Wikimedia Foundation to Launch Arabic Catalyst

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Wikimedia Foundation to Launch Arabic Catalyst

As many of you know, the Wikimedia movement strategy that was finalized in February 2011 re-emphasized the importance of Arabic Wikipedia to the achievement of the Wikimedia vision. The Wikimedia Foundation team has started in the past month to work on plans to support the growth of Arabic Wikipedia in the coming months and years. We want to learn about the region and the Arabic Wikipedia community and we would like to start some initiatives in the region to create new enthusiasm for Wikipedia and close the gap between Arabic Wikipedia and larger projects, such as English Wikipedia. There are close to 400 million people who speak Arabic and we want them included in our vision.
Our plans came in line with a common interest of Qatar Foundation’s computing research institute – QCRI team which was researching possible ways of supporting Arabic Wikipedia. They feel that the Arabic language community needs to have a great Wikipedia and they want to help us to build on your work in the community to attract new editors and try new approaches. We asked them to host a small working session with us, a group of leading contributors to Arabic Wikipedia and some outside advisors as a way for us to start making plans for the near future. We will be holding this working session in Doha on 20 and 21 October. While we will only have a few people there in person, we would like to hear your thoughts on the opportunities and challenges and have set up a space on Arabic Wikipedia; for discussion before, during and after the session. We will also capture notes to share the results of the discussion. We are excited to create the first of hopefully many opportunities for Arabic Wikipedians to get together in person.
Beyond the working session, the Wikimedia Foundation is in discussions with the Qatar Foundation the joint collaboration of a pilot and then a broader launch of our Global Education Program in the region. This initiative which has been launched in the United States and India presents a real opportunity to bring new forms of contributions to Arabic Wikipedia. We plan to support outreach activities you might want to plan locally as well as regional initiatives. We are taking another look at translation work reflecting on the experiences with Google’s translation work and experiences in other parts of the world. Finally, we want to hear from the community and like-minded groups about new and innovative ways to support the growth of the Arabic Wikipedia community.
This is bound to be a long journey together and we look forward to getting to know the Arabic Wikipedia community, to learning from you and to partnering with you to achieve our shared vision. We will have an IRC hour on Thursday, October 13 2011 at 20:00 UTC in #wikipedia-ar, to listen to the community suggestions and respond to any inquiries around the initiative. The conversation will be in English and Moushira will assist with translation if required.
Barry & Moushira
Barry is the Chief Global Development Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation based in San Francisco, USA. Moushira is a consultant to the Wikimedia Foundation based in Alexandria, Egypt.

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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Interesting. I think this is a great move. I suspect all the conditions are there for arabic wikipedia to shoot up over the next few years, like russian has over the past few years
* growing internet access
* lots of people interested in getting information out
* people interested in getting access to information.
Has this been posted in arabic too?

Great idea but i think the main problem i have with Arabic Wikipedia is their stupid adoption of flagged revisions since 2009. They don’t have enough active members and editors to make this work. A lot of articles and great contributions are blocked because no one has the time to review them. I made a few edits back in 2010 and some more in 2011 and 90% are still pending and waiting for one of the few editors to take a look at them. I hope this issue will be discussed on some level at this meeting because on Arabic… Read more »

[…] future holds for the country. I will be in Egypt for the next nine days, as well as Qatar for the Arabic Wikipedia Convening and Jordan to research opportunities in the academic community and to find professors interested […]

[…] Initiated our efforts to support the growth of the Arabic Wikipedia in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region http://diff.wikimedia.org/2011/10/04/wikimedia-foundation-to-launch-arabic-catalyst/ […]

[…] holds for the country. I will be in Egypt for the next nine days, as well as in Qatar for the Arabic Wikipedia Convening and in Jordan to research opportunities in the academic community as we find professors interested […]