Pew Reports on Wikipedia
The Pew Internet and American Life Project just released a report on how American adults use the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. They tell us that 36% of adults use it. Perhaps the report’s most surprising finding is that Wikipedia users tend to be a well-educated group overall, with 50% having college degrees or better. The report also discusses the reasons behind Wikipedia’s popularity, and settles on two: its link structure results in high search rankings in Google (and hence it draws more search engine users to the site) and it is just plain convenient.
Interesting. Too bad they didn’t look at teens and children. I’d love to see how they stack up against the adults in terms of usage patterns and demographics. I’d also love to see some qualitative data (beyond my own experience) about how students use the site. And how about some data on the people who contribute to and edit Wikipedia. What do we know about them?
