[Wikipedia-l] Mediametry survey (was )Re: Language versions' popularity vs. number of articles...)

[Oliver Coddington]

Surely the quality of the articles matters more than the quantity
(although I appreciate that it does not look how there is such a
disparity in numbers).

Oliver

On 3/29/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's certainly a good point.
>
> Unfortunately, the most recent statistics we have for site visits are
> from October 2004 but they are as follows:
>
> 1 English: 42.75%
> 2 Japanese: 14.72%
> 3 German: 13.74%
> 4 Spanish: 5.34%
> 5 French: 4.14%
> 6 Polish: 3.93%
> 7 Dutch: 2.94%
> 8 Swedish: 1.74%
> 9 Chinese: 1.42%
> 10 Italian: 1.20%
> 11 Portuguese: 1.20%
> 12 Hebrew: 0.94%
> 13 Danish: 0.53%
> 14 Finnish: 0.52%
> 15 Esperanto: 0.32%
> 16 Norwegian: 0.28%
> 17 Russian: 0.25%
> 18 Arabic: 0.25%
> 19 Slovene: 0.23%
> 20 Catalan: 0.21%
> 21 Korean: 0.16%
> 22 Malaysian: 0.16%
> 23 Bulgarian: 0.15%
> 24 Romanian: 0.15%
> 25 Simple: 0.14%
> 26 Czech: 0.13%
> 27 Hungarian: 0.13%
> 28 Indonesian: 0.13%
> 29 Estonian: 0.12%
> 30 Interlingua: 0.12%
> 31 Croatian: 0.11%
> 32 Turkish: 0.10%
> 33 Farsi: 0.10%
>
> This still raises some questions; for example the Catalan WP has over
> 20k articles while the Arabic WP has just over 10k; numbers for
> Chinese, Spanish, and even Japanese (!) are similarly incongruent.
>
> Mark
>
> On 29/03/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > > Hi everybody,
> > >
> > > While it's sort of obvious, given the digital divide, that the number
> > > of articles in Wikipedias is not proportional to the number of
> > > speakers, for example Hindi has a much smaller number of articles
> > > compared to speakers than most active Wikipedias; German has more.
> > >
> > > However, something that people may not notice as much is the
> > > incongruency between popularity of a particular language version and
> > > the number of articles in that version.
> > >
> > > The most visited Wikipedias, in order, are:
> > >
> > > 1 English (65%)
> > > 2 German (10%)
> > > 3 Japanese (6%)
> > > 4 Spanish (3%)
> > > 5 French (2%)
> > > 6 Polish (2%)
> > > 7 Chinese (2%)
> > > 8 Arabic (2%)
> > > 9 Italian (1%)
> > > 10 Hebrew (1%)
> > > 11 Turkish (1%)
> > > 12 Dutch (1%)
> > > 13 Portuguese (1%)
> > > (all others combined total 1% of visits)
> > >
> > > On the other hand, the list of Wikipedias ranked by number of articles is:
> > > 1 English (1048.7K)
> > > 2 German (376.9K)
> > > 3 French (261.1K)
> > > 4 Polish (223.8K)
> > > 5 Japanese (196.3K)
> > > 6 Dutch (156.9K)
> > > ...
> > > 8 Italian (146.8K)
> > > 9 Portuguese (123.8K)
> > > 10 Spanish (105.0K)
> > > ...
> > > 12 Chinese (61.48K)
> > > ...
> > > 17 Hebrew (34.35K)
> > > ...
> > > 29 Turkish (19.94K)
> > > ...
> > > 37 Arabic (12.03K)
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > By the way, I have wondered for a long time how it could be that the
> > french wikipedia be the third largest (which is a fact)... and only
> > supposingly 2% of the visits. I also remember that meta had very
> > significantly more visits than the french wikipedia. Which.. to me... is
> > not something I *believe*.
> >
> > Answer : these values are collected strictly thanks to the use of the
> > Alexa bar...; which is apparently very little used at least in France.
> > Hence possibly messing up the statistics. It might well be the same for
> > other languages, in particular those for which the Alexa bar... is
> > simply not working/translated. So... be careful with the use of the
> > Alexa data. They are a very interesting feedback... but also to take
> > with a pinch of salt.
> >
> > By the way, there was recently a study by Mediametry (a statistical
> > agency, making polls. In France, probably the largest and most famous one).
> >
> > The study showed this
> >
> >         déc. 2004       avr. 2005       août 2005       déc. 2005
> > USA     4 544 000       6 753 000       11 874 000      17 498 000
> > Germany 1 707 000       2 956 000       4 502 000       5 529 000
> > France  681 000         1 169 000       1 429 000       2 421 000
> > UK      540 000         766 000         1 525 000       2 298 000
> >
> >
> > Please see that :
> > http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mediametrie+wikipedia&btnG=Google+Search
> >
> > anthere
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
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