[Wikipedia-l] Language versions' popularity vs. number of articles (vs. number of speakers)

Wed Mar 29 06:30:08 UTC 2006

Mark,
I don't agree with all of your conclusions here....

>What this says to me is that these Wikipedias are not attracting new
>pages proportional to views when compared with other Wikipedias. This
>may be because people don't want to write new pages, but it seems to
>me more likely that people simply don't know they can.

There are all kinds of possible reasons for this. It isn't necessarily because non-Europeans (and the wikipedias you seem to be referring to are mostly non-European wikipedias) are less likely to know that they can write new articles. Perhaps people are less interested in writing new articles, perhaps they're content with the articles that are there, or perhaps they have other ways to spend their time. Perhaps they _are_ increasingly writing new articles - some of the wikipedias you listed might still be small, but they are growing rapidly.

>How can this be fixed? Perhaps a site notice inviting people to write
>quality pages or register, or a drive to recruit new Wikipedians from
>the academic community.

I think here you're confusing the issues of quantity and quality. Writing 'quality pages', or inviting academics to do so, isn't the way to boost page count quickly. And I'm sure many academics would be less interested in the number of articles a wikipedia has than the quality of those articles anyway. Perhaps it would be better to forget about page count and focus on improving the overall quality of wikipedia.

Hyunsung

>
>Mark
>
>--
>"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
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