Frank San Miguel (“software geek, boat builder, musician and a veteran of a number of internet startups”, including what became mapquest.com) alerted me to this nifty little map he made, inspired by some maps on this site. The data for this map were culled from these Wikipedia contributor statistics.
“Compare the population of world countries to the Wikipedia contributors. In the hierarchy of users the vast majority of visitors to Wikipedia, 48 million of them, are readers; for the most part they don’t edit articles. Next are the regular contributors who contribute between 5 and 100 times per month. There are about 77,000 of those. Finally, there are the 10,000 anchor contributers (I’ve borrowed this phrase from retail marketing) who contribute more than 100 times per month.”
“So if Wikipedia readers are like China, then the regular contributors are like Macedonia and the anchor contributors are like Barbados. To extend this analogy to absurd extremes, Barbados and Macedonia do all of the work, have the highest GDP and provide humanitarian aid to China!”
Here’s Frank San Miguel’s business website. This is his blog. And here’s his post on the Wikipedia map.
An atom is made of neutrons, protons and electrons. The electrons mass is really low compared to neutrons and protons.
That’s the way nature is: a very big mass of readers and a verty little mass of contributors.
When I was studying at the university I took part in student associations. We used a name for the mass: the neutrons. That’s the way our society is.
There is also an interesting point, I think: to contribute is an exercise of democracy, so how much people exercise daily its democracy systems? Can Internet contribute to change our democracy habits?
Great blog, I also like maps a lot.
Comment by nestic — July 13, 2007 @ 10:14 am
[...] found this ‘map’ to be [...]
Pingback by dispatches from TJICistan » Blog Archive » worst map yet at strangemaps — July 13, 2007 @ 2:42 pm
I’m always having a look to my server logs and I’ve seen that most of Chinese visitors have no resolvable address. This means that many Chinese visitors are registered by the log analyzer as unknown visitors. To know they are Chinese I need to do a WHOIS request.
;-)
ciao
Lorenzo
Comment by ominiverdi — July 13, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
Cool Map!
Comment by officedoodles — July 13, 2007 @ 8:15 pm
No doubt most chinese users are understandably cautious about what they say. Language may be a barrier too. Macedonians speak an offshoot of Bulgarian, itself a a slavic (and formerly cyrillic scripted language. And there’s another subject for research: Pomaks, Torbeshes and Poturs: macedonian muslims
Comment by lord hutton — July 13, 2007 @ 10:34 pm
Suddenly it struk me; this is my words…This strange world cyberspace…
sofia
http://sofiawinterborn.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/sofiasuddenly-it-struk-me-this-is-my-words/
Comment by A Woman — July 14, 2007 @ 7:11 am
I guess in terms of Wikipedia, I’m a Macedonian. :P
Also, just wanted to mention that this is pretty much the only blog I check regularly! Keep up the good work, I love the maps. :)
Comment by Patteroast — July 14, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
Why do this on a “relative” scale? Why make the readers=China (which has a population of 1.2 billion)?
You should have picked a country that had approximately the same population as the number of Wikipedia users you’re trying to map. A country with roughly 48 million would have done nicely to show the “readers”.
Comment by Amy — July 14, 2007 @ 4:46 pm
do you believe in ghosts and that we can get lost after this life?
creepy,
sofia
http://sofiawinterborn.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/sofiacan-we-get-lost-after-this-life-on-our-way-to-heaven-after-we-have-died/
Comment by A Woman — July 14, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
So I’m from Barbadoes?
Comment by Lurker — July 15, 2007 @ 9:50 pm
You’re not from Barbados Lurker. The first clue was that you spelt it wrong.
Comment by Leroy — July 15, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
If you do the maths and work out the total number of edits from each ‘country’ or group of contributors, it turns upside-down. Because there are so many more ‘readers’, they do most of the editing:
If we assume that for the Anchor Contributors, >100 epm means on average of 200, then
10,000 * 200 = 2,000,000 edits
for Regular contributors, assuming > 5 epm averages to 10 then
77,000 * 10 = 770,000 edits
and for ‘Readers’, assuming < 5 epm averages out at 2, then:
48,000,000 * 2 = 96,000,000 edits
So (even being generous to everyone else) edits from ‘Readers’ far outweight edits from everyone else, put together.
Comment by dunc — July 16, 2007 @ 10:52 am
[...] Mapa de la Wikipedia Leo en Strange Maps un dato que me ha parecido curioso. Resulta que Frank SanMiguel (de Tech4D) se ha dedicado a hacer [...]
Pingback by El Mapa de la Wikipedia « Jesus León. — July 20, 2007 @ 10:19 am
having been to china, their governmental internet censorship policies prevented access to the edit pages in wikipedia.
Comment by andy — August 3, 2007 @ 6:09 pm
“having been to china, their governmental internet censorship policies prevented access to the edit pages in wikipedia.”
That is not quite accurate. The Chinese government from time to time prevents access to all of Wikipedia, not just the edit pages.
However, at the moment access is fine and I can edit from China.
Comment by Liuzhou Laowai — August 7, 2007 @ 3:11 am
Wikipedia reminds me of that old joke about the encyclopedias in the Soviet Union with the loose leaf pages.
Comment by ala — August 16, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
[...] 146 – Comparing Wikipedia to China, Macedonia and Barbados“So if Wikipedia readers are like China, then the regular contributors are like Macedonia and the anchor contributors are like Barbados. To extend this analogy to absurd extremes, Barbados and Macedonia do all of the work, … [...]
Pingback by Macedonia » Blog Archives » Happy Birthday, Macedonia! — September 26, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
[...] 146 – Comparing Wikipedia to China, Macedonia and Barbados“So if Wikipedia readers are like China, then the regular contributors are like Macedonia and the anchor contributors are like Barbados. To extend this analogy to absurd extremes, Barbados and Macedonia do all of the work, … [...]
Pingback by Macedonia » Blog Archives » Macedonia, Ohrid — October 10, 2007 @ 2:13 am
[...] 146 – Comparing Wikipedia to China, Macedonia and Barbados“So if Wikipedia readers are like China, then the regular contributors are like Macedonia and the anchor contributors are like Barbados. To extend this analogy to absurd extremes, Barbados and Macedonia do all of the work, … [...]
Pingback by Macedonia » Blog Archives » Macedonia Baptist Church Pastor Sentenced — October 15, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
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Thanks :)
Comment by fraumourb — February 16, 2009 @ 11:15 am
thank you
Comment by Tony — May 4, 2009 @ 2:52 am
thanks for this map..
good
luck
Comment by Solomon — May 11, 2009 @ 7:42 am
merci
Comment by aspicco . — May 17, 2009 @ 5:27 am
teşekkür ederim
Comment by yory — June 12, 2009 @ 9:38 pm
Vielen Dank
Comment by moon — July 3, 2009 @ 4:36 am