Why are the number of users _and_ rank the criteria for a need in participation?

I find the "question of the week" weirdly formulated. The assumption that the rank that Wikipedia has in a country determines that the number of users needs to be increased seems to make no sense in some countries, France being a definite example of that. If you look at the French numbers (Médiamétrie) Wikipedia ranks 9, with 15 million unique visitors (a little less than 50% of the online population). Even with Comscore numbers, Wikipedia in France has a reach of 30% of the online population, same as the US.

In the end, I think the criteria for deciding which of the countries are in need of "tactics to increase the number of users" should be decided on different numbers. I am no statistician, but I'm thinking that a ratio online population/total population(in age of writing on wp) should be the first criteria, and the second should be the percentage of online users reached by Wikipedia.

With such numbers, one could then decide whether tactics need to include a better online communication, for example, or on the contrary find ways to reach a public offline.

Ranking, as I see it, bears little relevance to the topic at hand. If Wikipedia is number 98 in a country, but reaches 98% of the online population (while the other 97 websites reach 100% of the population), I hardly see how we can increase participation :). Delphine (notafish) 21:59, 15 December 2009 (UTC)