Wikimania

2019:Growing Wikimedia's Readership/Increasing Wikipedia Readership By Creating Local Content In Language Editions

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Growing Wikimedia's Readership/Increasing Wikipedia Readership By Creating Local Content In Language Editions
Slides

Title

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Increasing Wikipedia Readership By Creating Local Content In Language Editions

Description

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The percentage of articles that each Wikipedia dedicates to their geographical and cultural context (sometimes known as 'local content') is on average one quarter. In languages like English or Japanese it exceeds half. Even though this seems a disproportionate amount of content, it is read proportionally more than the rest of the Wikipedia. In fact, the most popular articles or those with more pageviews in each Wikipedia language edition tend to be about their local context, whether they are about controversies, celebrities, politics or simply defining a term required to understand the news.

In this short talk I want to stress the importance of developing local content in order to foster readership in all Wikipedia language editions. I will explain some metrics originated in the Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory project in order to measure the degree of readership of local content across languages as an a key indicator of a language well-functioning.

I want to point out that when editors of a Wikipedia are not aware of the value of local content they are not able to serve the readers' demands properly, which are sometimes covered by a language of a higher social status (i.e. English, French, etc.). By encouraging editors to create this content, perhaps we can break this vicious cycle that prevents readers from searching and reading in their own language in the Internet. This is one barrier that sometimes we overlooked when trying to increase readership and help smaller Wikipedias grow.


Relationship to the theme

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This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:

In this lightning talk I want to bring some key results on readership and context representation. This relates to the sustainable development goals with improving education quality (SDG 4), industry innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9) and reducing inequalities (SDG 10) in general.

Session outcomes

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At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:

* Discover the readership of local content in all Wikipedia language editions.

* Find new tools and lists of articles to use in your community events.

* Check projects that foster cross-language collaboration and aim at certain content gaps.


Session leader(s)

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Marc Miquel (marcmiquel), researcher

Amical Wikimedia, Wikimedia Diversity, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Catalonia)

Session type

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Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:

  • Lightning talk

Supporting work

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Optional:

Requirements

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The session will work best with these conditions:

  • Room:
  • Audience:
  • Recording:


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