If Wikipedia is a place where people come to negotiate a shared understanding of the truth, these patterns of editing activity suggest that it might work in part because people come from regions of differing political beliefs, especially including the bellwether swing states, and that trustworthiness is established through the interaction of contributors across the political spectrum.

Source: 2010 census; 2013–17 American Community Survey (ACS) five-year estimates

Source: 2010 census; 2013–17 American Community Survey (ACS) five-year estimates

Source: 2010 census; 2013–17 American Community Survey (ACS) five-year estimates

Source: 2010 census; 2013–17 American Community Survey (ACS) five-year estimates

Editing patterns also map onto other demographic lines: The pattern of editing activity in Appalachia and the South appears to match population density, income, education, and broadband access. Does proximity to other people make you more inclined toward collective action, or is it simply the fact that editing would be difficult without the income to purchase a computer, access to broadband, and education to feel comfortable with formatting citations? While idealistic Wikipedians might like to think it is the former, the persistent and well-documented poverty of the rural South seems the more likely cause. This area of low editing, from East Texas to Virginia, includes the highest concentration of African Americans in the country, raising the likelihood that income, education, and internet access intersect with racial inequity as factors that prevent participation.

Following this pattern, Native American communities also appear to be prevented from editing by similar factors: low education, high poverty, and lack of internet access. Nearly all counties with majority Native American populations have low editing rates.

The absence of participation from majority Native American counties, and rural, poor, black counties in the South, is troubling. This absence is not a choice—as it may be with the deeply religious—but an inability to contribute due to intersectional inequality. Furthermore, the Wikipedia community’s forms of outreach are ill-equipped to reach these rural regions, because in-person meetups, edit-a-thons, and university programs all require population density to succeed.

English Wikipedia Editors by Country

Source: Analysis of Wikipedia IP editor activity

While the United States accounts for nearly half of the editors, looking at the data from an international perspective reveals the United States as just one part of the colonial legacy of the English language. The five largest contributors were part of what once was the British Empire, and account for nearly 75 percent of all editors.

Source: Analysis of Wikipedia IP editor activity

Global editing patterns also trace specific geographic contours of the British Empire: While editing activity across Africa is orders of magnitude lower than all other inhabited continents, the more active countries are mostly former British colonies; Francophone West Africa is one of the regions with the lowest activity. India is the third-largest contributor to English Wikipedia. I spoke with the Indian regional organizer for Art+Feminism—the Wikipedia editing nonprofit I co-founded—about the importance of translating our training materials into Hindi, Bengali, and other languages of India; she said that it wasn’t a priority, because her participants are focused on editing English Wikipedia and have little interest in editing the Hindi or Bengali Wikipedias. This is a result of the colonial legacy of English and its contemporary role in social and economic mobility, but also because of the gravitational pull of English Wikipedia: 92 percent of all Wikipedia traffic in India is to the English version, and if you want to share your knowledge, for better or worse, you go to where the audience is.