A peek into Wikipedia use in Nepal
Who is that character you saw in the Game of Thrones just a few minutes ago? Look it up on Wikipedia and your problem is solved.

Internet means ‘information at your fingertips’, and Google and Wikipedia are two of its best examples. Wikipedia puts a great chunk of human knowledge at our fingertips by being completely free and accessible. It has become the first resource many students, professionals and adults turn to for information.

According to Alexa, Wikipedia is one of the most frequently accessed websites on the internet and is consistently ranked among the top 5 most visited websites worldwide. However, I was surprised when I discovered that Wikipedia is at a lowly 13th spot in Nepal, behind the usual suspects of Google, YouTube, Facebook and a plethora of news-oriented websites. 

It  disappointed me that a war-torn country like Afghanistan has a 0.6% share of worldwide Wikipedia access but Nepal has a meager 0.05%.This got me wondering and a bit of self-reflection was required.

Everyone in my family has 24-hour access to the internet. But does my mother who frequently visits news websites to keep herself up-to-date with all the new trends or watches YouTube videos to keep abreast of all the happenings in Bollywood access Wikipedia when she needs information? Definitely not! I have never seen her use Wikipedia or heard her mention the name.


A great majority of the internet usage in Nepal is limited to social media like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and many more. Are we making the best use of internet? Is the young generation even making the best use of all the things that internet has to offer? Or is knowledge-mining on the internet - through Wikipedia or any other means limited to those who have a decent grasp of English language?

Is it the lack of good, and searchable information on the internet in our own language, be that Nepali, Maithili or  Newarii dragging us down, limiting  us to using this great human invention for limited uses like social media, news, YouTube and the occasional porn flick?
Looking at Wikipedia’s own statistics for the Nepali version gives one possible answer. There are approximately 30,000 articles in the Nepali Wikipedia. However, only about 40% of all those articles have at least 0.5 Kb of information, which equates to almost no useful information. The number of new articles added every year has decreased from approximately 28 per day in 2011 to less than 8 per day this year (Jan-Oct). While the 40 odd contributors (1 contributor for every 1 million Nepali speakers) to the Nepali Wikipedia have done a commendable job, clearly, the amount of knowledge/information available to
Nepalese in their own language does not even meet our basic minimum requirements. It is also important to note that of all the Wikipedia pages accessed from Nepal, approximately 94% are in English language and less than 3% are in Nepali language.

I don’t mean to preach about contribution of Wikipedia alone, there are plenty of other wikis, blogging platforms that are available. However, regardless of the platform and service, when such tools are already at our disposal, I would like to tell myself that I can do better than fear that my mother doesn’t even know what Wikipedia is.       

 
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