Explore the data

Views of Wikipedia articles about COVID-19 often reflect major developments in the timeline of the pandemic. For example, on March 12, 2020, the day after the World Health Organization (WHO) classified COVID-19 as a pandemic, the main English Wikipedia article about the pandemic had over 1.4 million views alone, an increase of 73 percent from the day before the WHO’s announcement.^[3]

Wikipedia articles about COVID-19 exist in over 170 languages, serving as a source of reliable information for people around the world.

Here, you can see the 15 language editions of Wikipedia with the most pageviews^[4], ranging from English Wikipedia, with over 333 million views, to two and a half million views on Dutch Wikipedia. You can compare these pageviews with the number of editors who are contributing to a given language edition and how many articles they’ve created. When viewed together, these variables show the intersection of audience interest (pageviews), content accessibility (articles), and volunteer capacity (editors). Interesting insights emerge.

For example, the 63 COVID-19 articles on Japanese Wikipedia have garnered over 12 million views, suggesting there’s a high level of interest among Japanese-readers compared to the lower number of COVID-19 articles on the Japanese Wikipedia. And, although Wikipedia is currently blocked in China, the Chinese language edition of Wikipedia shows high numbers across all three categories: editors who want to share their knowledge on COVID-19, content volume, and interest from Chinese-readers.