Talk:Languages used on the Internet

Question about quality and reliability of sources

The data comes from a website called [Internet World Stats | http://www.internetworldstats.com]. This site is published by the [Miniwatts Marketing Group | http://www.miniwatts.com] in Colombia. The website looks very unfinished. It contains - literally - a lot of "Lorem ipsum". It looks like someone did a very quick job of getting up the website and did not fill in all the fields in the template.

Can someone please say something more about the source? I am interested in using the data, but I feel uncertain about it at this stage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dnordfors (talk • contribs) 19:49, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Internet World Stats looks like a marketing company, reads like a marketing company, and feels like a marketing company. I think it's irresponsible to be using them as a source. What would better serve people, however, is a quick look at the Open Net Initiative. More specifically, the vastly more reputable ITU statistics which are reviewed and actually legitimate: [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.113.106.71 (talk) 17:23, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I have the exact same feeling on this "Miniwatts Marketing Group". There is no way to contact them except by mail and no information about their way to extract the numbers they present... I will remove them and the source. If new clues about their reliability arise, then we could suggest a roll-back. G.Dupont (talk) 14:51, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

After some extra surf, it appears that even the others sources (one of them being now down) does not state clearly how they did compile the number. It seems to be that this is strange. How could we claim this on wikipedia without a clear validation of the data ? Counting the number of internet users in a country is in my sense a very complex problem that maybe government and/or internet providers (if they work all together) could solve. Compiling such numbers on the whole world should be an enormous work... or a very nice fake. What do you think ? Without answers in few days, I will suggest to delete this article. G.Dupont (talk) 15:22, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Move?

When I saw the title, I thought it would be about a government sponsored plan to give everyone on the planet internet access, if of a low bandwhich. However, it's a list of what language people on the internet speak. Move this to Internet user statistics or Internet user atributes or something similar. HereToHelp (talk) 02:03, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

In response to the above comment, the page was moved from Global internet access to Global internet usage.

Weird number

According to this organization, in 2006 there are 28 million French-speaking users. However, French stat companies state that in 2005 there were 26 million French Internet users and it's growing fast. [2] Since there are a number of other French-speaking countries or subnational entities out there, it seems to me that the number cited in this article is underestimated. David.Monniaux 06:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

We should split North and South Korea. Majority of the Internet users are from South, but the population is combined in the table; South alone is less than 50M. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dean2026 (talk • contribs) 19:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Duplicate articles?

It seems that this article and Languages on the Internet may be duplicates. They should probably be merged, preferably Languages on the Internet into this article (Global internet usage). Also, shouldn't internet be capitalized? It is the network as a whole afterall. - Rudykog 13:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Merge OK

I think Languages on the Internet article should stay where it is. It was due to that reason I got here. This article had what I was searching for so I think the title is pretty descriptive. But I have no ojections if it is merged with the other article Global internet usage. That second article title is a bit misleading since I think it should be cover more than just what languages spoken. More statistics over how many people at all in different countries uses Internet. Browsers and other system statistics.

Average number of users on a single day

I suppose that with "Total number of Internet users" one means the total number of people that use internet with a given frequency, or that have used it at least once (which one, by the way?). Does anybody know if there are sources on the average number of people who connect to internet on a single day? And does "Total number of Internet users" as used in this article mean the same as "Internet users" in alexa.com?

Languages table

I think it should be deleted or fully rewritten, because it doesn't make any sense or contradicts other wikipedia pages. e.g.

1) this table says that there are 874 Chinese speakers, wikipedia page on Chinese says that Mandarin Chinese has at least 850 speakers[3].

2) languages don't have GDP and even if it shows GDP of countries, China doesn't have GDP per capita of $7,200. DVoit 14:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Web or Internet?

Is this article about web pages or total internet usage? In other words, does it include figures for what languages are used in e-mail mesages, IRC chat, instant messaging conversations etc, or is it just about web pages published and web pages accessed? I think it is the latter, and so should be renamed appropriately, asap. --Nigelj (talk) 19:42, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Websites or users?

I wonder whether the 'estimated online population' adequately reflects the proportions of languages actually found on the internet. I would surmise that, although China has a substantial online population, there are far fewer websites written in Chinese than in German. Does anybody know of statistical data which could corroborate or refute this?--84.190.54.122 (talk) 18:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Dutch

The total population of Dutch speakers is way to low and I think the amount of Dutch users on the internet is also to low. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.144.100.44 (talk) 11:45, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

23 m speakers of Dutch. see: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlands

You are right, if you look at this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users you see that there are almost 14 million internet users in the Netherlands and 7 million in Belgium, if we take 60% of the users in Belgium(the amount is probably higher because Flanders has a higher internet rate than Wallonia) I get 4,8million+13,8million=18,6million(exc. Suriname, Nether. Antilles and Aruba). And it should be 27million(first+second language speakers) like the other languages have it too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MaxvJ (talk • contribs) 14:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Stats outdated

The stats of Internet users are outdated, if someone wants to take the time to update them : http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm/stats7.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by GRAND OUTCAST (talk • contribs) 07:19, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

As stated earlier, numbers from this sources are subject to question. It's rather obscure source which does not present well its methodology. I suggest to not use it neither update the article based on this.

Number of Pages

I would like to see some statistics on the number of web pages in different languages.

Also, I wonder how much these statistics account for non-native speakers of a language. German is a very popular second language in a number of countries, esp. in Central Europe and the major English-speaking countries. That would almost double its numbers.Bostoner (talk) 02:46, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Languages used on the Internet

This article used terms like 'languages used on the Internet' without specifying what that means. The 'Internet' is just a network. If it means the content published in various languages, it should state so. But most likely it refers to the number of users that speak various languages, and I rephrased some of the article's statements accordingly, as the sources seem to indicate this is what was measured. Kbrose (talk) 20:28, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The NiteCo Survey is here to stay!

hello,

I've witnessed that the Average Age of Internet Users survey conducted by NiteCo has been falsely removed after citing bogus and incoherent reasons.

for those of you who are unfamiliar with it , here is a summary it's a user particaption based survey that collects input from surfers who visit the link upon doing so , the average age is displayed followed by a question regarding their age.

some ppl have suggested that this survey is inaccurate by citing the following these irrelevant claims

1) the survey is not random

i guess that's the most absurd claim ever , obviously the fact that it's a public survey open to any surfer implicitly means that IT IS random by nature.

2) the survey is self selected

well that's true , but the point is that this totally irrelevant as there is no evidence that self selection is harmful in the sense that it may corrupt the results.

for instance , there is no data that may support the hypothesis that older ppl or younger may have a tendency to report their age more often or less than the other age group.

in a nutshell , self selection does not neccessarily lead to a selection bias at least not in this case. in other words the burden of proof lies on the critics ! Cowmadness (talk)

I'm afraid you are wrong on every count here. I refer to this reversion of yours. First, you need to look at things like Sampling (statistics) to see that there is far more to it than you seem to realise. Then look at the survey page in question[4] to see that it is just a webpage buried on a single, non-notable website that is only going to be seen by people visiting that site, or whatever links exist to it (like this one). Next, look at the heading, and build up you give it: 'Average age of Internet users' and 'the average Internet user is 28.3037 years old', then check Internet and WWW to see that this is a web site, not representative of the whole web, let alone the whole internet, and that there is a difference. Finally, have a look at WP:BURDEN where it says, "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material". The second reference you give, apart from the one that proves the survey web-form exists, is to a digg page that no longer mentions the site or the survey. What we need is a third-party WP:RS reliable source that says that this survey is accepted by serious academics (or other people of similar standing) as being a recognised statistical survey that is widely regarded as representative. In the meantime, what you have there looks mostly like WP:LINKSPAM and should be removed in toto without further warning. --Nigelj (talk) 17:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Usage per capita

(Usage percentage : number of speakers) would make an illustrating extra statistic. (It's trivial to calculate, but including this in the table would make sorting possible.) --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Outdated statistics

The stats are out of date again. Can some update them? http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

Ouyuecheng (talk) 09:44, 18 February 2010 (UTC)