Hi,

It is well-known that the size of a Wikipedia in a given language is not
proportional to the number of people who speak that language. By "size" I
mean the article count and the active editor count.

This begs the question: Is it proportional to anything else?

I can think of a bunch of possible things (to most items you can add "...
in the countries where this language is spoken"):

* Penetration of Internet access
* Quality of education
* Number of people who know other major languages, such as English, French,
Russian, Spanish, etc.
* Number of people who *don't* know other major languages
* Gross domestic product
* Human Development Index
* The level of usage of this language in the education system (in some
countries schools function in foreign languages)
* Amount of published literature in that language
* Level of censorship and press freedom
* [[Language planning]] policies (think Catalonia, Ukraine, Quebec, Israel)

It is quite possible that the size of a Wikipedia is proportional not to
one of these things, but to a combination of them. It is also possible that
it is not proportional to any of the above, or to anything at all.

Did anybody ever try to research this?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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