  This article analyzes one month of edits to Wikipedia in order to examine the
role of users editing multiple language editions (referred to as multilingual
users). Such multilingual users may serve an important function in diffusing
information across different language editions of the encyclopedia, and prior
work has suggested this could reduce the level of self-focus bias in each
edition. This study finds multilingual users are much more active than their
single-edition (monolingual) counterparts. They are found in all language
editions, but smaller-sized editions with fewer users have a higher percentage
of multilingual users than larger-sized editions. About a quarter of
multilingual users always edit the same articles in multiple languages, while
just over 40% of multilingual users edit different articles in different
languages. When non-English users do edit a second language edition, that
edition is most frequently English. Nonetheless, several regional and
linguistic cross-editing patterns are also present.
