Happily, the survey was translated into 11 languages and you can see the
breakdown of how many respondents answered per language edition, here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Knowledge_Gaps_Index/Measurement/Readers_Survey_2025#Survey_Administration_2
tl;dr, the survey design cleverly balances the sampling rate and date
range in some kind of rough inverse to the traffic on each wiki, so
response rates are comparable across languages.
There are some thoughtful questions in this thread, it would be great to
see constructive engagement around how to broaden the audience. Please
consider that a survey would need to be developed from scratch once you
expand to other projects beyond Wikipedia, so it would take some time
and will probably require ground work to find the correct assumptions to
test.
My armchair 2¢.
-[[mw:User:Adamw]]
On 5/20/26 9:58 AM, Rafael Conde Melguizo via Wiki-research-l wrote:
Good morning:
I don´t know why people read Wikipedia, pero creo que sé por qué la gente lee
Wikipedia en español.
As someone said: Wikipedia is more than just the English Wikipedia. A survey
like this is only valid if it includes more languages.
Rgrds
-----Mensaje original-----
De: Gerard Meijssen via Wiki-research-l <[email protected]>
Enviado el: martes, 19 de mayo de 2026 20:51
Para: [email protected]
CC: Isaac Johnson <[email protected]>; [email protected]; Debra Kumar
<[email protected]>; Gerard Meijssen <[email protected]>
Asunto: [Wiki-research-l] Re: Why people read Wikipedia - the question returns
PRECAUCIÓN: Este mensaje proviene de un remitente EXTERNO a UDIT. No haga clic
en enlaces ni abra archivos adjuntos a menos que reconozca al remitente y sepa
que el contenido es seguro.
Hoi,
My last blog was about my disappointment about that last survey [1].
I do understand the value of repeated surveys; it provides understanding of the
trends related to the subject that is researched. However, given that Wikimedia
is more than just Wikipedia and Wikipedia is more than just the English
Wikipedia and its biases the point to expanding a potential survey to include
all of Wikimedia and seeking out all the avenues for more public to and
contributors for what we aim to achieve; access to the sum of all knowledge.
When we want to know what it is a public seeks and what triggers a visit,
limiting the scope is exactly what holds us back.
Thanks,
GerardM
[1]
https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2026/04/what-is-utility-of-wikimedia-projects.html
On Mon, 18 May 2026 at 15:25, Debra Kumar via Wiki-research-l <
[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Lodewijk! The Global Readers Survey has been the yearly followup to
the Why We Read Wikipedia survey - in that it's been asking the
motivation question year over year, though with some tweaks to the
question over time which limits the ability to compare over time
(changing from single-select to multi-select). The 2025 Global Reader
Survey was just published to Meta recently, and you can find it here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Knowledge_Gaps_Index/Measurem
ent/Readers_Survey_2025
Best,
Debra
On Fri, May 15, 2026 at 10:46 AM Isaac Johnson <[email protected]>
wrote:
cc'ing Debra, who I think can help answer your question Lodewijk!
For context for other folks, the referenced surveys were the ones
described here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Read
er_Behaviour
.
Best,
Isaac
On Thu, May 14, 2026 at 12:50 PM effe iets anders via
Wiki-research-l < [email protected]> wrote:
Hi all,
I was wondering if anyone has tried to re-run the 'why people read
wikipedia' survey (ideally with the same design as the MC survey
etc) after the original wave, or something that looks similar
enough that it could
be
used to validate how relevant the numbers are over time?
Warmly,
Lodewijk
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--
Isaac Johnson <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Isaac_(WMF)>
(he/him)
-- Senior Research Scientist -- Wikimedia Foundation
--
*Debra Kumar* (she/her)
Manager, User Experience Research
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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