User:Hmwith/stats

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After reading how "biased Wikipedia is" from our friend, Conservapedia, I was curious as to the actual religious and political make up of the Wikipedian population. Thus, I came up with an idea to study and record the religious beliefs and political views of Wikipedians.

Contents

[edit] Religious beliefs

No Wikipedians had polytheistic beliefs, while nearly half believed in a monotheistic deity, and the majority of members considered themselves either atheists or agnostic.

All of the 45 percent who believed in a god were either Christian or Jewish.

However, the disparity of the average user's beliefs in a god or not was very significant, but the belief rate based on access level was much more interesting. The higher access level a user had, the more likely that he or she does not believe in a higher power.

[edit] Political views

As suspected, more Wikipedians are liberal than conservative, but it does not seem to be too much of a difference.

As with before, the comparison of access levels shows the most differences. Although there is about the same percentage of conservative editors in each level on Wikipedia, editors being liberal has a direct negative correlation with the users having higher access. Editors being moderate has a direct positive correlation with a higher level, which says a lot of WP:NPOV.

[edit] Results

This graph shows that higher access levels have a positive correlation with presenting political views, while administrators are the most likely to present their religious beliefs.

[edit] Possible flaws

  • The sample sizes were not very large and may not be proportionate with the Wikipedia's actual statistical population.
  • The random samples were only as "random" as thoughtless clicking usernames.
  • The research was limited by the amount of users who chose to provide their views and beliefs, which could present bias.
  • The results were gathered by users self-identifying themselves, and may or may not be correct.
  • There are different definitions of what is conservativism and liberalism throughout the world.