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

Mon Jan 18 17:29:06 UTC 2010

There are 3 phenomena acting simultaneously against the number of visits to
small projects: The bilingual effect, the size effect, and the Google
effect. For Catalan case we estimate a penalization factor of 8.3 (that
means that visits are 8.3 times less that what they should be). It comes
from: 1.2 bilingual factor (visits lost because people also understand other
languages, even if they have the opportunity to read the article in their
mother tongue, they also read it in others). 2.5 size factor (visits to
other projects because readers don’t find what they were looking for in
their mother tongue). And 2,77 Google factor. (Visits lost because Google
directs people to other tongues projects). The only positive factor is the
bilingual one. We are working hard to correct the others. For other projects
those factors can be very different but the concept can be there.

>
> Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:40:06 -0700
> From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from? Q&A
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <849f98ed1001160140h20c69f6fxa5a7a22d4b81eb37 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Sociolinguistic situations around the world are very complex I think. In
> especially former European colonies, of which Kenya is but one example, the
> language of the former colonial power often has a unique position in
> society.
>
> It is not surprising to me that the English Wikipedia is so popular
> compared
> to any other in Kenya, but it is quite a bit more surprising that Korean,
> Romanian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Iranian, etc. users prefer the English
> Wikipedia.
>
> Mark
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:25 AM, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk at googlemail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > 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
>