For the record, the day was organized across all of ar.wp , so Arabic speakers from all around the world participated, there was however two large teams: the one in Bib. Alex. that Samuel mentioned and one in Cairo in the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Marine transport. As far as I know there was also some smaller focus groups elsewhere, and a LOT of people on IRC. And yes there was 685 distinct articles contributed, the goal was 1000 but people are pleased with the 685 result :) .

http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8...

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 2:04 PM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.comwrote:

Samuel Klein wrote:

...

The Library of Alexandria (and Moushira and Abdel Rahman in particular) helped organize and host an Arabic Wikipedia day yesterday... if I read correctly, people contributed roughly 685 new articles in a day, and 4200 this month (increasing the project size by almost 1% in a day! and 6% this month). I looked at a selection from today, and nothing seemed scripted, /many/ contributors added new articles, including a number of anons. And it's good to see that the obligations imposed by the heavier volume is being taken seriously: http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86 http://www.bibalex.org/english/media/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=2278

I think Khaled Hosny and EGLUG in Cairo helped put on their own Wikipedia day(s?) earlier in August. There was certainly discussion of Arabic-language editing drives at Wikimania in Alexandria, but it's pretty awesome to see it taking place -- barnraisings are a good spectator sport (and motivation to practice a new language :-). Congrats to everyone involved, browsing the results made my night.

SJ (who heard about the event but forgot during the day, and was reminded by the sitenotice when browsing ar:wp for something quite different...)

That's wonderful news !

Regarding participation from the (by large) area of the world, I spent a while being bold on the french wikipedia in the past 2-3 days (active deletionnist) and I was very pleased to note the very serious increase in articles related to Marrocco. These are not always good ones, lot's of stuff on small villages, famous sportmen, actresses etc... but this is a very good sign that Wikipedia is now hosting a significant number of editors in that country ;-) So, I thought it was very good news.

Ant

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