Extra Posting 1. Why is Wikipedia less popular in South Korea than in most other developed countries?

Why is Wikipedia less popular in South Korea than in most other developed countries?

 Korea has an internet infrastructure that does not lag behind any other country in the world. However, Korean Wikipedia is not very popular in Korea. This posting was written to find out 'why?'.

 There are various reasons for the sluggishness of the Korean Wikipedia. The lack of editing time due to long hours of work, the closed attitude to new editors, and the friendly quality of the Wikipedia managers are the main factors. However, I tried to find out the cause by comparing it with other wiki sites in Korea. The target is 'Namu Wiki'.

 In Korea, the Internet encyclopedia based on collective intelligence such as Wikipedia is most famous for namu wiki and Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a clear source and neutrality. On the other hand, in the case of the namu wiki, it does not always present a definite source, but writes in their gates that biased descriptions exist. In terms of information delivery, we can see that Wikipedia has an ideology to provide better information than namu wiki. However, if you do a Google search for information, most of the namu wiki will display the search results at the top of Wikipedia. This means that namu wiki appeals to Korean Internet users with more hits and higher search reliability than Wikipedia. If so, why? I was able to find a hint in an Internet article.

 Korea has a long history of oral culture than text culture. There are many prints, such as the 'Tripitaka Koreana' and the 'Jikji', but it has been only a few decades for everyone to use letters. Therefore, it is more important to make a speech that can persuade a person than a character culture where logic is important. On the other hand, in the case of the West, it has a strong tradition of character culture that starts in Gutenberg and leads to rationalism and enlightenment. This means that the clear source of the information that Wikipedia has, and the logical writing, do not exert much power in Korea. Rather than having to listen to everything, the namu wiki, which allows you to freely use whatever you want to say, regardless of source, exerts more power.

 I think the sluggishness of Wikipedia in Korea has affected the influence of Korea 's unique oral culture. This is a cultural difference, not a matter of right and wrong. However, there is a risk that an overly oral culture will become sophisticated people who are overly emotional and appeal to people without reason. Therefore, we think that our culture and the value of Wikipedia should find a consensus on each other.

<Picture1. Pageviews per capita to any Wikipedia in February 2018 >


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