[Foundation-l] Wikipedias by page views

[Lars Aronsson]

Aude wrote:

> I'm finding with some languages including Arabic and major 
> languages in India, that the Wikipedia sites in those languages 
> (as well as readership) are drastically smaller than they should 
> be given the number of speakers.

There are so many variables that can explain differences in use.  

It was discussed earlier that Hindi is traditionally not a 
language for encyclopedias.  When Hindi speakers advance in 
society to the level where you buy an encyclopedia, you typically 
buy one in English because that has been considered the high 
status language. Promoting the Hindi Wikipedia thus means you have 
to introduce *two* novel concepts: a free online encyclopedia 
*and* a major encyclopedia in Hindi.

This was the state in northern Europe in the late 1800s.  Well 
educated and wealthy Swedes and Russians would have the German 
Brockhaus or Meyers Enzyklopädie at home.  Prestigious printed 
encyclopedias in the local language was a novelty (Nordisk 
familjebok, 1875; Brockhaus-Efron, 1890), that went hand in hand 
with nationalism and widened education.  The first 10 volume 
encyclopedia in Finnish in the 1910s came with a brochure that 
explained what to expect from an encyclopedia.  The wealthy 
classes in Finland spoke Swedish, but to speakers of Finnish this 
was a new concept.

Just like Californians are often more extreme than most Americans, 
this also goes when comparing Scandinavia to Germany.  The Germans 
are careful and conservative, but the Scandinavians descend from 
those Germans who boldly went farther north than anybody had done. 
In the late 1990s, Sweden had a dotcom boom and crash, pretty much 
like California.  Germany didn't have this.  Internet usage became 
commonplace earlier in Sweden than in Germany.  An Internet search 
for an actor's name would give several hits in Swedish, but 
nothing in German.  When the Internet finally started to catch on 
in Germany around 2003, the German Wikipedia became an instant hit 
because it was the first German-speaking resource in many fields.

There are similiarties in the development between many countries 
and languages, but only if you move the timeline.  Hindi in 2010 
might, in some limited respect, be similar to Finnish in 1910.  
This could mean you should not only make a brochure in Hindi about 
the free online encyclopedia, but also a brochure in Hindi of what 
to expect from an encyclopedia in the first place, or why an 
encyclopedia should be available in their own language rather than 
just English.  Maybe this is an idea that Ratan Tata can support?

Whether you compare the number of articles, the size of articles, 
the number of contributors or the number of visitors, you're only 
comparing what has been done.  Our focus should be on what needs 
to be done.  For example, Arabic and Chinese are languages spoken 
in countries where free access to knowledge and neutral 
information really needs to be promoted.



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se