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is the PRC. Thirdly, the records are likely to be skewed not simply towards native speakers (as the article hypothesises), but also towards fluent non-native speakers. That would explain, eg, the high performance of the
Netherlands and Germany (the latter of which has more fluent speakers of English than Australia), and possibly also Brazil, a country with a large population (about 2 1/2 times that of Germany) and mandatory learning of at least one foreign language for all 12 grades of compulsory schooling. Fourthly, one needs to be cautious about Canada, where only about 56% of the population speaks English as a mother tongue, and about 21% use French as their mother tongue. Fifthly, the figures indicate that some countries with smaller populations have disproportionately large numbers of contributors. So, eg, New Zealand and Ireland both have populations of about one fifth of that of Australia, but New Zealand has more than one fifth as many prolific contributors, and Ireland has more than one fifth as many small contributors. Similarly, the number of contributors from the UK (both prolific and small) is disproportionately large by comparison with the USA.
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the data. This dataset has some special quirks, designed right-in to hide identities, and even the most basic measure - what is an "edit"? - is pretty vague covering everything from changing a comma to a semi-colon, to adding in 1,000 words to an article. Beyond simple curiosity, I suppose my motivation has to do mostly with so-called "political bias". A lot of
Americans seem to think WP has a liberal bias, but is that due to age, gender, or country of residence of editors? I do think that this dataset will be examined in detail, so getting out all the quirks, biases, and hypotheses now is a worthwhile exercise. Thanks.
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191:. It allows the public to see, more or less, how many active editors (5–99 edits in a month) and very active editors (100+ edits) from about 180 individual countries contribute to active Knowledge versions, each month from January 2019 onward. For example, if you wanted to know how many people editing from the UK made more than 99 edits to the French version of Knowledge in September, you can look it up in this dataset. The answer is somewhere between 11 and 20.
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Dominican
Republic. Note that Venezuela and Cuba are excluded by the WMF from the dataset. The population rankings for native English-speaking countries are almost identical to the rankings in Knowledge contributions of the same countries. But the population rankings for native Spanish-speaking countries are much less similar to their rankings in Knowledge Spanish-language contributions.
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be a record of the nationality of the contributor. Secondly, the assumed location may not be correct. So, eg, if a contributor in the PRC is using a VPN that says that the contributor's location is the USA, then the record will show the USA, not the PRC, as the location, even though the true location
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Another area of interest might involve combining this dataset with other datasets. For example, say a program is undertaken to increase the quality – rather than the quantity – of articles about country Z. Using this data in conjunction with data on readership might give a more complete understanding
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Six rich
European Union countries where English is not the mother tongue, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, France and Spain, together account for 8.4% of the reported very active editors. Of the countries in this table, only the rankings of Brazil and perhaps South Africa do not appear to be
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Thanks for this - all datasets have limits or quirks of course, and it's important for everybody to understand the limits. Also you're starting to get into some new hypotheses about the data (e.g. from foreign students, fluent non-native speakers, or VPNs), which is the start of really understanding
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These are interesting figures, but they need to be viewed with caution, for a number of reasons, including the following. For a start, the records are of the assumed location, and not necessarily the nationality, of the contributor. So, eg, if a contributor is a foreign student in the USA, the UK or
600:
Nevertheless, wealth – or perhaps dialect – may be playing a stronger role in eswiki than it does in enwiki. The 12 largest countries by native
Spanish-speaking population are, in order, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Argentina, the United States, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Cuba, Guatemala, and the
596:
Table 2 shows analogous rankings for the
Spanish language Knowledge. While Spain and Argentina combine for slightly over half of the reported very active editors, the very active editors are distributed more evenly over all the reported countries. Only one country without Spanish as its predominant
564:
The countries with the most very active editors in enwiki are the US (43%) and the UK (17%) , or almost 60% of the total reported editors between them. The two large rich countries predominate. Two rich but less populous countries, Canada and
Australia, are also well-represented with almost 12% of
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will likely be of greater interest. For example, let's say that there was a new program introduced intended to increase the number of editors from country Y. The full effects of the program might not be seen after 9 months, but after 2 or 3 years hopefully any effects could be seen in the data.
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Time is the main variable of interest that was left out of the above examinations. Right now we could see how edit contributions from different countries change over the nine months from
January through September 2019. As time goes by, more months of data will be released, and the effect of time
198:
are excluded, e.g. China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and
Venezuela. Exact data on the number of editors in each category (editors from country x who edited Knowledge version y) are not given. Rather these numbers are only given in “buckets” of ten: 1–10, 11–20, 21–30, 31–40, etc. Technical
172:
Let's say you are interested in how many active editors from France are editing the
English-language Knowledge; or conversely, you'd like to know how many editors from the UK are editing the French-language Knowledge. All the necessary information needed to calculate these numbers is recorded, at
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But enough for the preliminaries! What questions can the dataset answer that I’ve been dying to know the answer to? The following analysis is only the briefest overview of data from one month, September, quickly done. It’s not in any sense academic research, but hopefully will allow people to
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Table 3 shows how very active editors from the US and the UK edit the non-English Wikipedias. Altogether very active editors from the US edit in 44 different Knowledge versions. Those from the UK edit in 29 versions. Among those versions with 11–20 very active editors from the US are an
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but the first language of only a small fraction. The Philippines, with nearly 2% of the reported very active editors, may be affected by similar factors as India. The percentages of reported active editors (5–99 edits) appear to be similar to the percentages for very active editors.
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language, the United States, has a fairly large proportion of the very active editors. The same three factors that seem to explain the rankings for enwiki editors, mother tongue, population, and wealth, may very well explain the rankings for eswiki as well.
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Table 1 shows the 11 countries with the most active editors and the 11 with the most very active editors to enwiki (14 countries total), plus two other large English-speaking countries, Ireland and South Africa. Numbers marked * are not in the largest 11.
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database you could never find those numbers. The WMF did not wish to disclose this data out of concerns that the numbers were precise enough that governments or others could back out material that might lead to the identification of individual editors.
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What countries contribute most to the English-language Knowledge (enwiki)? Are they the richer, or the more populous English-speaking countries? Or perhaps those countries where English is widely spoken as a second
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The much smaller but still relatively rich New Zealand and Ireland, with about 1% of the total reported very active editors each, trail among those countries where English is the predominant first language.
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India, which has the 5th largest group of very active editors (4%) and third largest group of active editors (9%), has a very large population, for whom English is an important
576:. The four countries with the largest native English-speaking populations are also the largest four contributors to enwiki – in the same order: USA, UK, Canada, and Australia.
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Do these relations differ across different Knowledge language versions? Answering the above questions for the Spanish-language Knowledge (eswiki) allows a simple comparison.
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Well I am a Knowledge editor from Sri Lanka and of course English is not a popular language though it is one of the official languages of the country. It is regarded as a
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interesting mix of the Chinese, Spanish, Farsi (Persian), Japanese, and Russian Wikipedias. The similar data from UK editors only includes the French Knowledge.
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in the country. Surprised to Portugese speaking Brazil in the top 15 list even ahead of South Africa for gaining popularity in English Knowledge.
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And finally, how do contributions across countries to different language versions compare. Edits from the US and UK are examined here.
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understand what type of data the dataset contains and what type of questions it can be used to address.
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least temporarily, by the Wikimedia Foundation, but unless you worked for the WMF and had access to the
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How many people edit in your favorite language? Where are they from?: Only now can we say!
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directly explained by the three factors of mother tongue, population, and wealth.
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Australia, all of which have big foreign student populations, the records will
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Because of privacy concerns exact numbers are not given. Data from
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This month a new dataset was made public by the Wikimedia Foundation
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How many people edit in your favorite language? Where are they from?
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The proportion of native English speakers by country is shown at
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Fascinating. I'm surprised Nigeria did not make the list. -
1241:language . country quant. lower limit upper limit
1187:If your comment has not appeared here, you can try
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US and UK editors editing on non-English Wikipedias
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214:My main questions – of personal interest – are:
565:the total very active editors between them.
1235:This is all there is from the September file:
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1029:So what else can you do with this dataset?
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574:English language#Pluricentric English
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1410:Knowledge Signpost archives 2019-11
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1251:enwiki Nigeria 5 to 99 251 260
1248:enwiki Nigeria 100 or more 11 20
1172:These comments are automatically
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1360:: doing it for free since 2005.
1038:of the effects of the program.
1264:yowiki is prob. yorba (sp?) .
1260:yowiki Nigeria 5 to 99 1 10
1257:jawiki Nigeria 5 to 99 1 10
1254:hawiki Nigeria 5 to 99 1 10
1245:arwiki Nigeria 5 to 99 1 10
1183:add the page to your watchlist
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1297:15:13, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
1278:14:12, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
1227:08:04, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
1212:03:36, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
1345:17:19, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
1319:09:46, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
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18:Knowledge:Knowledge Signpost
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203:. The data are available
199:information is available
189:Active Editors by country
1180:. To follow comments,
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581:medium of instruction
187:, or more informally
38:
1176:from this article's
840:Dominican Republic
1167:Discuss this story
1112:Arbitration report
1107:On the bright side
1071:
1058:"Special report" →
175:Geoeditors Monthly
45:← Back to Contents
40:
1191:purging the cache
1142:From the archives
1122:Technology report
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592:Who edits eswiki?
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230:Who edits enwiki?
184:Geoeditors/Public
50:View Latest Issue
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1079:29 November 2019
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1050:"Special report"
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1102:In the media
1085:all comments
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196:30 countries
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94:PDF download
1392:Suggestions
1219:Indy beetle
1174:transcluded
972:simplewiki
144:X (Twitter)
1333:Smallbones
1266:Smallbones
1016:27 others
983:37 others
899:100+ edits
755:Nicaragua
653:Argentina
624:5–99 edits
612:100+ edits
321:Australia
258:5–99 edits
246:100+ edits
164:Smallbones
82:Share this
77:Contribute
22:2019-11-29
1386:Subscribe
1339:smalltalk
1326:Bahnfrend
1311:Bahnfrend
1272:smalltalk
1178:talk page
704:Colombia
219:language?
1404:Category
1381:Newsroom
1376:Archives
1358:Signpost
1147:In focus
1048:Previous
823:Bolivia
806:unknown
789:Uruguay
738:Ecuador
474:Ireland
355:Germany
134:Facebook
124:LinkedIn
114:Mastodon
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1289:MPS1992
1127:Gallery
1005:frwiki
994:enwiki
961:ruwiki
950:jawiki
939:fawiki
928:eswiki
917:zhwiki
906:enwiki
670:Mexico
508:Brazil
457:France
440:Sweden
304:Canada
279:25,401
1204:Abishe
687:Chile
682:13.4%
679:1,471
676:12.1%
665:12.0%
662:1,421
659:17.2%
648:35.4%
645:3,881
642:35.9%
636:Spain
491:Spain
406:Italy
381:1,021
364:1,281
347:5,241
338:India
330:2,491
313:3,321
299:12.1%
296:7,491
293:16.7%
282:41.0%
276:42.9%
273:1,881
154:Reddit
104:E-mail
1371:About
1137:Essay
912:1881
894:From
872:91.8%
865:96.0%
852:0.9%
846:0.2%
835:0.9%
829:0.2%
818:0.1%
812:1.9%
801:1.3%
795:1.9%
784:2.3%
778:1.9%
767:0.7%
761:1.9%
750:2.1%
744:1.9%
733:5.8%
727:5.3%
721:Peru
716:7.8%
710:7.0%
699:7.6%
693:8.7%
629:% of
617:% of
557:83.6%
550:88.8%
537:0.5%
534:291*
531:0.5%
520:1.2%
514:0.7%
503:1.3%
497:0.9%
486:1.1%
483:661*
480:0.9%
469:1.3%
463:0.9%
452:0.7%
449:431*
446:1.2%
435:0.7%
432:441*
429:1.2%
418:1.3%
412:1.2%
401:1.0%
398:621*
395:1.4%
384:1.6%
378:1.8%
367:2.1%
361:2.8%
350:8.5%
344:4.4%
333:4.0%
327:5.3%
316:5.4%
310:6.2%
263:% of
251:% of
16:<
1366:Home
1356:The
1315:talk
1293:talk
1283:See
1223:talk
1208:talk
1056:Next
1000:731
849:101
832:101
815:11*
798:211
781:251
764:81*
747:231
730:631
713:851
696:831
656:101
639:211
528:21*
517:721
511:31*
500:681
494:41*
477:41*
466:791
460:41*
415:831
358:121
341:191
324:231
307:271
290:731
205:here
201:here
1306:not
1022:27
1011:11
989:37
978:11
967:11
956:11
945:11
934:11
923:51
843:1*
826:1*
809:11
792:11
775:11
758:11
741:11
724:31
707:41
690:51
673:71
443:51
426:51
409:51
392:61
375:81
162:By
79:—
1406::
1317:)
1295:)
1287:.
1225:)
1210:)
1046:←
207:.
1342:)
1336:(
1328::
1324:@
1313:(
1291:(
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1083:(
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