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heavily censored and was therefore excluded as it would possibly confound the research results[1]. The three languages selected at the end of this process were:
- English: The de facto language in the UK, Australia, USA, UAE and Malaysia and the unifying language for countries such as Bangladesh, Botswana, India, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Philippines and Tanzania.
- Spanish: The official language of Spain, as well as the de facto or de jure language of a large number of countries in Latin America, among them: Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela. In addition, Spanish is the predominant language in Equatorial Guinea, Africa.
- Arabic: The official language of a large number of countries across the Middle East and North Africa, among them: Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Tunisia. Modern Standard Arabic is based on Classical Arabic and is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications and spoken by the Arabic media.
These languages offer a range of numbers of total articles and average edits per article for Wikipedia, as shown in Table 3.1 below:
| Language | Ranking for total number of Wikipedia articles | Total number of articles | Average number of edits per article (2.s.f) |
| English | 1st | 4,003,764 | 136 |
| Spanish | 7th | 904,461 | 68 |
| Arabic | 25th | 186,414 | 58 |
Table 3.1 Characteristics of Wikipedia articles in each of the three study languages.[2]
3.1.2 Selection of Comparison Encyclopaedias in Each of the Languages
The criteria for the selection of the comparison encyclopaedia in each of the three languages were as follows:
Essential Criteria:
- The encyclopaedia should be available online.
- The encyclopaedia should be a popular choice among the native speakers of that language.
- The encyclopaedia should cover a broad range of articles within each specific discipline.
- ↑ Wikipedia (2010) Task force/China, [Online], Available at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/China_Task_Force [Accessed 01/07/11].
- ↑ Wikipedia (2012) Lists of Wikipedias, [Online], Available at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias [Accessed 12/07/12].
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