Internet19.07.2023

Biggest South African language Wikipedias and their editors

There is a large contingent of unpaid volunteers writing Wikipedia entries in South African languages.

Wikipedia is the only non-commercial and mostly volunteer-driven platform in the world’s top 10 most visited websites.

Launched in 2001, it quickly became the Internet’s go-to online encyclopedia that offers a wealth of information on the world’s geography, sciences, animals, well-known humans, and a wide range of other topics of interest.

While it’s often criticised for its susceptibility to false information, it is important to understand that the website relies heavily on the time and efforts of unpaid volunteer writers.

To help contribute to Wikipedia, users can simply click the “edit” button at the top of each article.

For contributions to persist through the scrutiny of the editing community, however, editors must provide a link to a reliable third-party source — such as a news article from a reputable outlet.

Southern Africa has an official member organisation for Wikipedia editors, founded in 2012.

Wikimedia ZA is the WMF-recognised Southern African chapter of Wikipedia volunteers.

Director Douglas Scott told MyBroadband that although Wikipedia was created and maintained by unpaid volunteer editors like himself, the servers are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF).

“WMF employ staff of around 600 people to write software, provide legal services, run the servers, and do many other community support activities for the unpaid volunteer editors,” Scott said.

“These range from advice to services connecting them up with resources developed by the WMF.”

Biggest South African languages on Wikipedia

While English is one of South Africa’s most spoken and used official languages, it is difficult to work out how many English articles are contributed by South African Wikipedia editors.

“Wikipedia does not keep a country-specific list of top editors,” Scott explained. “But people such as Dodger67, Underlying lk, Lefcentreright and Bruce1ee are certainly up there.”

“Other than English, Afrikaans is by far the largest South African language Wikipedia — both in terms of number of articles and size of their volunteer community,” Scott said.

“Afrikaans Wikipedia has entered a stage of rapid growth in the number of new Wikipedia articles created each day and a readership increase of 15% in the last year.”

Overall, Afrikaans is ranked 70th out of 322 global languages in which Wikipedia articles have been written.

Krugersdorp resident Deon Steyn has contributed over 10% of all Afrikaans entries on Wikipedia, Scott told MyBroadband.

The former Telkom employee recently described himself as a “grandfather” of Wikipedia in an interview with Afrikaans online publication Netwerk24.

In the past 14 years, he wrote over 12,565 Afrikaans articles and made 208,000 corrections under the user name “Oesjaar”. His Wikipedia handle directly translates to “harvest year”. It can also mean “vintage”.

Steyn started contributing to Wikipedia after noticing that there was little information on the website about optic fibre networks — his area of expertise.

An Afrikaans article about optic fibre technology largely written and edited by Deon Steyn.

After English and Afrikaans, Zulu has the highest number of articles — 10,579 — putting it in the 160th spot globally.

Scott said Wikimedia ZA had started noticing a gradual increase in activity in the Zulu and North Sotho [Sepedi] Wikipedias.

Another Wikimedia ZA board member — Coenraad Loubser — told MyBroadband that Zulu, Sepedi, and Xhosa were in many ways where the English Wikipedia was in 2002.

Why a volunteer system works best

Loubser told MyBroadband the fact that Wikipedia editors were unpaid played a critical role in Wikipedia’s success.

“Wikipedia does not allow anyone to be paid to edit it, to promote neutrality. The volunteer-driven model received a lot of criticism when it started, because most people believed that encyclopaedic articles need to be written by paid experts.

“It is now widely accepted that Wikipedia is more accurate than many printed books,” Loubser said.

“The reason is simple: Once a book is printed, it takes a reprint to update it, whereas Wikipedia is updated many times a day.”

Volunteer communities help keep misinformation and disinformation in check by using their own guidelines.

“The English Wikipedia, for example, is quite strict, and does not allow, for example, oral citations or videos as reliable sources, whereas African Languages have a lot of knowledge locked up in their oral history and would be much more significantly affected by such a policy.”

Scott said Wikimedia ZA encouraged potential editors to create an account on Wikipedia before editing, even though it was not necessary.

“If you are looking for a more detailed ‘how to edit’ then you can check this helpful page on our website, where you can see some videos on the topic,” Scott said.

The table below summarises the status of Wikipedia articles in South African languages and the biggest contributors for each language in 2022, as compiled by Wikimedia ZA member Ian Gilfillan.

Biggest Wikipedia entry contributors in South African languages — 2022
Language Number of articles | words Number of editors|admins Biggest contributors (user names) Articles contributed in 2022
Afrikaans 104,335 | 36.14 million 190 | 16 Oesjaar 2,156
Aliwal2012 1,828
Burgert Behr 622
Rooiratel 612
Anonymous user 501
Zulu 10,579 | 813,798 48 | 1 InternetArchiveBot 140
Anonymous user 20
TapticInfo 14
Tyulif 12
Fongcwele 11
Sepedi (Northern Sotho) 8,524 | 304,250 18 | 1 Ptpare 16
Xhosa 1,239 | 272,081 32 | 1 Ndlovukazi Nomnotho 9
Sotho 843 | 137,851 25 | 3 Ndlovukazi Nomnotho 9
Tswana 776 | 269,758 22 | 2 Rebel Agent 1,021 (includes other languages)
Venda 748 | 34,238 18 | 1 LissajousCurve 7
Tsonga 717 | 162,122 14 | 2 Caro de Segeda 21
Swati 574 | 69,718 11 | 3 DerekSquared 17
Bobbyshabangu 13
Ndebele (incubator only) 11

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