Wikipedia:Wikipedians: Difference between revisions

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	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.

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This is an information page.

It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts

This page in a nutshell: Anyone can edit Wikipedia and become a Wikipedian!
There are currently 47,323,911 Wikipedia accounts, of which 122,676 have made at least one edit during the last month.

Human administration
Wikimedia Board of Trustees
Wikipedians
Wikimedia staff
Stewards
Arbitration Committee
Bureaucrats
Administrators

Wikipedians are volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia by editing its pages, unlike readers who simply read the articles. Anyone—including you—can become a Wikipedian by boldly making changes when they find something that can be added or improved. To learn more about how to do this, you can check out the basic editing tutorial or the more detailed manual.

Wikipedians do a wide variety of tasks, from fixing typos and removing vandalism to resolving disputes and perfecting content, but are united in a desire to make human knowledge available to every person on the planet.

Number of editors

English Wikipedia editors with >100 edits per month^[1]

The English Wikipedia currently has 47,323,911^[2] users who have registered a username. Only a minority of users contribute regularly (122,676^[3] have edited in the last 30 days), and only a minority of those contributors participate in community discussions. In 2023, 812,635 registered editors made at least one edit;^[4] about half of these were new accounts making their first (and often only) edit.^[5] There are about 10,000 higher-volume experienced editors active during a typical month.^[6] In a given month, more than 5,000 editors make at least 100 edits.^[7]

An unknown but relatively large number of unregistered Wikipedians also contribute to the site. As of 2012, most logged-in editors had edited as unregistered Wikipedians before registering their accounts.^[8]

As of February 2015, when about 12,000 editors were eligible to vote in the Wikimedia Stewards Elections, their eligibility was based on their English Wikipedia edit count. It applied to those who had an edit count of at least 600 overall and 50 since August 2014. This was about one-quarter of the number of Wikipedians who had 600 edits overall. (See the Talk page for details.)

User permissions

Some accounts have special permissions, including:^[9]

13 account creators
861 administrators
4,778 autopatrollers
297 bots
17 bureaucrats
54 checkusers
548 confirmed users
141 edit filter managers
117 event coordinators
70,115 extended confirmed users
393 file movers
1 founder^[10]
2 importers
1,001 IP block exempt users
53 mass message senders
811 new page reviewers (new page patrollers)
44 oversighters
407 page movers
7,967 pending changes reviewers
3 researchers
6,825 rollbackers
189 template editors
2 copyright violation bot

Some user groups (such as stewards) act globally, and thus they do not get local flags and local rights.

Registered editors by edit count (all registered accounts)
If you have made...	you are about 1 in	then you rank in the...	or the...	That's more than...
1 edit	3	top 30% of all users	top 14,100,000 of all users	70% of all users
2 edits	5	top 20% of all users	top 9,400,000 of all users	80% of all users
5 edits	10	top 10% of all users	top 4,700,000 of all users	90% of all users
10 edits	20	top 5% of all users (the autoconfirmed)	top 2,360,000 of all users	95% of all users
100 edits	100	top 1% of all users	top 473,000 of all users	99% of all users
500 edits	400	top 0.25% of all users (the extended confirmed)	top 118,000 of all users	99.75% of all users
1,000 edits	1,000	top 0.1% of all users	top 47,000 of all users	99.9% of all users
10,000 edits	4,000	top 0.025% of all users	top 11,800 of all users	99.975% of all users
25,000 edits	10,000	top 0.01% of all users	top 4,700 of all users	99.99% of all users
50,000 edits	20,000	top 0.005% of all users	top 2,300 of all users	99.995% of all users
100,000 edits	50,000	top 0.002% of all users	top 900 of all users	99.998% of all users
250,000 edits	200,000	top 0.0005% of all users	top 200 of all users	99.9995% of all users
500,000 edits	1,000,000	top 0.0001% of all users	top 50 of all users	99.9999% of all users
1,000,000 edits	3,300,000	top 0.000031% of contributors	top 13 of all contributors	99.99997% of all contributors
For the purposes of this table, a "user" is a person who has a registered account on the English Wikipedia.

Registered editors by edit count (only successful contributors)
If you have made...	you are about 1 in	then you rank in the...	or the...	That's more than...
1 edit	1	–	one of 14,100,000 contributors	–
2 edits	1-2	top 65% of contributors	top 9,200,000 of all contributors	35% of all contributors
5 edits	3	top 30% of contributors	top 4,200,000 of all contributors	70% of all contributors
10 edits	5	top 20% of contributors (the autoconfirmed)	top 2,839,000 of all contributors	80% of all contributors
100 edits	40	top 2.5% of contributors	top 354,000 of all contributors	97.5% of all contributors
500 edits	133	top 0.75% of contributors (the extended confirmed)	top 106,000 of all contributors	99.25% of all contributors
1,000 edits	200	top 0.5% of contributors	top 70,000 of all contributors	99.5% of all contributors
10,000 edits	1,000	top 0.1% of contributors	top 14,100 of all contributors	99.9% of all contributors
25,000 edits	3,333	top 0.03% of contributors	top 4,200 of all contributors	99.97% of all contributors
50,000 edits	6,666	top 0.015% of contributors	top 2,100 of all contributors	99.985% of all contributors
100,000 edits	14,000	top 0.007% of contributors	top 900 of all contributors	99.993% of all contributors
250,000 edits	66,666	top 0.0015% of contributors	top 200 of all contributors	99.9985% of all contributors
500,000 edits	250,000	top 0.0004% of contributors	top 50 of all contributors	99.9996% of all contributors
For the purposes of this table, a "contributor" is an account with at least one published edit on the English Wikipedia.

Demographics

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.

UNU-Merit (United Nations University-Merit) completed the 2010 meta:Research:UNU-MERIT Wikipedia survey of Wikipedia users, including both contributors (registered and unregistered) and readers.^[11] 176,192 people chose to participate, approximately 58,000 of whom were contributors to Wikipedia. Many of the findings were reported as an aggregate and were not separated by user type. Only the statistics relevant to Wikipedians are presented. In 2011, the WMF (Wikimedia Foundation) presented a questionnaire to logged-in Wikipedia editors (does not include unregistered Wikipedians) to gain a better understanding of the demographics, perceptions and motivations of Wikipedians.^[12] Over 5,000 people responded to the survey. Here are the results of both surveys:

Editors by age^[12]
Age group	WMF (%)
12–17	13 percent
18–21	14 percent
22–29	26 percent
30–39	19 percent
40+	28 percent

UNU-Merit reported the average age of contributors at 26.14 years, but did not provide a greater breakdown of age by user type.^[11]

Editors by education completed
Education level completed	WMF (%)	UNU-Merit (%)
Primary	9	11
Secondary	30	34
Undergraduate	35	26
Masters	18	18
PhD	8	4
Other	NR	6

WMF reported 43% of respondents are currently enrolled in school or post-secondary education.^[12]

According to the WMF findings, the top three countries where Wikipedia contributors reside are the United States (20%), Germany (12%), and Russia (7%). The primary language of Wikipedia contributors is English (52%) followed by German (18%) with Russian and Spanish coming in third at 10% each. The UNU-Merit study did not breakdown language and country of residence in terms of type of participation with Wikipedia.

According to UNU-Merit, 87 percent of Wikipedians are men and 13 percent are women.^[11]

According to the 2011 WMF survey, although the percentage of female editors continues to increase, ninety percent of Wikipedians are male, nine percent female, and one percent transgender/transsexual.^[12]

Experienced female editors can be very successful—they are more likely to become administrators than men—but as new editors, their good-faith contributions are more likely to be reverted than good-faith contributions by a man.^[13]

More information regarding the gender gap can be found at Gender gap.

In an October 2023 representative survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, YouGov found that 7% had ever edited Wikipedia, that 20% had ever considered doing so who had not, that 55% had never done so and had never considered doing so, and that 17% had never used Wikipedia.^[14]


October 2023 YouGov survey on U.S. editors
Demographic	% of demographic respondents	Demographic sample size
Gender
Male	9%	416
Female	5%	582
Age
18–29 years	14%	122
30–44 years	12%	206
45–64 years	3%	394
65 years or older	1%	276
Race
White	6%	611
Black	5%	119
Hispanic	13%	155
Other	10%	113
Party ID
Democratic	12%	362
Independent	5%	371
Republican	4%	265
2020 vote
Biden	11%	367
Trump	4%	338
Family income
Less than $50,000	6%	423
$50,000 to $100,000	8%	277
$100,000 or more	11%	209
Region
Northeast	6%	164
Midwestern	6%	217
Southern	5%	393
Western	13%	224

Personality

Researchers 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.^[15] 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.^[16]^[17] 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.

Motivations for contributing

In November 2007, the most commonly indicated motives were "fun", "ideology", and "values", whereas the least frequently indicated motives were "career", "social", and "protective" (as in "reducing guilt over personal privilege").^[18]

Nomenclature

One could argue 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 (a resident of a locality). 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 supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Contribution styles

Some Wikipedians welcome newcomers; some Wikipedians award those whom 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 these tasks; some, of course, take on none. Whatever one decides to do, every Wikipedian is a valuable member of the community.

Wikipedians who contribute mainly by writing and editing the contents of Wikipedia, without interacting much on Talk or administrative pages, are sometimes called exopedians, whereas those who spend significant time on such community interactions are contrasted as metapedians. A multitude of views and other contribution characteristics are represented well by common Wikipedia-related userboxes: Wikipedia:Userboxes/Wikipedia.

References

^ "Wikipedia Statistics (English)". stats.wikimedia.org.
^ This number is dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBEROFUSERS
^ This number is dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS
^ https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/80211
^ https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/80159
^ https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/78064. This particular query counts the number of registered editors who averaged at least one edit per day during the last month, with a minimum total of 500 edits and a minimum account age of one year.
^ Editors graph at stats.wikimedia.org
^ Pande, Mani (2012-05-10). "59 percent of logged-in Wikipedians started as anonymous editors". Diff. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
^ These numbers are dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBERINGROUP:groupname
^ Although there are two co-founders, Jimbo Wales is the only member of this group, as he is the only one of the three who still contributes to Wikipedia.
^ ^a ^b ^c Glott, Ruediger; Schmidt, Phillipp; Ghosh, Rishab (March 2010). "Wikipedia Survey—Overview of Results" (PDF). Wikipedia Study. UNU-MERIT. Archived from the original on 28 July 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "Wikipedia Editor Study: Results From the Editor Survey, April 2011" (PDF). Wikimedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
^ Lam, S. K.; Uduwage, A.; Dong, Z.; Sen, S.; Musicant, D. R.; Terveen, L.; Riedl, J. (October 2011). "WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance". WikiSym. ACM. pp. 1–10. doi:10.1145/2038558.2038560. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011.
^ "YouGov Survey: Wikipedia" (PDF). YouGov. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
^ Amichai-Hamburger, Y.; Lamdan, Naama; Madiel, Rinat; Hayat, Tsahi (November 2008). "Personality Characteristics of Wikipedia Members". CyberPsychology & Behavior. 11 (6): 679–81. doi:10.1089/cpb.2007.0225. PMID 18954273.
^ Amichai-Hamburger, Y.; Wainapel, G.; Fox, S. (May 2002). "On the Internet no one knows I'm an introvert: extroversion, neuroticism and Internet interaction". CyberPsychology & Behavior. 5 (2): 125–128. doi:10.1089/109493102753770507. PMID 12025878.
^ Amichai-Hamburger, Y.; McKenna, K.; Tal, S. (September 2008). "E-empowerment: Empowerment by the Internet". Computers in Human Behavior. 24 (5): 1776–1789. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.02.002.
^ Nov, Oded (November 2007). "What Motivates Wikipedians?" (PDF). Communications of the ACM. 50 (11): 60–64. doi:10.1145/1297797.1297798. S2CID 16517355. Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 April 2012.

External links

[stats.wikimedia.org_editor_metric_graph-1] "Wikipedia Statistics (English)". stats.wikimedia.org.

[2] This number is dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBEROFUSERS

[3] This number is dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS

[4] ttps://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/80211

[5] ttps://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/80159

[6] ttps://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/78064. This particular query counts the number of registered editors who averaged at least one edit per day during the last month, with a minimum total of 500 edits and a minimum account age of one year.

[7] Editors graph at stats.wikimedia.org

[8] Pande, Mani (2012-05-10). "59 percent of logged-in Wikipedians started as anonymous editors". Diff. Retrieved 2022-09-01.

[9] These numbers are dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBERINGROUP:groupname

[10] Although there are two co-founders, Jimbo Wales is the only member of this group, as he is the only one of the three who still contributes to Wikipedia.

[UNU-M-11] Glott, Ruediger; Schmidt, Phillipp; Ghosh, Rishab (March 2010). "Wikipedia Survey—Overview of Results" (PDF). Wikipedia Study. UNU-MERIT. Archived from the original on 28 July 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)

[2011_WMF_Survey-12] "Wikipedia Editor Study: Results From the Editor Survey, April 2011" (PDF). Wikimedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 9 January 2021.

[13] Lam, S. K.; Uduwage, A.; Dong, Z.; Sen, S.; Musicant, D. R.; Terveen, L.; Riedl, J. (October 2011). "WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance". WikiSym. ACM. pp. 1–10. doi:10.1145/2038558.2038560. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011.

[14] "YouGov Survey: Wikipedia" (PDF). YouGov. Retrieved January 26, 2024.

[Amichai2008a-15] Amichai-Hamburger, Y.; Lamdan, Naama; Madiel, Rinat; Hayat, Tsahi (November 2008). "Personality Characteristics of Wikipedia Members". CyberPsychology & Behavior. 11 (6): 679–81. doi:10.1089/cpb.2007.0225. PMID 18954273.

[16] Amichai-Hamburger, Y.; Wainapel, G.; Fox, S. (May 2002). "On the Internet no one knows I'm an introvert: extroversion, neuroticism and Internet interaction". CyberPsychology & Behavior. 5 (2): 125–128. doi:10.1089/109493102753770507. PMID 12025878.

[17] Amichai-Hamburger, Y.; McKenna, K.; Tal, S. (September 2008). "E-empowerment: Empowerment by the Internet". Computers in Human Behavior. 24 (5): 1776–1789. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.02.002.

[Nov-18] Nov, Oded (November 2007). "What Motivates Wikipedians?" (PDF). Communications of the ACM. 50 (11): 60–64. doi:10.1145/1297797.1297798. S2CID 16517355. Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 April 2012.

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