Open thread: Why is the Norwegian Wikipedia so much larger than the one in Danish?
Monday, September 01, 2008
Something I've wondered about for a while, and perhaps I'll just ask the question and see if someone has the answer.
Take a look at the following for the three countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and their official languages compared to their Wikipedia sizes:
| Sweden/Swedish | Norway/Norwegian | Denmark/Danish | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Population | 9.2 million | 4.8 million | 5.5 million |
| HDI (Human Development Index) | 0.956 | 0.968 | 0.943 |
| Total GDP | $455 billion | $376 billion | $311 billion |
| Wikipedia stats | |||
| # of articles | 290,605 | 179,002 (+39,918 Nynorsk) | 93,246 |
| # of edits | 7.3 million | 4.4 million (+ over 700,000 Nynorsk) | 2.5 million |
Swedish and Norwegian make sense: Sweden has more people, ergo a larger Wikipedia. Danish though is less than half the size of Swedish, and barely over half the size of Norwegian (less than half including Nynorsk).
I'm sure the answer's somewhere within their respective Wikipedias but I suspect it might be faster to just ask this way.
2 comments:
Well, English is spoken as a second language throughout the whole Scandinavian reason, but perhaps particularly so in Denmark, making the creation and maintenance of a Danish Wikipedia that much closer to redundant.
That and I suppose the Danes can just read the Norwegian or Swedish wikias when they need something Scandinavia-centric.
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