The Popularity of Wikipedia in Australia

Australians are the fifth most Wikipedia active editors in the world!

15 July 2023, James Gaunt.

This post is a draft and is subject to change without notice.

Wikipedia is the 6th most visited website in Australia, so when you search for anything online it's often the top result.

But Australians don't just read Wikipedia, they're actively contributing to it too.

Number of Wikipedia editors in Australia

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and we even have some training videos and resources to help get you started.

Some people edit occasionally, while others make hundreds of edits this month!

The Wikimedia Foundation collect statistics on the number of active editors on Wikipedia and split them into two groups.

• Editors who made between 5-99 edits in a month
• Editors who made 100 or more edits in a month

In both cases, the top five most active countries are USA, UK, India, Canada, and Australia.

Since January 2015, Australians have consistently been the fifth most active Wikipedia editors in the world, with a few exceptions. In August 2018, May 2019, and June 2019 Australians were the fourth most active.

[Graph]

Between January 2015 and June 2023, there was an average of ???? editors in Australia making between 5-99 edits in a month. The highest number was in May 2019 with 3,400 editors, and the lowest was in December 2022 with 1,790.

[Graph]

In the same period, there was an average of ???? editors in Australia making 100 or more edits in a month. The highest number was in ??? with ??? editors, and the lowest was in ??? with ???.

Comparing the number of editors worldwide

Overall, there is a downwards trend for the number of editors on Wikipedia worldwide, as seen by comparing the top five most active Wikipedia editing countries.

[Graph]

Comparing the number of editors worldwide who made between 5-99 edits in a month to each countries populations shows generally 0.01% of each country is editing Wikipedia.

In 2022 Australia recorded a population of 25,978,935 people according to The World Bank Group, and in December 2022 there were 1,790 people in Australia editing Wikipedia, representing 0.01% of the total population at the time.

Denmark had 160 editors in December 2022 and were the 38th most active. But they had the highest percentage of their population editing Wikipedia, with 0.22% of the country contributing.

Full list of Worldwide editors in December 2022

Rank	Country Name	Total Editors
1	United States of America	21100
2	United Kingdom	6430
3	India	4350
4	Canada	2990
5	Australia	1790
6	Germany	1250
7	Philippines	1110
8	Indonesia	880
9	Brazil	850
10	Italy	850
11	France	690
12	Malaysia	690
13	Netherlands	530
14	Ireland	530
15	Spain	520
16	Bangladesh	450
17	Japan	420
18	Poland	390
19	Sweden	390
20	Hong Kong, SAR China	380
21	New Zealand	380
22	Greece	350
23	Korea (South)	340
24	Nigeria	340
25	Israel	290
26	Mexico	270
27	Taiwan, Republic of China	260
28	Switzerland	240
29	Belgium	230
30	Portugal	230
31	South Africa	230
32	Argentina	210
33	Norway	210
34	Romania	210
35	Finland	200
36	Czech Republic	170
37	Serbia	170
38	Denmark	160
39	Hungary	160
40	Ukraine	160
41	Peru	160
42	Bulgaria	140
43	Nepal	140
44	Chile	140
45	Austria	130
46	Croatia	130
47	Colombia	120
48	Sri Lanka	110
49	Kenya	80
50	Lithuania	70
51	Morocco	70
52	Slovakia	70
53	Puerto Rico	70
54	Estonia	60
55	Macedonia, Republic of	60
56	Uganda	60
57	Bosnia and Herzegovina	60
58	Unknown	50
59	Albania	50
60	Armenia	50
61	Costa Rica	50
62	Cyprus	50
63	Dominican Republic	50
64	Georgia	50
65	Latvia	50
66	Qatar	50
67	Slovenia	50
68	Tunisia	50
69	Ecuador	40
70	Jordan	40
71	Cambodia	40
72	Kuwait	40
73	Lebanon	40
74	Malta	40
75	Kosovo	40
76	Algeria	30
77	Iceland	30
78	Kyrgyzstan	30
79	Montenegro	30
80	Maldives	30
81	Oman	30
82	Panama	30
83	Uruguay	30
84	Brunei Darussalam	20
85	Ghana	20
86	Guatemala	20
87	Honduras	20
88	Jamaica	20
89	Luxembourg	20
90	Mongolia	20
91	Paraguay	20
92	El Salvador	20
93	Trinidad and Tobago	20
94	Tanzania, United Republic of	20
95	Zambia	20
96	Isle of Man	10
97	Monaco	10
98	Namibia	10
99	Sierra Leone	10
100	Zimbabwe	10
101	Cameroon	10
102	Dominica	10
103	Faroe Islands	10
104	Guernsey	10
105	Gambia	10
106	Guam	10
107	Cayman Islands	10
108	Macao, SAR China	10
109	Mauritius	10
110	Nicaragua	10
111	Palestinian Territory	10
112	South Sudan	10
113	British Virgin Islands	10
114	Congo (Brazzaville)	10
115	Côte d'Ivoire	10
116	Cape Verde	10
117	Curacao	10
118	Fiji	10
119	Micronesia, Federated States of	10
120	Gabon	10
121	Grenada	10
122	Gibraltar	10
123	Greenland	10
124	Guinea	10
125	Guadeloupe	10
126	Andorra	10
127	Guyana	10
128	Haiti	10
129	Angola	10
130	Jersey	10
131	Saint Kitts and Nevis	10
132	Aruba	10
133	Saint Lucia	10
134	Liberia	10
135	ALA Aland Islands	10
136	Moldova	10
137	Mali	10
138	Barbados	10
139	Northern Mariana Islands	10
140	Martinique	10
141	Burkina Faso	10
142	Malawi	10
143	Mozambique	10
144	Saint-Barthélemy	10
145	New Caledonia	10
146	Niger	10
147	Bermuda	10
148	French Polynesia	10
149	Papua New Guinea	10
150	Bolivia	10
151	Réunion	10
152	Seychelles	10
153	Bahamas	10
154	Senegal	10
155	Suriname	10
156	Bhutan	10
157	Sint Maarten	10
158	Saint Vincent and Grenadines	10
159	Botswana	10
160	Virgin Islands, US	10
161	Vanuatu	10
162	Belize	10
163	Congo, (Kinshasa)	10

Why is the number of Wikipedia editors dropping?

The number of Wikipedia editors dropping has been discussed as early as 2009, when Felipe Ortega from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid published his dissertation: Wikipedia: A quantitative analysis.

His work was widely reported by the media, and the Wikimedia Foundation published their own take on the data.

Between January 2001 when Wikipedia launched, and December 2018, stats

https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm

https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm

External links

• Active Wikipedia editors by country - Wikimedia Foundation
• Most Visited Websites in Australia - Similarweb
• World population data - The World Bank Group