suspicion is that as with purchasing over the Internet, editing wikipedia is not a year one activity, so the level of editing is more likely to be related to last year's level of Internet use than this year's.
Policies on article creation vary between different language versions of wikipedia and this is bound to have an effect.
Regards
Jonathan Cardy
On 26 Jan 2015, at 02:05, wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
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Message: 7 Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 17:57:55 -0800 From: "Amir E. Aharoni" amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il To: wikimedia-l wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] proportion of wiki size to what? Message-ID: CACtNa8tp9aYdB5MVCF350qJjyCYfsAGOT49=3jYwN0LTFwtHWA@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hi,
It is well-known that the size of a Wikipedia in a given language is not proportional to the number of people who speak that language. By "size" I mean the article count and the active editor count.
This begs the question: Is it proportional to anything else?
I can think of a bunch of possible things (to most items you can add "... in the countries where this language is spoken"):
- Penetration of Internet access
- Quality of education
- Number of people who know other major languages, such as English, French,
Russian, Spanish, etc.
- Number of people who *don't* know other major languages
- Gross domestic product
- Human Development Index
- The level of usage of this language in the education system (in some
countries schools function in foreign languages)
- Amount of published literature in that language
- Level of censorship and press freedom
- [[Language planning]] policies (think Catalonia, Ukraine, Quebec, Israel)
It is quite possible that the size of a Wikipedia is proportional not to one of these things, but to a combination of them. It is also possible that it is not proportional to any of the above, or to anything at all.
Did anybody ever try to research this?
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Message: 8 Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 18:05:00 -0800 From: "Amir E. Aharoni" amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il To: wikimedia-l wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] proportion of wiki size to what? Message-ID: CACtNa8vK2rBaW35_EYNqKpZ2QVh-7SEFmadujyoVYw6sbsk_Ng@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
(And yes, I know that Language planning and some of the other items are not measurable as numbers. I'm throwing ideas around.)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2015-01-25 17:57 GMT-08:00 Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il:
Hi,
It is well-known that the size of a Wikipedia in a given language is not proportional to the number of people who speak that language. By "size" I mean the article count and the active editor count.
This begs the question: Is it proportional to anything else?
I can think of a bunch of possible things (to most items you can add "... in the countries where this language is spoken"):
- Penetration of Internet access
- Quality of education
- Number of people who know other major languages, such as English,
French, Russian, Spanish, etc.
- Number of people who *don't* know other major languages
- Gross domestic product
- Human Development Index
- The level of usage of this language in the education system (in some
countries schools function in foreign languages)
- Amount of published literature in that language
- Level of censorship and press freedom
- [[Language planning]] policies (think Catalonia, Ukraine, Quebec, Israel)
It is quite possible that the size of a Wikipedia is proportional not to one of these things, but to a combination of them. It is also possible that it is not proportional to any of the above, or to anything at all.
Did anybody ever try to research this?
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
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