Wikipedia consumption is heavily skewed toward a profile of “elite” people, and these people use the site in qualitatively different ways.
I didn’t talk about it much in the post since it would be too speculative, but I’m interested in more concrete thoughts on predicting what websites or online communities would have a high degree of Wikipedia use. The SurveyMonkey Audience and Google Surveys results plausibly show that crude demographic proxies such as intelligence, education, wealth, income, gender, age, etc. have very little predictive power compared with something like “reads Slate Star Codex and is willing to click to a survey link from there.”
I wonder what sort of attributes might be most predictive of using Wikipedia a lot. I’d say it’s something like “general intellectual curiosity”: curiosity of an intellectual kind, but general, across domains, rather than narrowly related to one domain where one can achieve enough mastery so as not to need Wikipedia. I do know of curious people who don’t use Wikipedia much, because their curiosity is specific to some domains where they have far surpassed Wikipedia, or Wikipedia doesn’t cover well.
I wonder what other websites similar to SSC might qualify. Would LessWrong? Wait But Why? EconLog? Overcoming Bias? XKCD? SMBC Comics?
I also wonder what friend networks or other online community filters would predict high Wikipedia use. Does being a Yudkowsky follower on Facebook predict high Wikipedia use? What about being in particular subreddits?
Per the suggestion at Improve comments by tagging claims, here is a comment to collect discussion of the first takeaway:
I didn’t talk about it much in the post since it would be too speculative, but I’m interested in more concrete thoughts on predicting what websites or online communities would have a high degree of Wikipedia use. The SurveyMonkey Audience and Google Surveys results plausibly show that crude demographic proxies such as intelligence, education, wealth, income, gender, age, etc. have very little predictive power compared with something like “reads Slate Star Codex and is willing to click to a survey link from there.”
I wonder what sort of attributes might be most predictive of using Wikipedia a lot. I’d say it’s something like “general intellectual curiosity”: curiosity of an intellectual kind, but general, across domains, rather than narrowly related to one domain where one can achieve enough mastery so as not to need Wikipedia. I do know of curious people who don’t use Wikipedia much, because their curiosity is specific to some domains where they have far surpassed Wikipedia, or Wikipedia doesn’t cover well.
I wonder what other websites similar to SSC might qualify. Would LessWrong? Wait But Why? EconLog? Overcoming Bias? XKCD? SMBC Comics?
I also wonder what friend networks or other online community filters would predict high Wikipedia use. Does being a Yudkowsky follower on Facebook predict high Wikipedia use? What about being in particular subreddits?
On a related note, one of famous LessWronger Carl Shulman’s research suggestions mentions Wikipedia:
From his research advice document