世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently reported on this survey conducted by goo Research, their seventh regular Wikipedia survey. Note that as with most reports on japan.internet.com they report the highlights, not the full survey.

Demographics

Between the 28th of April and the 1st of May 2008 1,085 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

Wikipedia is very good for simple facts – I used it just yesterday to look up English manga titles – but almost every time I examine an article on a subject I know something about it comes up lacking. Yes, yes, I can hear you all telling me to edit it myself, but I barely have time to write this blog, let alone try to keep up with my changes to make sure they get accepted. The latest I saw was a poorly-written complaint about their shops being expensive in the middle of an article about a major electronics company.

UPDATE: Thank you to one of my readers for edited Wikipedia to get rid of the whinge from the above-mentioned page!

I’ve also written a WordPress plugin for Wikipedia nofollow, that even after a year still regularly picks up a few backlinks.

Research results

Q1: Do you know the online encyclopedia Wikipedia? (Sample size=1,085)

Yes	85.4%
No	14.6%

27 of the 927 above who knew of Wikipedia had never actually visited the site. The remaining 900 were asked the following question.

Q2: Have you ever edited Wikipedia entries? (Sample size=900)

Frequently	0.4%
Several times	4.0%
Once	1.9%
Never, but would like to	30.3%
Never, and don’t want to	63.3%

The reamining 185 who had never visited Wikipedia were asked the following question.

Q3: Would you want to try out Wikipedia in the future? (Sample size=185)

Definitely	7.0%
If I have the opportunity	67.6%
Don’t really want to	20.5%
Don’t want to at all	4.9%