Talk:Languages used on the Internet

message: I agree that Internet World Stats does not look like reliable data. Also the first chart that appears in the entry, with the footnote [1] leading to Internet World Stats... the page does not even support that chart. Is the chart from a different source, that got misattributed somewhere along the way?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.166.223.182 (talk) 13:20, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about quality and reliability of sources 

message: When I saw the title, I thought it would be about a government sponsored plan to give everyone on the planet internet access, if of a low bandwhich. However, it's a list of what language people on the internet speak. Move this to Internet user statistics or Internet user atributes or something similar. HereToHelp (talk) 02:03, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Move?

message: According to this organization, in 2006 there are 28 million French-speaking users. However, French stat companies state that in 2005 there were 26 million French Internet users and it's growing fast.  Since there are a number of other French-speaking countries or subnational entities out there, it seems to me that the number cited in this article is underestimated. David.Monniaux 06:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weird number 

message: It seems that this article and Languages on the Internet may be duplicates. They should probably be merged, preferably Languages on the Internet into this article (Global internet usage). Also, shouldn't internet be capitalized? It is the network as a whole afterall. - Rudykog 13:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Duplicate articles?

message: I think it should be deleted or fully rewritten, because it doesn't make any sense or contradicts other wikipedia pages.
e.g.
:1) this table says that there are 874 Chinese speakers, wikipedia page on Chinese says that Mandarin Chinese has at least 850 speakers.
:2) languages don't have GDP and even if it shows GDP of countries, China doesn't have GDP per capita of $7,200.  DVoit 14:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What are you talking about? The number is in million. 874 million or 850 million, who knows that exactly? And about GDP, I don't know how the page looked like in 2007, but it doesn't matter. However, one thing is clear. You are a sinophobe and this is racist! This is not exaggerated. You don't agree with 874 million, so you looked for another source (Wikipedia can't be a good source for Wikipedia) showing a smaller number. Then you are not happy with China's high GDP, so you argue with per capita. --2.245.197.242 (talk) 10:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Languages table

message: Is this article about web pages or total internet usage? In other words, does it include figures for what languages are used in e-mail mesages, IRC chat, instant messaging conversations etc, or is it just about web pages published and web pages accessed? I think it is the latter, and so should be renamed appropriately, asap. --Nigelj (talk) 19:42, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Web or Internet? 

message: I wonder whether the 'estimated online population' adequately reflects the proportions of languages actually found on the internet. I would surmise that, although China has a substantial online population, there are far fewer websites written in Chinese than in German. Does anybody know of statistical data which could corroborate or refute this?--84.190.54.122 (talk) 18:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Websites or users? 

message: The total population of Dutch speakers is way to low and I think the amount of Dutch users on the internet is also to low.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.144.100.44 (talk) 11:45, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dutch 

message: The stats of Internet users are outdated, if someone wants to take the time to update them : http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm/stats7.htm  —Preceding unsigned comment added by GRAND OUTCAST (talk • contribs) 07:19, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stats outdated 

message: I would like to see some statistics on the number of web pages in different languages.
Also, I wonder how much these statistics account for non-native speakers of a language. German is a very popular second language in a number of countries, esp. in Central Europe and the major English-speaking countries. That would almost double its numbers.Bostoner (talk) 02:46, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of Pages 

message: This article used terms like 'languages used on the Internet' without specifying what that means. The 'Internet' is just a network.  If it means the content published in various languages, it should state so. But most likely it refers to the number of users that speak various languages, and I rephrased some of the article's statements accordingly, as the sources seem to indicate this is what was measured. Kbrose (talk) 20:28, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Languages used on the Internet

message: hello,
I've witnessed that the Average Age of Internet Users survey conducted by NiteCo has been falsely removed
after citing bogus and incoherent reasons.
for those of you who are unfamiliar with it , here is a summary
it's a user particaption based survey that collects input from surfers who visit the link
upon doing so , the average age is displayed followed by a question regarding their age.
some ppl have suggested that this survey is inaccurate by citing the following these irrelevant claims
1) the survey is not random
i guess that's the most absurd claim ever , obviously the fact that it's a public survey open to any surfer
implicitly means that IT IS random by nature.
2) the survey is self selected
well that's true , but the point is that this totally irrelevant as there is no evidence
that self selection is harmful in the sense that it may corrupt the results.
for instance , there is no data that may support the hypothesis that older ppl or younger may have a tendency to
report their age more often or less than the other age group.
in a nutshell , self selection does not neccessarily lead to a selection bias at least not in this case.
in other words the burden of proof lies on the critics ! Cowmadness (talk)
:I'm afraid you are wrong on every count here. I refer to this reversion of yours. First, you need to look at things like Sampling (statistics) to see that there is far more to it than you seem to realise. Then look at the survey page in question to see that it is just a webpage buried on a single, non-notable website that is only going to be seen by people visiting that site, or whatever links exist to it (like this one). Next, look at the heading, and build up you give it: 'Average age of Internet users' and 'the average Internet user is 28.3037 years old', then check Internet and WWW to see that this is a web site, not representative of the whole web, let alone the whole internet, and that there is a difference. Finally, have a look at WP:BURDEN where it says, "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material". The second reference you give, apart from the one that proves the survey web-form exists, is to a digg page that no longer mentions the site or the survey. What we need is a third-party WP:RS reliable source that says that this survey is accepted by serious academics (or other people of similar standing) as being a recognised statistical survey that is widely regarded as representative. In the meantime, what you have there looks mostly like WP:LINKSPAM and should be removed in toto without further warning. --Nigelj (talk) 17:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The NiteCo Survey is here to stay! 

message: (Usage percentage : number of speakers) would make an illustrating extra statistic. (It's trivial to calculate, but including this in the table would make sorting possible.) --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usage per capita 

message: The stats are out of date again.  Can some update them? 
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm
Ouyuecheng (talk) 09:44, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outdated statistics 

message: The study done by W3Techs mentioned in the article is from December 2011. There is already a newer version as of 2012, which states English is used by 54.9% of websites and not 56%. http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language/all Many Thanks, Zalunardo8 (talk) 15:08, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outdated figure 

message: Hello,
I believe the last paragraph of the section 'Languages Used' should be updated with more current information. The research shown is dated of 2007. The same info about the percentage of content per language is shown below in a graph, so I think we should either remove the paragraph, or use the same numbers. Cheers, Zalunardo8 (talk) 16:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outdated information 

message: A merge template was added in April 2013 suggesting that the article Foreign language internet should be merged into this article, but I can find no discussion of the proposal anywhere. So, here is a place to hold that discussion. Would such a merge be a good idea? --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 12:26, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, definitely. Please. --Atlasowa (talk) 14:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge "Foreign language internet" into this article? 

message: The source data used by the table and graph for "Content languages for websites" is updated daily? How often should this page's reflection of that data be updated? Lately it's been valid as of the day of the most recent update. In the discussion above (pie charts vs. bar graphs), W163 and I thought more regular date would be best, such as the most recent January 1 or July 1.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daggerbox (talk • contribs) 21:48, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Frequency of data updates 

message: I would like to propose Top Language List by Number of 4k, or 8k TV station broadcasters, and 4k BluRay Movie Publications.
There Could be also list by number of bytes of Books, Total Time of Music Published on CD.
But I humbly think 4k/8k content will be much easier to measure.
Maybe we can ask YouTube about top languages, by time, but it can be hard, because of misslabeled content by default setting.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.21.42.220 (talk) 20:07, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: You are suggesting a new article separate from "Languages used on the Internet", right? --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 20:45, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe it could be done, but focussing on 4k or 8k content sounds like it would be extremely biased towards languages prevalent in 'wealthy' countries.  Provided that is made clear in the new article to be created, I wouldn't mind.  It mustn't be presented as a surrogate measure of 'global language use'.  Also, as mentioned by Jeff Ogden (W163), it has nothing to do with internet pages.  —DIV (120.17.128.128 (talk) 03:06, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

text: Print books could maybe be done through the OCLC's WorldCat, although mislabelling (or lack of labels) can also occur there.  —DIV (120.17.128.128 (talk) 04:12, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  I would like to propose Top Language List 

message: Been a long time since I looked at this article, and the lead is now a mess. I removed the first extremely awful paragraph as it asserted a 'controversy' before considering any information or providing a basic introduction to the context of the article. Whether the use of English on the Internet is 'controversial' belongs in the body of the article, not the first sentence. But the rest of the lead is also awful, and much of it is the type of content that would belong in the body. But it's not good content either. For example, the source for the statement "the main and most reliable source for persons connected to the Internet by country is the ITU" is the ITU. Surely no POV problem there?? The ITU may well be an authority on the matter, but the source should be used to support what the ITU actually states about languages used on the Internet, not statements about its own credibility.--Jeffro77 (talk) 00:45, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: A person closely related to the subject of the article should not be making assertions that the other sources are biased. Citing yourself in your comments above also does nothing to alleviate concerns about potential for conflict of interest.--Jeffro77 (talk) 05:28, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

text: The request to 'focus on content' is irrelevant as the issue is an obvious conflict of interest, which is inherently an editor issue.--Jeffro77 (talk) 15:59, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

text: I noticed the formal mediation request.  In case that is rejected because other venues have not been tried enough, I then recommend WP:COIN or WP:NPOVN.  —PaleoNeonate – 20:18, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

text: I don't currently have time for an extended debate about this. There is obviously a conflict of interest involved. Other editors may like to add their thoughts.--Jeffro77 (talk) 23:24, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

text: Referring to 'rival' sources as 'biased' is not uncontroversial.--Jeffro77 (talk) 14:23, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

text: I didn't 'disagree' with mediation, nor do I presently have time for it. I therefore provided a suitable response.--Jeffro77 (talk) 23:53, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

text: As the editor using Wikipedia to assert elements of your own work as significant, the point remains valid. Your edits also asserted a 'controversy' in the lead sentence, which is inherently controversial. The conflict of interest remains.--Jeffro77 (talk) 23:57, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

text: The claim that I was 'caught lying' is false. The claim of defamation is bizarre, since even I were incorrect, it would be odd that you do not believe your methodology to be superior. You seem to be trying to take advantage of the fact that I have limited time available at the moment for responding, and it was hasty of me to rely only on memory of your edits at the time. Though I decided the specifics were not as important in my comments at the COI page, it was indeed you who also stated in the article that your own sources are authoritative (even though that may be the case), using an argument from authority with reference to the UN. I should have been more clear that an editor who is also the author of the source material should be not be adding this material at all without first discussing at the article's Talk page, and I apologise if that were not articulated clearly enough. It is also true that you asserted that a controversy exists, which is not appropriate for an editor who is also a substantial source related to the purported controversy. Re-read the opening paragraph of this section for additional problems with your edits. It is not at all clear what motive you imagine I would have for challenging your edits other than pointing out your prima facie conflict of interest (setting aside less significant presentation issues). It is not necessary to rely on the 'wayback machine', since the article history is already available in Wikipedia.--Jeffro77 (talk) 02:50, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Although it derived in part from a content dispute, please avoid casting aspersions on article talk pages (personal user pages or administrator noticeboards are the proper venues for that).  I think that I'll initiate a conflict of interest noticeboard thread.  Jeffro77: it's likely only necessary to post once there and let others assess COI and take any action if necessary.  Apart from any potential COI issues, one is to determine if the source is considered reliable for what it's used, for that we have WP:RSN if in doubt.  Danielpimienta: I'll post a standard notice on your page in relation to COI.  —PaleoNeonate – 17:21, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see that the source itself is not usable, but its significance should not be asserted by an editor who is an author of that source, especially where the source asserts that other sources are biased and that a controversy exists in relation to the various sources. (There is also a separate matter of using the ITU as a source for itself (with a dead link) for the assertion that the ITU is a reliable source.)--Jeffro77 (talk) 04:20, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead is awful 

message: Maybe useful content or links at https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezvx9e/the-internet-is-killing-most-languages—DIV (120.17.128.128 (talk) 03:00, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vice article 

message: The article has been practically unchanged for the last years while the evolution of the Internet demographic has been changing drastically with Africa, CIS, Arab states and Asia having shown growth rate of Internet users, between 2010 and 2017, of respectively  327%, 202%, 195% and 179% while the Americas and Europe were respectively at 135% and 120% growth rate (computed from ITU figures and note a related visual animation). This evolution, which put by 2016 the percentage of Internet users of China + India above one third of the total, has obvious repercussion on demo-linguistics data and make hardly trustable figures such as only 2% of contents for the sum of  languages spoken in those 2 countries.
Furthermore, the article fails to address several  important points that I will try to expose briefly after I present myself as a person having a connection to the subject.
My connection to the subject.
My name is Daniel Pimienta. I am a civil society player and academic, former Head of Networks & Development Foundation, an NGO pioneer in the theme of digital divide since 1988. Funredes created in 1998 the Observatory of languages and cultures in the Internet which has been maintained alive in spite the ending of Funredes in 2017. I worked, in collaboration with Union Latine, a former member states organization which activities are now suspended, in the field of languages on the Internet and  producing corresponding indicators (between 1998 and 2007, we were one of the main source of data, together with the Language Observatory Project).  I have published a number of scientific articles in that field in English, French or Spanish. 
Most of the corresponding activities has been funded by respectively Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Union Latine or UNESCO (which is the United Nation organization which is most connected to that theme). Funredes is also a founding member of the World Network for Linguistic Diversity, a non profit organization formed during the World Summit of Information Society  and I am a former Executive Secretary and still member of the Board of MAAYA. 
MAAYA has served as a niche for some activities related to the subject (for instance we have been  collaborating with LOP, another MAAYA member). After 2007, the evolution of Search Engines made our method for production of data obsolete and at the same time the LOP has ceased production activities. That has left for the past years W3Techs and InternetWorldStats as the unique sources of data available for languages on the Internet (ITU does produce on a yearly basis data of users connected per country but not directly on languages, and we have been producing data in the past years, but exclusively for French, Spanish and for the languages of France). 
In 2017, we launched a new method which allows to produce data for both indicators for the 140 languages of more than 5 million speakers. The method relies mainly on ITU data, on a large set of sources of Internet related data per languages or per country (including Alexa.com) and on specific statistical computations which are documented in the reference article, as well as the associated biases of the method and sources (as a matter of fact the biases of the 3 existing methods are discussed).
The points which I consider needs to be addressed by the article:
'''
- The difference between the 2 main indicators (% of Internet users per language and % of web contents per language) needs to be clarified as they are often confused by the users of those statistics.
- The methodologies of the 2 sources which are presented (W3Techs for contents and InternetWorldStats for the top 10 languages of Internet users) needs to be somehow presented  and a discussion on their potential biases should be made so to warn the readers those figures are not solid data asserted by Wikipedia's voice.
- The article needs to refer to an historical and still existing controversy about the real proportion of web contents in English. This is important as it relates to a policy against the digital divide, whereas a consensus has been reached from all stakeholders in 
fostering the production of local contents; a steady high figure of English in the Web in spite of  its evolutions  reducing motivation for local contents. Note that the figure of English contents around 50% was given in 2007 and the demographic evolution of the Internet since then pleads for a much lower figure today (at least it has to be said that they are strong discrepancies between experts on that figure).
- The article finally should add to the picture a third source, as of 2017, which covers both indicators (without being limited to the 10 top for the language of users) and presents extensive discussion of biases of all methods starting by itself. The source (already presented in "my connection to the subject" comes from a former producer of data from the period 1998-2007 and the author or co-author of several references which are already mentioned in this article.
-Discussing the biases, it is important to underline the difference between mother tongue language (also noted L1) and second language (also noted L2). Generally, statistics such as percentage of users of a given language are given for L1+L2 and it is important to note that if discrepancies around L1 figures exist they are much less important compared to L2 figures  (for example, L1 figure for English is around  350 million but L1+ L2 figures for English may vary from 500 million toward 1.5 billion, depending of sources). 
To conclude I would appreciate if willing editors are eager to try to improve this article which touches a sensitive yet important subject related to the past, present and future history of the Internet. I will restrain to edit it myself since I am one of the potential source and I will keep contributing in the talk page, either on request either if I feel a strong need to react to some edit.
Sorry for the length of the post, the subject is complex and its complexity deserve to be reflected somehow. Danielpimienta (talk) 14:48, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article needs a serious rework 

message: "Norwegian Bokmål" and "Norwegian" are both to the found in the "Content languages for websites" list, even though the former is a subset of the latter. The other written variety of Norwegian - "Nynorsk" - is not to be found in the list. This is not weird considering Nynorsk is considerable less frequently used. My opinion is that "Norwegian Bokmål" and "Norwegian" should be merged into a single entry called "Norwegian", or perhaps "Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk)". If possible, numbers for Nynorsk should also be included in the total.
:The original article treats "Norwegian Bokmål", "Norwegian" and "Norwegian Nynorsk" as three distinct things. It doesn't explain what "Norwegian" is supposed to be, but I would say it is probably an average of Bokmål and Nynorsk numbers. Kiwi Rex (talk) 17:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Norwegian Bokmål" versus "Norwegian" 

message: I'm surprised to see that there's more content in Turkish than in Chinese, Arabic, and Portuguese combined given that these 3 languages have 18 times more total speakers than Turkish.
Is it due to W3Techs' methodology? The Wikipedia article says that: "language is identified using only the home page of the sites in most cases (e.g., all of Wikipedia is based on the language detection of http://www.wikipedia.org).[6] As a consequence, the figures show a significantly higher percentage for many languages (especially for English) as compared to the figures for all websites.". However on their website they say (here and there):
* "We investigate technologies of websites, not of individual web pages. If we find a technology on any of the pages, it is considered to be used by the website."
* "We may not detect technologies if they are used only on some pages of a websites, as we do not analyze each page of a website."
So it's unclear whether W3Techs focuses on the homepage or not. If they only consider the homepage then this table is misleading and should be removed from Wikipedia. Indeed the most used Western platforms are translated and available in most European languages (especially Spanish, French, and German) but only English would count. Whereas some countries have popular equivalents not used elsewhere (this is especially the case for Russia), with a homepage in a non-English language. This artificially reduces the count of "Western" languages and artificially increases it for languages of "isolated" countries such as Russia, Iran, and Turkey. The numbers for Chinese are also especially low, I think that Alexa (W3Techs' source) isn't as accurate for China.
So should we keep this table? A455bcd9 (talk) 11:09, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  W3Techs Methodology 

message: Some editor(s) interested in this page may find it useful to know that there is recent article here:<BR>
The languages in cyberspace  https://en.unesco.org/courier/2021-2/languages-cyberspace <BR>
= based on May 2021 UNESCO World report of Languages. 202.166.205.112 (talk) 03:21, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  UNESCO report "The languages in cyberspace" (2021)