East Asia/en
Note: This page is a work in process and all of the analysis shown is in a preliminary stage
Table of Major East Asian languages and their Wikipedias
| Wiki code | Language | Number of speakers (Millions) | Potential Users (Millions) | Number of articles (8-09) | Article, 1 year growth rate (8/08-8/09) | Article, 2 year growth rate (8/07-8/09) | # of 5+editors (8-09) | 5+ editors, 1 year growth rate (8/08-8/09) | 5+ editors, 2 year growth rate (8/07-8/09) | Article to editor ratio |
| ja | Japanese | 132 | 84 | 618,577 | 19.3% | 51.7% | 4316 | 0.2% | -2.7% | 143.3 |
| ko | Korean | 78 | 52 | 111,426 | 54.2% | 170.7% | 808 | 54.8% | 212.0% | 137.9 |
| zh | Chinese | 1300 | 266 | 262,729 | 36.5% | 85.6% | 2033 | 18.5% | 20.9% | 129.2 |
East Asian languages
- There are over 1.4 billion speakers of the 3 languages listed, comprising 90% of the population of East Asia.
- The three languages listed are all national languages of the primary country listed. These languages are the dominant language both in the home as well as in the media.
- In China, many people speak different dialects of Chinese at home. However, Mandarin is the standard written form of Chinese
East Asian languages and education
- All of the languages listed are used as mediums of instruction at the elementary, secondary and university level
Internet penetration in East Asia
- There is a significant difference between Internet penetration in East Asia. Below are the following Internet use rate by country/territory:
- China 22%, Japan 70%, South Korea 88%, North Korea <1%, Hong Kong 59%, Taiwan 67%, Macau 46%
East Asian language Wikipedias
- East Asian language Wikipedias have had very different growth trajectories
- Japanese is one of the largest Wikipedias.
- The Chinese Wikipedia has shown a strong growth and has developed a significant number of articles when compared to other languages. However, many of these articles are only stubs that have limited content. Only 17% of the articles are greater than 1.5 KB. Additionally, given the large number of potential users, the Chinese Wikipedia has not experienced the type of growth compared with European languages with a similar number of potential users.
- The Korean Wikipedia has experienced moderate growth. However, despite the growth in article count many of the articles are stubs with limited information which can be seen by the low number of articles of greater than 1500 bytes.
- There are Wikipedias in several Chinese dialects however, none of them has more than 12,000 articles.
Barriers to the growth of East Asian language Wikipedias
- Chinese/Mandarin
- There is steep competition in the Chinese online encyclopedia space from Baidu Baike and Hudong. Both of these online encyclopedias have more than a million articles.
- In mainland China there is a lack of understanding of the value proposition for participating in Wikipedia. This is due in part to the fact that other are Chinese online encyclopedias pay people to write entries.
- There is concern amongst some mainland Chinese that participating in Wikipedia could involve them unwittingly in political controversy. Because the political climate is constantly shifting, the topics that are permitted for discussion by the censors changes on a regular basis. Websites based in China automatically censor contributions. Therefore, contributors do not have to worry about whether or not they are discussing politically sensitive topics since the website will automatically remove something that is deemed sensitive. Wikipedia does not provide that protection.
- In the rather developed regions like Hong Kong, the problem is people not willing to share their knowledge, believing which is their property. Wikipedia and her sister projects are widely-use, people won't edit it even knowing they can
- On the other hands, people currently contributing in Wikipedia in this region are mostly teens or in their twenties, not many of them with sufficient knowledge in professional articles. This made them rather focus on local stuff, resulting a large quantity of articles on local information (some refer such as Wiki-travelization). This had made people questioned the quality and direction of Wikipedia, which had stopped people, especially professionals come to contribute in the projects.
- Japanese
- ??
- Korean
- ??