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Anyone can put Wikipedia in the palm of their hands, even you. All you just gotta do is edit an article.

Wikipedians are people who write and edit the pages for Wikipedia, unlike readers who simply read the articles. Anyone can be a Wikipedian—including you. Just click the edit link at the top of any page, or at the beginning of each section. Visit the editing tutorial to learn more. You can browse or search the full user list, or request a random Wikipedian's user page.


Number of editors

Gender
84 / 100
The 2013 study The Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited measured gender bias in survey completion and estimated that as of 2008, 84% of English Wikipedia editors were male. In the worldwide Wikipedia Editor Survey 2011 of all the Wikipedias, 91% of respondents were male.
Nationality
The greatest number, or plurality, of editors as of 2011: 20% reside in the United States, followed by Germany (12%) and Russia (7%). The only country not in Europe or North America in the top 10 is India (3%).
Language
76 / 100
49 / 100
Most users primarily edit (76%) and read (49%) the English Wikipedia, followed by the German Wikipedia at 20% and 12%, and the Spanish Wikipedia at 12% and 6% respectively. More than half (51%) of editors contribute in two or more languages.
Age distribution
13 / 100
13% of editors are under 17.
14 / 100
14% are in the group 18–21.
26 / 100
26% are 22–29.
19 / 100
19% are 30–39.
28 / 100
28% editors are aged 40+.
59 / 100
59% of the editors are aged 17 to 40.
Editing activities
66 / 100
66% of editors said that their primary activity is to edit existing articles.
42 / 100
42% said it was researching articles.
28 / 100
28% said it was creating new articles.
23 / 100
23% said that they do mostly patrolling work.
22 / 100
22% participate primarily in discussions.
17 / 100
17% mainly upload media.
Why contribute?
71 / 100
71% of the editors contribute because they like the idea of volunteering to share knowledge.
69 / 100
69% believe that information should be freely available.
63 / 100
63% pointed out that contributing is fun.
7 / 100
Only 7% edit Wikipedia for professional reasons.

The number of named accounts is currently 48,270,044.[1] Only a minority of account holders are regular contributors, and only a minority of those users interact in discussions about the community. An unknown but relatively large number of unregistered Wikipedians also contribute to the site.

User status

Based on user rights, there are the following user groups[2]: [Purge]

  • Administrators: 852
  • Account creators: 8
  • Autopatrollers: 4,821
  • Bots: 296
  • Bureaucrats: 15
  • Checkusers: 55
  • Confirmed users: 552
  • Edit filter managers: 143
  • File movers: 388
  • Founders: 1
  • Importers: 2
  • IP block exemptions: 811
  • Oversighters: 0
  • Researchers: 0
  • Reviewers: 8,018
  • Rollbackers: 6,852
  • Stewards: 0
  • Transwiki importers: 0

Editing patterns

The highest number of unique users making at least one edit during any given month was in March 2007.[3] Since then, the number of active users declined and has now largely plateaued. For example, in December 2010, 34,048 users made more than five edits during the month and 3,478 made more than 100 edits during the month; in December 2011, 33,948 users made more than five edits during the month and 3,489 made more than 100 edits during the month.[4]

There is a definite seasonal pattern to editor activity, with more editors active during the North American school year than during its summer break.

About 250,000 new accounts are created every month. About 300,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times. 121,930 have performed an edit within the last 30 days.[5]

The Wikipedians with the 5,000 highest edit counts are listed here.

Demographics

Based on a survey of over 58,000 self-selected Wikipedians by a group at UNU-Merit published in March 2010, contributors can be split into four approximately equal groups: those under 18, those between 18 and 22, those from 22 to 30 and the remainder between 30 and 85.[6] About 23% of contributors have completed degree-level education, 26% are undergraduates and 45% have secondary education or less. 87% are men and 13% women. The survey included users of 22 language editions in 231 countries.[6]

Various information about individual Wikipedians is available on the user pages of Wikipedians who choose to create them.

Personality

Researchers around the world have begun to identify key personality traits in Wikipedians. According to a study published in 2008, Wikipedia members are more likely than non-members to locate their 'real me' online—that is, to feel more comfortable expressing their "real" selves online than off.[7] This corresponds with more general findings that Internet communities tend to attract users who are introverted offline but more able to open up and feel empowered on the Web.[8][9] A gender difference was found in terms of extroversion: whereas female Wikipedia members were on average more introverted than female non-members, male members were just as extroverted as males in the control group. Wikipedians have also been found to be less agreeable, and less open, as defined by psychology’s Big Five personality traits.[7]

Motivations for contributing

Main article: Motivations of Wikipedia contributors

A 2010 study found that although members may initially contribute to the site for pleasure, they are motivated primarily by an internal drive to feel efficacious and self-confident. Aside from potentially fueling a first-time contribution, enjoyment was found to have no significant impact on knowledge-sharing behavior in Wikipedia. It was found that Wikipedians are not primarily motivated by recognition or reputation.[10]

Nomenclature

It has been suggested that Wikipedist would be a more appropriate name, as an encyclopedist is someone who contributes to an encyclopedia. "Wikipedian", though, suggests being part of a group, community or demonym. So in this sense, Wikipedians are people who form The Wikipedia Community. The term "Wikimedian" is also widely used to include contributors to all the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Contribution styles

See also: Wikipediholic and Conflicting philosophies

Some Wikipedians welcome newcomers; some Wikipedians award those who they feel deserve awards. Some upload images or help others do so; some work on history articles; some clean up grammar; and still others work on reverting vandalism. Many take on all of these tasks. Whatever one decides to do, every Wikipedian is a valuable member of the community.

Wikipedians have different characteristics on many aspects, of which boldness is one: On one hand there are editors who voluntarily follow the one-revert rule, who'd rather discuss than engage in edit wars. On the other, there are bold editors, who are doers rather than discussers. In addition, there are Wikipedians who contribute mainly by writing and editing the contents of Wikipedia and there are those who contribute to Wikipedia's administration or provide access to it for every single person on the planet. A multitude of views and other contribution characteristics are represented well by common Wikipedia-related userboxes: Wikipedia:Userboxes/Wikipedia.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wikipedians.
Meta-Wiki
Categorisation
Other

References

  1. ^ This number is dynamicaly updated with the magic word NUMBEROFUSERS
  2. ^ These numbers are dynamicaly updated with the magic word NUMBERINGROUP:groupname
  3. ^ Ragesoss, Editing frequency statistics show decline in participation. Wikipedia:Signpost, January 3 2009
  4. ^ Edit activity levels of registered users and bots per group of namespaces
  5. ^ This number is dynamicaly updated with the magic word NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS
  6. ^ a b Collaborative Creativity Group, retrieved 2011-03-22
  7. ^ a b Amichai-Hamburger, Y. et al. "Personality Characteristics of Wikipedia Members", CyberPsychology & Behavior, Vol. 11, No. 6 (2008).
  8. ^ Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Wainapel G., Fox S. “On the Internet no one knows I’m an introvert: extroversion, neuroticism and Internet interaction.” CyberPsychology & Behavior (2002).
  9. ^ Amichai-Hamburger, Y., McKenna, K., Tal, S. “E-empowerment: Empowerment by the Internet.” Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 24 (2008).
  10. ^ Yang, H. and Lai, C. “Motivations of Wikipedia content contributors.” Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 26 (2010).
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