The French version of the open encyclopedia has registered peaks of audience during the confinement and crossed twice the mark of the billion page views: in April and May 2020.
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The French version of Wikipedia was, in April, the 6th most visited site in France (with more than 5 million unique visitors per day and nearly 32 million for the whole month).
In August, its audience stabilized around 4 million unique visitors per day, more than 28 million for the whole month.
Strong increase in the number of visits to the French Wikipedia in March 2020
Thierry Noisette noted, in ZDNet, from March 15, an "epidemic of articles "epidemic of articles"devoted to the coronavirus. " The Wikipedians have created an important number of articles around the epidemic of coronavirus - Covid-19, articles which are among the most modified in English as in French. In the week of February 28 to March 5, in the English edition of the free encyclopedia, 10 of the 20 articles with the most modifications were about the coronavirus. The following week, from March 6 to 12, 13 of the 15 articles in English with the most modifications were related to the virus, while in French, from March 6 to 12, 7 of the 20 articles with the most modifications were related to the coronavirus.
According to the blog specialized in the follow-up of the wikipedia news, Wiki Riderthe pandemic has had a strong impact on the consultation of the French Wikipedia, with a very high traffic since March 22, 2020 (...) fluctuating between 28 and 32 million daily page views, while it rarely exceeded 25 million during the first three weeks of March.
Wiki Rider has undertaken to reconstruct the ranking of the most constituted articles in March 2020. Of the 10 most viewed articles, 9 of them were directly or indirectly related to Covid 19.
adds Wiki Rider : Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral (2,173,220 page views), Jacques Chirac (1,630,450) and Karl Lagerfeld (1,355,116).
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"It's not often," "that articles are viewed more than a million times a month. In 2019, this was the case only three times "
Wikipedia in the face of misinformation
Wired magazine has devoted an investigation to how Wikipedia (the English-language version) has curbed misinformation about Covid-19. " For a long time," Wired observes, "the Wikipedia encyclopedia has been singled out as unreliable, on the grounds that anyone can edit the articles. However, this feature is also a strength that allows experts from around the world to improve the quality of articles, as is currently the case with Covid-19. Wikipedia's content on the coronavirus is attached to the WikiProject Medicine, which includes 150 editors with expertise in medicine or public health. Once an article is attached to the WikiProject Medicine, it is inspected very closely. The sources must include peer-reviewed journals, textbooks or official reports, and not just mainstream media (...) Does this mean that there is no questionable information about Covid-19 on Wikipedia? Yes, but on a dedicated page: "Disinformation related to the 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic".
In France, Paméla Rougerie, for Le Parisien, set out to understand how the pages devoted to the epidemic were edited and updated. "On Wikipedia, any Internet user can add and contribute information to a page. These additions and modifications are nevertheless controlled (...) On the pages dedicated to Covid-19, the vigilance is redoubled. These pages are labeled as "projects", which means that coordinated work is done on a daily basis. There are many warnings and tips, including telling editors to "respect point of view neutrality," "provide accurate and complete sources when adding information," and "consider removing unsourced information.
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