A recent Atlantic Monthly article quoted a Polish Wikipedian named Krzysztof Jasiutowicz as saying that the Internet was nothing but a “global Wikipedia without the end-user editing facility.” So if Wikipedia ends up reflecting the number of web pages, there are millions of entries left to write in the English Wikipedia. True, the English Wikipedians have picked the low-hanging fruit. But the numbers don’t necessarily reflect the law of diminishing returns just yet.

Here’s the data for the top 25 Wikipedia languages by number of entries, per capita, and per Internet user (which puts low-income, high-population countries like China on more equal footing). Despite the law of diminishing returns, you’ll notice that the Scandinavian languages still have a much higher participation rate compared to Wikipedias with a similar number of entries. There are some other obvious factors at work here: percentage of workforce at desk jobs, GDP per capita, and the date that Wikipedia was started in their language. Though I’m not sure what explains the relatively low participation rate in Japan. And Korea didn’t even make the top 25.