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Turkey report: A research on Wikipedia usage of Turkish university students and Bridges Across Cultures

By Basak

216 students from 11 Turkish universities were interviewed on their Wikipedia usage

Students who have conducted half-strutctured interviews about Wikipedia as a requirement of their Research Methods course

The students taking Research Methods course at Uludag University Psychology Department were given an unusual assignment in 2016-2017 term. They were supposed to interview with undergraduate students in their university and other universities about their Wikipedia usage. They have interviewed 216 students from 11 different universities!

The interviews were made either face-to-face or through video-conferencing. After conducting the inverviews the students have transcribed them and submitted to the instructor with a report. Later the data was analyzed by the instructor and a research assistant.

This collaboration did not only helped students in improving their research skills but also helped Turkish Wikimedia community by producing findings about Wikipedia usage of university students. The results have been finally published in 2018. Please find some findings below.

• The majority of students have reported the experience of not finding information they are looking for at Turkish Wikipedia. They don’t complain much about the quality of the information they reach but there are complaints about the insufficient number and variety of the articles.
• They think Wikipedia content is static like the content in a traditional encyclopedia. Only 32% of students are aware that Wikipedia content is not static.
• Roughly two third of the students see Wikipedia partially or completely satisfactory, objective, detailed and reliable.
• Only 7% have edited an article and only 10% are aware of the “History” of the articles.
• 54% uses Wikipedia for their school-assignments.
• 50% report that their instructors do not approve using Wikipedia for their assignments.
• 37% think that WP articles were written by professional editors, 9% think that they were written by the collaboration of volunteers and professional editors.

Bridge Accross Cultures

Contest took place in October-November 2018

Turkish wikipedians are proud to take part in the first edition of Bridges Accros Culture contest despite the ongoing block in Turkey.

The results of Bridges Accros Culture, a wiki-collaboration contest which has taken place in 2017 among languages from both Latin America and the Middle East & North Africa was announced in 2018, January 12th. It was organized by Wikimedia affiliates of different countries, including Argentina, Brazil and Chile (Latin America) and Iran, Levant, and Turkey (MENA). 427 articles about Latin American culture were expanded in Arabic, Persian and Turkish Wikipedia, while 415 articles about MENA culture were done in Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedia.

Hopefully the contest will continue in 2018. If you are interested in including your language project in future versions, please get in touch with the contest’s organizers.