Wikipedia and Internet Use

The following map displays the total number of Wikipedia articles normalised by the number of internet users at the country level. The countries with the highest number of articles per 100,000 internet users are Nauru (4667), the Central African Republic (1253) and Myanmar (824). In fact most of the places that score highly by this measure, like the countries listed above, have extremely low levels of internet use per capita.

In contrast, countries with higher level of per-capita internet usage tend to have far lower rates of Wikipedia article per 100,000 internet users (e.g. the United Kingdom (70) and France (67)). While it is entirely possible that the high rates of articles per internet users in some countries is an indication of dedicated Wikipedia editors, it seems instead more likely that Myanmar, the Central African Republic and most other nations with low levels of internet penetration are being represented by editors from outside of their boundaries.