Repository logo

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
  1. Home
  2. Academic and Research Output
  3. Conferences, Workshops, Symposiums, and Seminars
  4. Why the World Reads Wikipedia: Beyond English Speakers
 
conference paper

Why the World Reads Wikipedia: Beyond English Speakers

Lemmerich, Florian
•
Saez-Trumper, Diego
•
West, Robert  
Show more
January 1, 2019
Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (Wsdm'19)
12th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM)

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.

  • Files
  • Details
  • Metrics
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name

Final_Version.pdf

Type

Publisher's Version

Version

http://purl.org/coar/version/c_970fb48d4fbd8a85

Access type

openaccess

Size

1.11 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (MD5)

e0b5e7d6297fc715636f79960339ae92

Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Contact
  • infoscience@epfl.ch

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on X
  • Follow us on Youtube
AccessibilityLegal noticePrivacy policyCookie settingsEnd User AgreementGet helpFeedback

Infoscience is a service managed and provided by the Library and IT Services of EPFL. © EPFL, tous droits réservés