[Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from? Q&A

Sat Jan 16 09:25:47 UTC 2010

Dear Erik,

Maybe there is a dirty Polish word looked up by many Polish pupils,
and when they Google it they come to eu.WP because a Basque word
accidentally is alike? :-)

I am looking now for the interest in the native / the English
Wikipedia in specific countries. It might be important how localized
the software in general is. If you live in, say, Kenya, and your
computer has Windows in English, the Internet Explorer and everything
is oriented to English, and you google your home town in an English
language Google, it is probable that you will get the Wikipedia
article in English and not in Swahili.

Kind regards
Ziko

2010/1/16 Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> I notice in that list both Belarusian Wikipedias are listed just as
> "Belarusian Wikipedia". It would be very informative to know which is which
> and to have visitor statistics on both :-)
>
> skype: node.ue
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com>wrote:
>
>> Here is a Q&A on all issues raised:
>> Q=question/R=Remark, A=answer
>>
>> I put the more general questions on top.
>>
>> Cheers, Erik Zachte
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> Q: Nikola Smolenski
>> Is it first time these reports are published?
>>
>> A:
>> Yes, expect trend report to grow by accretion over time.
>> Other reports will be built from data for recent (6) months only
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> R: Andrew Gray
>> Andrew explains why distribution of page requests over countries favors
>> Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries:
>> 'Some Wikipedias - the ones which insist on only-free-images - do not use
>> local uploads at all.'
>>
>> A:
>> Thanks for explaining this unexpected distribution of page views on
>> Commons,
>> I had no idea.
>>
>> Spain           30.0%
>> USA             29.2%
>> Brazil  8.5%
>> Argentina       4.8%
>> Mexico  3.9%
>> Germany 3.3%
>> France  2.1%
>> Venezuela       1.9%
>> Chile           1.4%
>> Costa Rica      1.4%
>> Italy           1.4%
>> Uruguay 1.2%
>> Colombia        1.2%
>> Portugal        1.1%
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> R: Mark Williamson
>>
>> Two main factors influencing choice of Wikipedia language:
>> # Fluency of the Internet-using population of a country in English.
>> # Quality of the native Wikipedia.
>>
>> A:
>> Like you say. Many Scandinavians (and Dutch people I might add) probably
>> switch between English and local content all the time.
>> Personally I tend to look at English Wp first I many instances, because of
>> obviously richer content and larger depth.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> Q: Ziko van Dijk
>> Why are 40 % of the visitors of ksh.WP (the dialect of Cologne) from Japan.
>> Why are 25 % of the visitors of eu.WP (Basque) from Poland?
>>
>> Q: Andre Engels
>> I think bots are a likely explanation in the eu case
>> (unless Erik is using an algorithm that filters out bots)
>>
>> A:
>> KSH used to be code for Kashmir. Still not Japan, but much closer than
>> Cologne.
>> Maybe Japanese mountaineers caused this spike ? (only half kidding)
>>
>> As for eu.wp: Would Polish presume there also is a European Wikipedia? Just
>> a guess.
>>
>> I do filter bots
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> R: Teun Spaans
>> For trends, I would expect a bar indicating upward or downward trend, not a
>> percentage bar.
>>
>> A:
>> We can have both, a notion of importance and of change: I might color code
>> cells as I do already in e.g. [1]
>> This way large fluctuations really stand out. Let's first collect more
>> history.
>>
>> [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> Q: Nikola Smolenski
>> Could we get this for other projects?
>>
>> A:
>> This question is of course not unexpected.
>> One consideration is we need a certain sample size to make numbers
>> significant.
>> For other projects, with far less traffic, few country/language pairs would
>> be backed by sufficient data.
>> See also below on extending the current reports with more table rows.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> Q: Nikola Smolenski:
>> Please include at Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Overview [1] number of
>> Internet users from [2], and number of views per Internet user?
>>
>> [1] http://tinyurl.com/yk43aq6
>> [2] http://tinyurl.com/yfv5bwn
>>
>> A:
>> Done
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> R: Nikola Smolenski
>> It is obvious why Slovene Wikipedia is highly visited in Sierra Leone, and
>> Serbian in Suriname; URLs do matter :)
>> Although, I don't understand why so much. I would expect this distribution
>> by visitors, perhaps, but not by visits.
>>
>> A:
>> Very interesting observation! So people from Sierra Leone try
>> 'sl.wikipedia.org'.
>> Why people from Surinam go to 'sr.wikimedia.org' is only slightly less
>> obvious to me, but apparently is happens
>>
>> For countries with just a few hits in the sampled log the distinction
>> between visitors and visits gets blurred.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> R: Andre Engels
>> Ukrainian is not a small language by any means, yet Wikipedia visitors tend
>> to be drawn to the Russian Wikipedia instead.
>>
>> A: Yes but article growth in Ukrainian Wikipedia has been speeding up in
>> recent months. [1]
>>
>> [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaUK.htm
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> R: Andre Engels
>> The Q3-Q4 comparison for most countries shows a shift from English to the
>> 'vernacular'.
>>
>> A:
>> Interesting analysis. Let's see if this is a consistent trend.
>> However the monthly page views per Wikipedia language for which we have 2
>> year history do not show very significant shift from large to smaller
>> wikipedia's.
>> See table 'Distribution of page views' at bottom of page of [1]: smaller
>> languages gain in share of page views, but very slowly.
>>
>> [1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthly.htm
>>
>> ------------------------------------------
>>
>> Q: Nikola Smolenski / Milos Rancic
>> At Wikipedia Page Views By Country - Breakdown [1] and Wikipedia Page Views
>> By Country - Trends [2] could you include more languages (ideally all
>> languages)?
>> Some of the numbers are going below 0.1% of population, but some of them
>> are
>> not mentioned even they are larger than 0.5% of population.
>>
>> [1] http://tinyurl.com/yhp3an7
>> [2] http://tinyurl.com/yzga2hm
>>
>> A:
>> Yes on some reports I do include smaller percentages for the largest
>> Wikipedia's as those represent significant numbers of page views.
>> I used different (and arbitrary) thresholds per report. The arbitrariness
>> could change, but I want to plead for a notoriety threshold:
>>
>> Here is a much more extended version of the breakdown report [1] (for this
>> discussion only)
>> It shows per country up to 50 Wikipedia's
>> An extra column shows the total number of records for this country/language
>> (for the 6 month period) on which the percentage is based.
>> As you can see for the smallest countries that number is so low that it is
>> no longer significant.
>>
>> Let us say we cut off not at 1%, but at an (arbitrary) absolute threshold
>> of
>> x logged records per country/language pair (per row).
>> Let us say we cut off at average 5 records per month. Everything below that
>> threshold in the test report is in dark red.
>> Personally I think this is still way too much detail for a general report.
>> Not because of Kb's but information overload.
>>
>> [1] http://tinyurl.com/yjwoyre
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

-- 
Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde