Whilst I can understand and empathise with the possible good natured intent of the NYT article, if one looks at the stats (that they, themselves, referenced), the demographics for other languages are vastly different[0].
Also, "Simple English"[1] is vastly different from "English"[2] and stats referenced don't seem to list "English" but, rather, "Simple English"; so, referencing it is bordering on intentionally misrepresenting the statistics to favour your argument.
The stats also notate the following: "This cutoff is arbitrary for the sake of clearly visualizing the distribution across major Wikipedia languages." This, to me, would seem to be the most disconcerting aspect/notion of the stats, in question. Arbitrarily deciding what a "cut-off" point is will, surely, make the stats askewed.
...but if we're to proceed with taking the article at face-value, then we must also ask the question:
Why is there such a stark contrast between the languages in these stats? For example, Welsh (the second-highest stat) is almost at 50%.
Why would there be such a discrepency between the two languages (English versus Welsh), if they share nigh equal hardships? Does this actually come down to culture as a byproduct of language representation?
Also, "Simple English"[1] is vastly different from "English"[2] and stats referenced don't seem to list "English" but, rather, "Simple English"; so, referencing it is bordering on intentionally misrepresenting the statistics to favour your argument.
The stats also notate the following: "This cutoff is arbitrary for the sake of clearly visualizing the distribution across major Wikipedia languages." This, to me, would seem to be the most disconcerting aspect/notion of the stats, in question. Arbitrarily deciding what a "cut-off" point is will, surely, make the stats askewed.
...but if we're to proceed with taking the article at face-value, then we must also ask the question:
Why is there such a stark contrast between the languages in these stats? For example, Welsh (the second-highest stat) is almost at 50%.
Why would there be such a discrepency between the two languages (English versus Welsh), if they share nigh equal hardships? Does this actually come down to culture as a byproduct of language representation?
[0] - https://whgi.wmflabs.org/gender-by-language.html
[1] - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page