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Cultural diversity of quality of information on Wikipedias

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Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

Published online on

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between linguistic culture and the preferred standards of presenting information based on article representation in major Wikipedias. Using primary research analysis of the number of images, references, internal links, external links, words, and characters, as well as their proportions in Good and Featured articles on the eight largest Wikipedias, we discover a high diversity of approaches and format preferences, correlating with culture. We demonstrate that high‐quality standards in information presentation are not globally shared and that in many aspects, the language culture's influence determines what is perceived to be proper, desirable, and exemplary for encyclopedic entries. As a result, we demonstrate that standards for encyclopedic knowledge are not globally agreed‐upon and “objective” but local and very subjective.