Understanding Editing Behaviors in Multilingual Wikipedia.

Area of Science:

• Computational Social Science
• Digital Linguistics
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Multilingualism is prevalent offline, yet its online manifestations and role in cross-lingual content dissemination remain underexplored.
• Understanding how multilingual individuals contribute to and navigate online content is crucial for digital communication.

Purpose of the Study:

• To computationally analyze multilingualism on Wikipedia, focusing on content creation and editor behavior across English, German, and Spanish editions.
• To investigate the engagement, interests, and language proficiency of multilingual editors in their primary and secondary languages.

Main Methods:

• Collected and analyzed over two million paragraphs edited by 15,000+ multilingual users on Wikipedia (July 8 - August 9, 2013).
• Examined editor engagement, topical interests, and language proficiency in primary versus secondary languages.
• Compared editing complexity between primary and secondary language editors across different language editions.

Main Results:

• English Wikipedia exhibits distinct dynamics, with secondary language editors contributing edits as complex as primary editors.
• Spanish and German Wikipedia editions show primary editors making more complex edits than secondary language editors.
• A 'complexity barrier' hinders editing complex content in a second language, and multilinguals exhibit lower engagement and proficiency in non-primary languages.

Conclusions:

• English serves as a unique hub for multilingual content integration on Wikipedia, bridging different language communities.
• Despite integration, language proficiency and content complexity pose significant barriers to seamless cross-lingual information flow.
• Multilingual editors' engagement and proficiency in secondary languages are lower, impacting their contribution complexity.