115 Country Report: Wikipedia

Wikipedia has been a widely used information platform since its inception in 2001. In the past two decades it has spread to so many countries around the globe, even spawning Wikipedias in 325 different languages. With Mexico being just below the United States, where Wikipedia was founded, it is no surprise that the Spanish-speaking country interacts heavily with both the English and Spanish versions of the website. In fact, according to Wikipedia founder James Wales, it is currently the top ten most frequented sites in Mexico (Global Newsstream). Despite this widespread use, many users in Mexico do not view Wikipedia as a fully reliable source, especially in regards to the Spanish version. According to a study comparing English, Spanish, and German Wikipedia pages done by the Colegio Libre de Eméritos, “the Spanish version of Wikipedia was the least reliable of the three. It found it to be more cumbersome and imprecise than the German and English Wikipedias, stated that it often lacked reliable sources, including much unreferenced data, and found it to be too dependent on online references” (Spanish Wikipedia). However credible it may be, Wikipedia sees about 203 million page views coming from Mexico, specifically about 161 million page views on Spanish Wiki and 36 million on English Wikipedia.

If one were to look up Mexico itself on the English Wikipedia, one could find information about etymology, history, geography, government and politics, economy, demographics, and culture. The same information is found on the Spanish Wikipedia, but with additional headings created for Mexico’s infrastructure, education, and sports, showcasing what biases may be present among the two Wikipedia platforms and what information they choose to prioritize. In terms of adding and editing the information presented, Mexicans make up about 13% of all editors of the Spanish Wikipedia site, about 1,000 people total, and there are 360 active editors of the English Wikipedia, though there is always room to grow. The Wikipedia page on Mexico itself has what is called “extended confirmed protection,” which only allows edits by editors with the extended confirmed user access level, something that is granted automatically to registered users with at least 30 days’ tenure and 500 edits. As Mexico gains more users and more editors of Wikipedia, the number of extended confirmed access level users will hopefully grow, and the information about Mexico on this free online encyclopedia will continue to increase and improve.

Sources:

• https://www.proquest.com/globalnews/docview/757732977/582F1D3031914748PQ/3?accountid=9783 – cited as Global Newsstream in report
• https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/es.wikipedia.org
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico
• https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Wikipedia – cited as Spanish Wikipedia in report