世論 What Japan Thinks

Please feel free to select one of the two words in the headlines that fits your own personal bias. I’d love to see a Wikipedia-free Google, myself, or at least an option to exclude it from searches unless specifically asked for. However, I do know that my attitude towards Wikipedia is probably seen by many as elitist, but if you too are fed up with too much Wikipedia in your Google and you run a blog, please feel free to download my Wikipedia nofollow WordPress plugin. It works with Japanese Wikipedia too, but I’ve not noticed it being used on any Japanese sites.

The above serves as an introduction to a recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research entitled the fourth regular survey into Wikipedia and Wiki that they carry out every month.

Demographics

Between the 30th of October and the 2nd of November 2007 1,098 members of the goo Research online monitor pool successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample was male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, and 27.5% aged fifty or older.

I found the gripes listed in Q1SQ2 rather interesting; missing from the list above is one of my biggest gripes, that being that articles get too messy and should be reworked to remove duplicated information or to consolidate information. Another big issue, the ever-present trivia section, also didn’t feature. I’m not sure why people get worried about getting a virus from Wikipedia as there’s not really any way for that to happen. I was also surprised that so few mentioned grammar as a problem.

Research results

Q1: Do you know the online encyclopedia Wikipedia? (Sample size=1,098)

Yes (to SQs)	83.2%
No	16.8%

This is up 3.5 percentage points from last month.

Q1SQ1: Do you feel you see Wikipedia articles in the results from search engines? (Sample size=914)

Usually see them highly ranked	24.3%
Often see them	55.0%
Sometimes see them	16.7%
Don’t see them much	2.8%
Never seen them	1.1%

Note that the two main search engines in Japan are Yahoo! and Google. A split on the data by engine would be interesting to see!

Of the 914 above, 872, or 95.4%, had viewed Wikipedia articles.

Q1SQ2: What do you think are problems in Wikipedia? (Sample size=872, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Quality and quantity of articles varies between categories	464	53.2%
Unfinished articles are conspicuous	281	32.2%
Length and details of articles varies	256	29.4%
Article details are subjective	255	29.2%
Few pictures	214	24.5%
Edit wars, revert wars, vandalism, etc occurs	132	15.1%
Lot of article details cannot be trusted	84	9.6%
Lot of errors in article details	74	8.5%
Pages are too big	62	7.1%
Could be a carrier of viruses, etc	48	5.5%
Has material that violates copyright	33	3.8%
Has grammar, usages errors	29	3.3%
Other	47	5.4%