Incubator escapee wiki:Wikipedians

Template:Short description Template:Pp-semi-indef Template:Pp-move-indef Template:Redirect-multi Template:Information page Template:Nutshell

File:10 sharing book cover background.jpg

Wikipedia is in the palm of your hand—all you need to do is edit an article.

Template:Human administration

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 editorsEdit

Template:Wikipedia editor graph The English Wikipedia currently has 81<ref>This number is dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBEROFUSERS</ref> users who have registered a username, but only about 30% of those have ever edited Wikipedia (about {{#expr: 81 * .30 / 1e6 round 0}} million). Only a minority of users contribute regularly (2<ref>This number is dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS</ref> 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;<ref>https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/80211</ref> about half of these were new accounts making their first (and often only) edit.<ref>https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/80159</ref> In a given month, more than 5,000 editors make at least 100 edits each.<ref>Editors graph at stats.wikimedia.org </ref>

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Update inline

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.)Template:Update inline

User permissionsEdit

Template:See also

Some accounts have special permissions, including:<ref>These numbers are dynamically updated with the magic word NUMBERINGROUP:groupname</ref> Template:Div col

0 account creators
1 administrators
0 autopatrollers
0 bots
1 bureaucrats
0 checkusers
0 confirmed users
0 edit filter managers
0 event coordinators
0 extended confirmed users
0 file movers
0 founder<ref>Although there are two co-founders, Jimbo Wales is the only member of this group, as he is the only one of the two who still contributes to Wikipedia.</ref>
0 importers
0 IP block exempt users
0 mass message senders
0 new page reviewers (new page patrollers)
0 oversighters
0 page movers
0 pending changes reviewers
0 researchers
0 rollbackers
0 template editors
0 copyright violation bots

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

Template:Registered editors by edit count

DemographicsEdit

Template:Update-section {{Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Demographics}}

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.<ref name="UNU-M">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="2011 WMF Survey">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Over 5,000 people responded to the survey. Here are the results of both surveys:

Editors by age<ref name="2011 WMF Survey"/>
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.<ref name=UNU-M/>

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.<ref name="2011 WMF Survey"/>

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.<ref name=UNU-M/>

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.<ref name="2011 WMF Survey"/>

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.<ref>Template:Cite conference</ref>

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>


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

PersonalityEdit

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 offline.<ref name=Amichai2008a>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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 contributingEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Template:Further

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").<ref name=Nov>Template:Cite journal</ref>

NomenclatureEdit

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 stylesEdit

Template:See also

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.

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

External linksEdit

Template:Sister project

Template:Wikipedia community