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Computer Science > Computers and Society

arXiv:1812.00474 (cs)
[Submitted on 2 Dec 2018]

Title:Why the World Reads Wikipedia: Beyond English Speakers

Authors:Florian Lemmerich, Diego Sáez-Trumper, Robert West, Leila Zia
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Abstract:As one of the Web's primary multilingual knowledge sources, Wikipedia is read by millions of people across the globe every day. Despite this global readership, little is known about why users read Wikipedia's various language editions. To bridge this gap, we conduct a comparative study by combining a large-scale survey of Wikipedia readers across 14 language editions with a log-based analysis of user activity. We proceed in three steps. First, we analyze the survey results to compare the prevalence of Wikipedia use cases across languages, discovering commonalities, but also substantial differences, among Wikipedia languages with respect to their usage. Second, we match survey responses to the respondents' traces in Wikipedia's server logs to characterize behavioral patterns associated with specific use cases, finding that distinctive patterns consistently mark certain use cases across language editions. Third, we show that certain Wikipedia use cases are more common in countries with certain socio-economic characteristics; e.g., in-depth reading of Wikipedia articles is substantially more common in countries with a low Human Development Index. These findings advance our understanding of reader motivations and behaviors across Wikipedia languages and have implications for Wikipedia editors and developers of Wikipedia and other Web technologies.
Subjects: Computers and Society (cs.CY); Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC); Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
Cite as: arXiv:1812.00474 [cs.CY]
  (or arXiv:1812.00474v1 [cs.CY] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1812.00474

Submission history

From: Florian Lemmerich [view email]
[v1] Sun, 2 Dec 2018 21:52:13 UTC (714 KB)
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Florian Lemmerich
Diego Sáez-Trumper
Robert West
Leila Zia
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