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