Cross-language Wikipedia Editing of Okinawa, Japan

TL;DR

This paper examines bilingual Wikipedia editors of Okinawa, Japan, revealing their editing behaviors in primary and non-primary languages and proposing design changes to foster broader multilingual contributions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of bilingual editing patterns on Wikipedia and suggests design interventions to enhance cross-language contributions.

Findings

Primary language editors are highly active and produce high-quality edits.

Non-primary language edits are smaller and more limited in scope.

Design changes can motivate wider and more diverse cross-language editing.

Abstract

This article analyzes users who edit Wikipedia articles about Okinawa, Japan, in English and Japanese. It finds these users are among the most active and dedicated users in their primary languages, where they make many large, high-quality edits. However, when these users edit in their non-primary languages, they tend to make edits of a different type that are overall smaller in size and more often restricted to the narrow set of articles that exist in both languages. Design changes to motivate wider contributions from users in their non-primary languages and to encourage multilingual users to transfer more information across language divides are presented.