Forwarding message to the Arabic community list, as per the request to get
in touch with people growing the Arabic Wikipedia in terms of content or
community. See full message below.
Original senders CC'd.
--
Tighe Flanagan
Manager, Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
tflanagan(a)wikimedia.org
education.wikimedia.org
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Linksvayer <ml(a)gondwanaland.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 1:49 PM
Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Arabic Wikipedia research-driven improvement &
Bassel
To: Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Cc: Jon Phillips <jon(a)fabricatorz.com>
Hi, you may have read
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/10/08/bassel-missing-syria/ about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassel_Khartabil and focusing on one of
his projects, building free 3D models of Palmyra, before he was
detained. Bassel also did outreach for free/open projects throughout the
region and dreamed of projects to increase the number and quality of
articles on Arabic Wikipedia. But he is in prison, now taken to an
unknown location. :(
Bassel's friend and advocate Jon Phillips (not on this list but cc'd) is
looking to talk to people who are actually engaged in efforts to grow
the Arabic Wikipedia community and articles, I believe in order to show
the kind of work Bassel would have been doing and that the world has
lost, and to be supportive of others carrying on that work.
If anyone has such contacts who would be willing to talk to Jon, feel
free to reply on- or offlist as appropriate.
This seemed to be the most appropriate list for me to ask on because it
is one of a few wikimedia ones that I'm on :) and because I figure that
best such efforts will be paired with research. I did look at
http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/Main_Page and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Projects -- I see lots of
papers doing some kind of semantic analysis of Arabic Wikipedia, one
study of the Arab spring
http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/Collective_memory_building_in_Wikipedia…
and a master's thesis that seems to be unavailable
http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/Motivational_voluntary_knowledge_sharin…
-- the best lead might be
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Mapping_Wikipedia_in_the_Middle_Ea…
which looks broad but potentially very relevant. Have I missed anything
obvious, or non-obvious because too new/ongoing?
...
Another question, mostly out of (idle, but this seems like a good time
to ask) personal curiosity: is there a line of research about movements
that looks at responses to movement members in distress, perhaps in
order to characterize level of solidarity, maturity, or some other
feature of movement, or to map connections between movements? Or
concerning how vulnerable movement members are to various forms of
persecution, perhaps in order to characterize where movement operates
with regard to law and norms of society? I figure there must be but my
super naive searches haven't turned up anything.
I'm curious because I wonder how free/libre/open/wiki movements compare
to other movements and member vulnerability/responses to member distress
seem like a potential thing to compare, and I notice how Bassel, who had
'weak ties' to a whole bunch of open movements (and 'strong ties' to
Creative Commons) has gotten a fair amount of support from ... a whole
bunch (which is good of course).
Thanks for reading.
Mike
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