User:RM395/Course/Week 12
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Please complete the Manypedia assignment before posting to this discussion.
On the Wikipedia Systemic Bias page we read about the "average Wikipedian" on the English Wikipedia. Who, in your estimation, is writing on the other Wikipedias? Other than the obvious differences in language and location, are they similar to contributors on the English Wiki? In discussing the role these differences play in what appears in the text of an article, be careful not to fall into the trap of considering the English Wikipedia as a kind of standard against which others should be measured (as should be clear from the systemic bias page, the English wiki is affected by particular cultural values, too).
A Mix From Different Cultures
The systemic bias page defines the "average Wikipedian" as "(1) a male, (2) technically inclined, (3) formally educated, (4) an English speaker (native or non-native), (5) aged 15–49, (6) from a majority-Christian country, (7) from a developed nation, (8) from the Northern Hemisphere, and (9) likely employed as a white-collar worker or enrolled as a student rather than being employed as a laborer." Most of these traits are probably the same throughout all the Wikipedias simply because males tend to like computers and the Internet more than females, you have to be technically-inclined to understand the site, it is helpful to be educated so that you have something to add to the pages, and developed nations are the ones where internet and technology is most prevalent. I believe the other Wikipedias will still have users with these traits simply because those are the qualities needed to edit the pages (and not get your work reverted). However, in less-developed countries, I would imagine that there will be people from other countries that just know the language that would edit the pages. If the people in those countries don't have internet access, they wouldn't be able to contribute, so there must be outside editors. This probably happens on the English Wikipedia too, but not nearly as often because people from other countries would most likely just add to their language's Wikipedia since it would be smaller than the English one. I believe that the "average Wikipedian" is similar in every country, but I also think there is probably some mixing in the countries of the contributors. Kslinker5493 (talk) 15:46, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
- I mostly agree with this outlook. Certain demographics such as gender and age would likely be similar to all Wikipedia editors across the globe. Access to and familiarity with computers are critical to the ability to edit pages. Internet service with relatively high speeds is also important. What I find interesting here is how much of a cultural bias the average contributor incorporates into their edits. I would assume most of this occurs unconsciously to a significant degree.--Jeflicki (talk) 00:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
- I agree with both of you. I'm not really sure that I even totally understand the question because of course most Wikipedians are similar. Obviously race, religion, and language might change but I think we can all agree that most people in war-torn Afghanistan are not writing on Wikipedia. Tribes in the Amazon are not like "wait, chill a minute on spear hunting while I edit this page on Manga". We know that people like us are doing the same things as us. Most young people in other countries learn English anyway and can contribute to our Wikipedia, which only enriches our culture. As for being a young, Christian, white male with a computer... um... yeah. They run the world, don't they? --Tinaface86 (talk) 07:09, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
- I agree, considering that some of those factors are kind of necessary to contribute to Wikipedia. I think users from other countries would challenge the mostly-Christian aspect, considering the world has many different religions. Since Wikipedia started as an English enterprise I would agree with the English-speaking aspect. However, technology is technology. In order to use the web, you must first have access to it and understand it. I think uneducated people and people who are from less developed countries lack the resources to contribute to wikipedia. For the most part, I think the contributors are the same. It is so interesting to see how the "average Wikipedian" breaks down. I wonder how those types and characteristics pan out within percentages of the population? Wouldn't it be interesting to compare user characteristics by state or country as well? For the most part, I think all factors would basically stay the same, except for 6 and 8 which I have discussed above, and are somewhat obvious. --Tabbboooo (talk) 08:25, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
WikiProjects
I feel that certain WikiProjects would contribute to the other Wikipedias. Groups like WikiProject Italy, for example, is not necessarily only available in English, they are also available in French. I feel like people who join and contribute to WikiProject Italy would be people interested in topics related to Italy and/or may be people who are native or descendents from Italy and are familiar with these topics. Therefore it would be possible for that group to be able to translate articles as well, from Italian to English or vice versa, and therefore helping both Wikipedias. In fact, WikiProject Italy has categories such as "Articles needing translation from Italian/Neapolitan/Sardinian/Sicilian Wikipedia" so it's quite possible that the French WikiProject would have something similar as well. --MangoDango (talk) 18:47, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
- I agree that WikiProjects would be the subgroup that branches out the most. To be perfectly honest I'm still not entirely sure who exactly would be the common Wikipedia person, but I suppose there are a lot of people in the world and in America alone that would do so. In general I imagined just individuals doing their thing and perhaps getting together after doing some work online, but WikiProjects definitely showed me a new side of an organized team not specifically working on the dev team or whatnot. I can imagine there are many like-minded folk in other countries, but obviously the site started in America and in English. Obviously our lives and mindsets are heavily influenced by language, but a general thirst for knowledge would be what I consider as the draw point for people of any nation with access to the Internet to seek out Wikipedia. --Seannator (talk) 05:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Same Characteristics but Maybe Scarcer Resources
I compared three articles between Spanish and English, as I understand Spanish quite well and could compare the articles without relying on a machine translation. I thought the Spanish articles were of comparable character and quality to those in English. My sense was that the demographics of the editors were about the same for Spanish as for English. I noticed that the [Pancho Villa] article was longer in English than Spanish and had many more revisions and editors. The same was true for the [Monarch butterfly] article. This made me think that the Spanish editorial population might to some degree suffer from having fewer resources than the English-language group -- fewer people involved and less time available, resulting in shorter and less detailed articles. Interestingly, the Spanish article on [Forced disappearance] (desaparecidos) was much longer than the English article, even though it had many fewer revisions and editors. This was due to the inclusion of long sections discussing the legal framework around this as a human-rights issue. This suggests that some Spanish-language interests have had resources and time to devote to the article in that language. --Brodmont (talk) 03:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)