Edit 2023/Readership of Wikipedia: Submissions:2019/How can Africa and North America partner to promote the goals of the Foundation

WikiConference North America 2023 unfortunately could not accommodate this submission in its program this year.

Wikipedia is the world's single most requested, published, accessed, and consulted source of information on almost every topic among most people who use the Internet to seek information. Despite this popularity, something is off and odd about how the public and institutions react to Wikipedia. If Wikipedia is so popular as a general reference resource, then why do individuals and institutions not react to Wikipedia with respect proportional to its influence? For example, why do cultural institutions, universities, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies make great investments to share general reference information in less popular channels like social media, websites, and traditional broadcasting, while neglecting to consider what they could accomplish more easily at lower cost through Wikipedia?

In this talk I present a preprint literature review titled, "Readership of Wikipedia". Beyond the evidence of that paper, I share Wikipedia community perspectives on audience metrics, Wikimedian in Residence roles for engaging Wikipedia, and make some comparisons between Wikipedia editing and comparable off-wiki communication industry professional services.