Wikipedia in English has a couple of things working for it. English is the international language of science and a first or second language for most of those already connected to the Internet. The population of people from whom the core editing population is likely drawn - literate people in developed countries with good Internet access and enough time after their basic needs are met to devote to a volunteer project - are also largely English speakers. But it turns out according to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (speaking at TED), only about 1/3 of accesses to Wikipedia are to the English language part.

When I heard him say this I immediately wondered (given the fact he admits that 600-1,000 people make up the ‘core’ of wikipedia’s editors) how many people are primary contributors in other languages? It turns out in the case of Swahili at least the answer appears to be just four, and only one of them is African (living in America).

When contributor numbers are low and when the big English language volunteer community at Wikipedia can’t keep an eye on things (because they can’t read the language) what is to prevent individuals or groups with an axe to grind exploiting the Wikipedia brand? Has anyone looked to see whether the entries on the causes of AIDS written in small African languages are consistent with current science or lean towards crackpot theories? What does the Chinese language version of Wikipedia say about the ‘June 4th incident’ at Tiananmen Square and is its ‘neutral point of view’ account significantly different from that of the English language version of the same event? I just checked on this and a Google translation of the Chinese language account seems to tone down the casualty figures, saying something like “specific figures are not known, there are hundreds of thousands of view” while the English version says “Estimates of civilian deaths vary: 23 (Communist Party of China), 400–800 (Central Intelligence Agency), 2600 (Chinese Red Cross). Injuries are generally held to have numbered from 7,000 to 10,000″.

This is of particular concern given that it recently emerged that selected Wikipedia articles will be installed on the $100 laptops being produced by the One Laptop Per Child Consortium. Is there a danger that articles in non-English languages (selected by whom?) may not be produced to the standards held by the English-language Wikipedia and yet may be seen by impressionable children as the infallible wisdom of the Internet handed down in their magic boxes?

But I’d like to end on a cheerful note. If the students who receive these laptops are very lucky their teachers could use Wikipedia articles as a way to introduce critical media literacy. They might be told that these Wikipedia articles are written by ordinary people like them and can be edited by them. It would be pleasing to think that the dearth of Internet content aimed at developing countries could be tackled, at least in part, by those nations’ schoolchildren.

David Brake

According to a new report by Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulatory authority (reported on the BBC News site) a staggering 70% of 16-24 year olds online (compared to 41% of the general population) have used some kind of social networking site, such as My Space, and one in five have their own website or blog.

The interesting bits are from page 68 of the telecoms section PDF (p 172 of the report). For example:

41% of UK adults with internet at home say they have used social network sites, with around half of those doing so on a weekly basis . Nearly one third use them for discussing hobbies and interests, and a further 26% discuss work-related topics online. Fewer internet users take advantage of websites for discussing personal issues (17%) or meeting new people (15%).

There has been a recent report by the excellent Pew Internet and American Life project on bloggers in the US as well that I imagine many of you have heard of but because they measure things differently (eg treating social networking software as a kind of blog for statistical purposes) it is hard to directly compare them with the results of this survey. Both the UK and US have some way to go in matching S Korea in blogging, however. Last year according to the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication more than half of all of S Koreans in their 20s had a blog (that’s in part because more than 95% of S Koreans that age were online).

Pew makes their raw data available a few months after the reports they produce emerge and I understand it is possible that Ofcom will do the same so if you are a researcher it may be worth visiting their research page from time to time to see if it turns up…

David Brake