TOP TWELVE LANGUAGES ON WIKIPEDIA

Naked Eye   Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:02 pm GMT
Presence of languages on Wikipedia is an indicator of cultural relevancy of languages. Maybe a good one, let's take it for what it's worth.
English is largely predominant in all parameters.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias#All_Wikipedias_ordered_by_number_of_articles

Languages with over 200,000 articles:
01. English: 2 532 220 articles
02. German: 795 172
03. French: 697 513
04. Polish: 530 866
05. Japanese: 515 045
06. Italian: 486 296
07. Dutch: 473 414
08. Portuguese: 423 865
09. Spanish: 392 215
10. Russian: 310 676
11. Swedish: 290 214
12. Chinese: 205 019
[ My comment: ] Polish ranking strangely high, Spanish abnormally low.

Total number of pages:
01. English: 2 260 613
02. French: 2 688 202
03. German: 2 260 613
04. Portuguese: 1 636 806
05. Italian: 1 396 753
06. Japanese: 1 297 209
07. Spanish: 1 195 543
08. Russian: 1 112 441
09. Dutch: 1 079 961
10. Polish: 914 017
11. Swedish: 693 383
12. Chinese: 673 048
[ My comment: ] No significant change, other than Polish and Spanish get more sensible rankings.

Depth factor:
"The "Depth" column ((Edits/Articles) × (Non-Articles/Articles) × (Stub-ratio)) is a rough indicator of a Wikipedia’s quality, showing how frequently its articles are updated" — in short, it's an indicator of Wiki collaborativeness;
01. English: 374
02. French: 105
03. German: 78
04. Spanish: 73
05. Russian: 66
06. Chinese 62
07. Portuguese: 61
08. Italian: 50
09. Japanese: 39
10. Dutch: 21
11. Swedish: 20
12. Polish: 8
[ My comment: ] Yep, there was something fishy with Polish!

Users:
01. English: 7 716 575
02. Spanish: 797 157
03. German: 601 619
04. Chinese: 492 713
05. French: 441 318
06. Portuguese: 432 966
07. Italian: 296 668
08. Japanese: 236 024
09. Polish: 211 656
10. Dutch: 182 725
11. Russian: 156 482
12. Swedish: 73 444
[ My comment: ] The Chinese and Hispanics are great users but poor contributors.
Guest   Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:58 pm GMT
It could be. But the most important is the last list, the top 4 users.

For instance, if Wikipedia wants to add some advertisements, they will do it in English, Spanish, German and Chinese. There will be more clients (users) in them.

Wikipedia will be more interesting for users (clients): So, there will be more photos, more maps, more interesting things in these 4 languages.



That is the same in all the WWW. There is an important webpage that shows which are the master languages in Internet:

English, Chinese and Spanish are the top 3 languages used in the Web. It shows that all other languages are less important than the top 3.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/languages.htm
Guest   Tue Aug 26, 2008 10:13 pm GMT
Joder lo que yo decía, si sale una lista a favor del español ya se estan inventando cosas a cada cual mas rara, dentro de poco una lista de quien se saca más mocos, francia primera por supuesto, pero hay una cosa que tiene gracia, cuando uno da un enlace de wiki se dice que no es una fuente fiable que si es mentira todo, pero claro para decir lo bueno que es el frances la wiki en lo mejor de internet, que gente, que asco me da.
Guest   Tue Aug 26, 2008 10:20 pm GMT
Anyway, English, Chinese and Spanish are the top 3 languages used in the Web. It shows that all other languages are less important than the top 3.

So, a webpage in these 3 languages will be understood by over half of the World users.


Written English is understood by a lot of people, more that spoken English.

Written Chinese is understood by speakers of all Chinese dialects

Written Spanish is understood by speakers of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
Breiniak   Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:12 pm GMT
Chinese is marching on. I always felt Dutch had some great contributors and it's true of you look at the low numbers.

BTW, that Volapük polluter, does he have a live? What is his name?
Breiniak   Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:13 pm GMT
"does he have a life" I meant.
Guest   Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:32 pm GMT
"BTW, that Volapük polluter"

ROFL! Volapük has more articles than Romanian or Turkish, wat more than Esperanto, but most pages are half empty stubs... With the same depth ratio as Polish at 8... And only 5 administrators, 5 freaks who certainly have great time with that tremendous hoax!
Guest   Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:42 pm GMT
spanish people are probably lazy or illiterates
Guest   Wed Aug 27, 2008 12:09 am GMT
It could be, but our language is more important than French.
CNN Watch   Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:06 am GMT
Wikipedia was banned in China for a very long time.
Guest   Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:08 am GMT
Has anyone noticed that Spanish-speakers tend to only write in Spanish on the internet? I've known of French-speakers who actually try to write in English even if it may not be that good.
Breiniak   Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:23 am GMT
"Wikipedia was banned in China for a very long time."

Taiwanese and Chinese diaspora are doing the job then.
Breiniak   Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:30 am GMT
Nope, the ban has been lifted 2 years ago, but with restrictions:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/16/business/wiki.php

This explain the swift march forward of Chinese on Wikipedia.


"[ My comment: ] The Chinese and Hispanics are great users but poor contributors."
Actually the depth of the articles on Chinese and Spanish are pretty good, especially when compared to how many used contribute.

Personally I like to switch between languages when I feel English has too much text, and later read the English version to get more depth. Sometimes, although rarely, English isn't the most detailed on a particular article (especially on Ancient Rome Dutch has some great contributors, or at least it used to be so).
Breiniak   Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:32 am GMT
I misread, you meant they have great quality, but don't use wikipedia enough in numbers. Poverty and lack in education is the reason I guess. :p
CNN Watch   Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:43 am GMT
bullshit, China shut down Wikipedia fully just a few days after the 2006 lift and unbanned the site just a few days before the Games in Beijing.

i think the Chinese could be Great contributorss if they can access the site.

just look at their localized Wiki, 2,761,321 entries so far since 2006:

http://www.hoodong.com/