Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 June 3

= June 3 =

Does Wikipedia have a disproportionate amount of highly educated users?
Often, I visit user pages to see how the users describe themselves. What I find is that most users from the Reference Desk sample are (1) schoolteachers, (2) academic faculty members, (3) professional researchers, (4) and mathematically inclined computer programmers. People with Master's and PhDs working in technology and education industries are supposed to be the minority of the population, but it seems that they make up the majority of the Wikipedia population. Has there been an analysis on the Wikipedian populace? Are there any Wikipedians who are highly educated in underwater basket weaving? What about Wikipedians who hold blue-collar jobs or only have a Bachelor of Science degree or only have a high school education? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:51, 3 June 2017 (UTC)


 * According to the 2012 Wikipedia Editor's survey of 17577 editors, 5% completed less than high school, 15% completed high school, 18% completed a college degree, 15% completed a master's degree, and 6% have doctorate degrees. 41% of survey takers did not answer this question. Compare that to the country of your choosing, whose distribution I'm sure you can find with a simple google search. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:05, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
 * [[file:2012 People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed an Advanced Degree by State (percent).png|thumb|right|200px]] We don't have to google for the USA, we have a nice article on Higher_education_in_the_United_States. Naively, the survey shows about 21% of WP users hold an advanced degree, and according to our map, that is higher than the proportion of advanced degree holders in every single state. No surprise really, editing en encyclopedia is inherently a scholarly activity, so I'd be more surprised if we didn't have an over-representation of scholars here. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:55, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Bashang Plateau v. Bashang Grasslands
Is the place referred to in the Wiki article the same as the Bashang Grasslands in this article? I'm wondering because the article takes place in Fengning County which is not one of counties mentioned in the article. Muzzleflash (talk) 16:00, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Bashan (坝上, meaning “above / upper dam”) Grassland (草原) would be a more accurate translation (the first character of the second pair, 草 (cao) means grass). The second of that set, 原, means level.DOR (HK) (talk) 14:02, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The kind of "草原" （"grassy plains") that exists in Inner Mongolia is conventionally translated as "steppes". "Plateau" corresponds to a separate word "高原" ("high plains").
 * OP, the Chinese wikipedia article confirms that "Bashang Plateau" is also called "Bashang Steppes/Grasslands". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:21, 5 June 2017 (UTC)