User:RM395/Course/Week 12

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)

Great point about the unconscious nature of cultural bias. I agree most of it must be unconscious, considering how we can overlook the assimilation we have experienced to our own nations and cultures.--Tabbboooo (talk) 08:12, 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)

I think it completely comes down to culture. In America based on who posts things on Reddit the majority of people adding content to the internet are white males of the democratic party between the ages of 18 and 25. I imagine that since Wikipedia is a much more serious website that there is a larger group of people contributing. Younger men seem to add the most content to the internet in America, but in Japan it could be a completely different story. Maybe older women spend more time on the internet there and would be more inclined to put info on a Japanese Wiki page. I think it comes down to in every culture who is knowledgeable about the subject, who cares enough to add content, and who has time to add content. Every aspect brings down more people. Somebody might be knowledgeable about something, but not care whatsoever if it gets posted on Wikipedia. I do not think it is fair to say there is an average Wikipedian because the people who have time to post will not know enough about different subjects to post, and vice versa. I think every contributor to a page is specialized and cannot be summed up into an average Wikipedian.--SJRick (talk) 08:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I like this point. We don't know everything about every culture, so it is hard to say who would be contributing the most to Wikipedia in each country. Yes, there seems to be a "typical" Wikipedian in the United States, but there may be a huge mix in other places.Kslinker5493 (talk) 13:36, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree they make a solid argument that we don't know everything about the cultures in those country's. For all we know the poeple who are the major demographic on the internet could be completely different than in the united states. I also think that some things would remain constant like the education and technical characteristics. Those basic characteristics are needed to edit Wikipedia properly but those requirements do not really limit gender, age, or any of the other characteristics. --Youngpenn (talk) 14:57, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I have noticed the majority bias in Wikipedia articles about the Middle East (and various actors therein). It seems there is a greater tendency to focus on how such and such affects the United States. In reality, that particular such and such is far more influential in its local sphere (say, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) than it is in the U.S. But I understand -- it's hard to overcome the habit of focusing on our own culture and reality. And hey! There's a list of articles that have been specifically categorized as "Western Culture-Centric." Luna002 (talk) 13:39, 29 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)

I also looked at a couple of articles in Spanish and found that although comparable, they also had less resources than their English counterparts. Little things like images and sound clips were more scarce on the Spanish pages I looked at than on the English pages. I wonder if that's due to copyright issues, or just no one has made the decision to include such media in the pages quite yet. --Katerwaul (talk) 12:10, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I would say that it would be mostly the people with the same characteristics that are writing on the other wikipedia pages. Just because a page maybe in another language doesn't mean it entirely changes the requirements for writing a wikipedia page. A person still needs access to the internet to write a wikipedia page, no matter what language they are writing one in. A person also needs a good amount of free time and be willing to invest that free time into wikipedia. Both of these requirements are only met by people in a middle to upper class. The age range is most likely the same, in my psychology class we actually learn that people are good at learning new things up until roughly their early 20's and then they have a harder and harder time learning new things progressively throughout their life. This makes the claim that the age range is probably going to remain consistent around the world. Women are still discriminated against in the US and this is also probably true throughout the rest of the world, so this might contribute to the reason that most of the wikipedians are women. The only thing that may vary from different pages would be the religion. Christianity is not the biggest religion in the world so it just makes sense statistically that it wouldn't be as big of a percent of contributing wikipedians in other countries.--MartellRedViper (talk) 12:17, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, some of the characteristics of the "average Wikipedian" can't be changed (like the internet accessibility), but some may be completely different based on culture. To us, it seems that the average Wikipedian on the English Wikipedia would be the average Wikipedian everywhere, but we need to keep in mind that we don't know everything about other countries. So, there may be many other factors in that society that would affect who posts on Wikipedia.Kslinker5493 (talk) 13:38, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that the major characteristics will stay the same no matter where you go but as the heading says I think that the only thing that really does change is the access to resources. Wikipedia is not a simple site to edit and that does not change no matter where the person is from or there culture so they will always have to be technically inclined in order to be interested in editing Wikipedia. Editing on Wikipedia also takes a certain understanding of writing which is usually only obtained by receiving a formal education so that would remain constant as well. The race and language of the person will of course change. The thing that will not change is the requirements for writing a article and the need for sources to cite. That is what limits other languages so much because much of the easily accessible information on the internet is written in English. This lack of information is reflected in there articles when you compare a English version of a article and another languages article you can see that they try to write the articles in the same manner as the English versions but they just lack information. So the major characteristics stay the same just the length of the articles is affected. --Youngpenn (talk) 14:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration Theory

I believe that the major contributors to Wikipedia, are the same contributors that work on the other Wikipedias. When I imagine a new article being created on let's say the Spanish Wikipedia, I assume it was at first created by someone with acute knowledge of that particular topic. Then, the average wikipedian, who is on the site everyday monitoring and editing, can expand on the topic after doing some research. As we've talked about in class, Wikipedia is very culture specific and you can see that in the Manypedia assignment. It takes a collaboration of contributors to make the various Wikipedias what they are, some to get the basic information on the page and others to elaborate on the cultural aspects. --Thepresidenthal (talk) 13:53, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I feel like it would be much more difficult for major contributors of the English Wikipedia to contribute to other Wikipedias due to language barriers. If they are not familiar with the language they are working on, it would be hard for them to contribute. Sure they can stick everything into Google translate, but it's not perfect and sometimes you just have to be fluent in that language. I've personally tried to translate Korean to English using Google translate and sometimes it gives me gibberish. --MangoDango (talk) 16:35, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Depends on the Culture

In comparing the three articles among different languages on Manypeida, I found that the English and larger European countries were very similar. For Example, the French, German, Spanish, Italian, Etc. I fell that the average English Wikpedian, "(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," is probably similar if not spot on with comparable foreign wikipedians. There is a language barrier and gap the is difficult to understand on some pages, and some pages just don't go into that much detail, making it easier to believe that the "Average English Wikipedian" cannot be comparable to other average wikipedians in some countries. It's obvious that Wikipedia is more popular in the United States and Western Europe. Maybe other countries will follow suit and become more interested in contributing to the site, or edit pages that need work, but the fact of the matter is that the average English wikipedian probably shouldn't be compared with the rest of the world's average wikipedian.--Jastout (talk) 15:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Different Only in Entertainment

I feel like culture in the U.S. differs so drastically from that in other countries — Mexico and Italy notwithstanding to such an extent — that foreign contributors really are different. The English versions on which I wrote seemed to get across entertaining tidbits about each article (e.g., Soccer and Super Mario Bros.) without getting into the details of technicalities than the average Wikipedian wouldn’t care to read. However, when it came to politics, contributors are very much the same. Politics is one of those things where people contribute with the intent to convince other that they’re right. In entertainment, these aren’t problems, so we have a lot of contributors who edit articles for the sole purpose of sharing their ideas about and the secrets contained within various forms of media. --Information-01152001 (talk) 15:03, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

That is interesting that you found "tidbits" more predominate in English articles. I wonder if that's it's because there are more contributors, as you've mentioned, or if there's some other factor. Would a Korean article on a Korean soap opera have more "tidbits" than an English article on the same topic? Assuming both pages had an equal amount of contributions, which would have the most little entertaining facts? --Katerwaul (talk) 02:26, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Western Europe is probably the same

The English Wikipedia has the most articles followed by a few other languages from Western Europe (French, German, Italian). I imagine the average Wikipedian to be relatively similar between these countries. It's the Wikipedians who speak the languages who have a much smaller number of articles on Wikipedia that I imagine to be quite different. I imagine these people to be extremely interested in the topic they are covering. Wikipedia doesn't seem to be as big of an item in other countries as it is in America and Western Europe. Wikipedians here or in W. Europe probably end up working on articles they are not completely interested in simply because they like working on Wikipedia. In other countries were it is not so popular, I imagine Wikipedians to be individuals extremely interested in the topics they cover. --Eems.p (talk) 15:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I totally agree with you. I don't think that Wikipedia is very popular besides the U.S. and Western Europe. If you compare John Elway's page, for example, in English, Dutch and Persian, the English and Dutch will definitely be closer in comparison that with the Persian page. Some cultures may not know that much about the site, or simply just may not be interested.--Jastout (talk) 15:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Fairly Similar

I would say that people writing for Wikipedia in other parts of the world are pretty similar to those who write on the English Wikipedia. Other than the obvious difference in location, which I would say has the greatest effect on difference, I would imagine the motives of the person to be similar to anyone writing on in English. A person has to have a desire to create or edit a page on their own time and for no financial reward, usually to better the information on the topic, therefore, I would think the intentions of Wikipedian's from all around would be the same. Although, resources available to do so may vary by location and thus cause differences in quality. Overall, I would say anyone who write for Wikipedia is somewhat similar due to their intentions to provide knowledge.--Ryenocerous (talk) 15:38, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I like that you point out that people who edit Wikipedia are people who "have a desire to create or edit a page on their own time and for no financial reward." In my post, I discussed that the Western European and American Wikipedian are similar and a different group from the rest of the world of Wikipedians. However, it is good to point out that all Wikipedians are brought together by one characteristic -- the desire to participate on Wikipedia. Because nobody is paid (for the most part) to produce or edit articles on Wikipedia, every single Wikipedian is driven by at least a small interest in the topic they choose to work on. --Eems.p (talk) 05:15, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

People around the world exchange information freely do it in good intent. The validity of a subject at interest is important in the Wikipedia community and it is the driving force for the advancement of knowledge to all peers. Wikipedia does a good job ensuring responsibility for all web users to participate in the growing demand of knowledge. All Wikipedia users are similar in this fact that information is essential in present time and should be a driving force for all people around the world. Anyone can be a Wikipedian, all they have to do is contribute their knowledge of information to a given crowd or audience in the favor for informing and contributing something that is very valuable on the web... information. --Isaiahgee (talk) 04:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Standard, but not Absolute

Before reading the Wikipedia page on systemic bias and the "average Wikipedian", I could have guessed what the description would be. I mean really, it makes sense that educated young-to-middle aged people from socially and technologically developed countries are the demographic for major contributions to Wikipedia. What I'm not sure I agree with is that this due to cultural barriers. For one, the criteria stating that males are the major contributor may be true, but it is not as if the female population is restricted from contributing due to some sort of civic unbalance. Similarly, even though major contributors are predominantly from Christian oriented nations, if a contributor from a different religious upbringing were to write a stronger, and more knowledgeable, but still neutral contribution to Wikipedia, it's not as if this contribution would be questioned or disputed. --Eng395jy (talk) 17:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with you. I could have pictured the average Wikipedian just from hearing about it the first time. But yes, of course the various cultural differences that do make it onto the site really make it what it is, because that description of the average Wikipedian would only have an encyclopedic knowledge of certain subjects. What makes Wikipedia interesting is many different personalities contributing to one end. --Tinaface86 (talk) 03:45, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Depends on the subject

I love the description of the "average Wikipedian", particularly the part where it said that they were most likely to be a white collar worker or a student than a laborer. I find that to be very true. My brother is only two years older than me and works as a laborer at a company that makes bricks. He is nowhere near as active on the internet as I am. Depending on the subject, I think that the contributors to the other Wikipedias are the same as the contributors to the English Wikipedia. We contribute to the pages that we find interesting, regardless of other factors. I agree with what someone above me. Just because girls are less active on Wikipedia, doesn't mean that they have less of an opportunity to contribute. If you have the means to do something and you're seriously interested in it, then you're going to do it. Rebaduck (talk) 22:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think this is very important, too. My post focused on the cultural barrier between Internet users whereas you bring up another important chasm: (1) people who use the Internet and (2) people who don't. There are a lot of subjects (e.g., copyright) on Wikipedia that might only interest people who use the Internet every day. Why would someone whose life isn't directly affected by the Internet care about tech policy, for instance? Then again, to go along with your example, the brickwork page is incredibly extensive. --Information-01152001 (talk) 19:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you as well. I feel like the characteristics that make a person want to contribute to Wikipedia are the same regardless of culture. The same motivation that causes a person to create an English page, probably because they are passionate about the topic, is most likely true for anyone across the world who contributes. They do so because they want to.--Ryenocerous (talk) 17:30, 29 March 2013 (UTC)