Hoi, For reasons that are not in line with the policies of the language committee, the board has refused to allow new projects in any of the Arabic languages. The Language policy allows for this; the WMF board will decide if it will allow a new project when there are issues, any issues. The insistence on one Arabic language is not based in fact. The ISO standard explicitly recognises them.
The Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia is doing relatively well and shows that there is room for linguistic diversity for multiple Arabic languages. Thanks, GerardM
PS It is my personal opinion that there is room for the many languages that are used in the Arabic world
On Wednesday, 16 November 2011, aude wrote:
On Nov 16, 2011, at 3:04 AM, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki@gmail.comjavascript:;
wrote:
On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 1:39 AM, Barry Newstead <bnewstead@wikimedia.orgjavascript:;
wrote:
Hi Katie, Just to build on Moushira's response to tackle your questions a bit further.
Thank you Moushira and Barry for the replies.
I won't give a full reply just yet, since I am typing on my phone...v except for some reply to Keegan now
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 5:26 AM, aude <aude.wiki@gmail.comjavascript:;>
wrote:
Erik, Sue, Frank, et al,
Can you please say more about the plans for a Middle East education program? (yes I have read notes from the recent trip on outreach wiki)
What is the timeframe? Who is going to run it? Will you establish a "trust" there? Where will the office be?
We are planning a pilot in Cairo, but have not yet firmed up the details. Frank, Annie and Moushira will spend a week in Cairo in December to investigate the opportunity further and see when it would make sense to run a small pilot. We are hoping for February, but want to make sure the conditions are right for success.
If the program is to be duplicated, I certainly hope there are not the same issues with quality, as has happened in Pune. What lessons have you learned and what will you do differently?
We do not plan on duplicating the Pune experience. For one, we want to do a much smaller pilot. We also want to dig into questions regarding copyright and student writing ability in Arabic before we start the pilot. Nitika has captured a series of lessons on the pilot [1] and we are doing further detailed evaluation work to ensure we mine the pilot fully.
Knowing that there is quite a backlog, last time I checked, with pending changes on Arabic Wikipedia, I am very concerned for the ability of volunteers there to handle a massive influx of new content.
This is a concern we share...and we discussed this with the community members in Doha as Moushira mentioned. No easy solutions here and we'll need to innovate.
Forgive me if I've missed something, I don't have time in the day to follow all the links I'm provided in emails.
Why exactly are we focusing on the Arabic Wikipedia and not localized dialects and languages?
Yes there are dialects, and if you want to call it a dialect, yes there is the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia which is mostly spoken and not necessarily written. Arabic Wikipedia is appropriate here for the education project.
Relying on a group to tutor as well as maintain a website doesn't work very well when we branch from an internet forum to an encyclopedia. The Public Policy Initiative team did an amazing job in setting up standards for education programs and has expanded well in North America and the UK and will continue to grow. Growth means learning, and I think that we learned from the India project on the English Wikipedia that international projects need a bit more time and structure before we dive into creating content.
The west has a nasty habit of considering every Middle East country as just speaking Arabic with little regard to Semetic languages. I believe there is a reason that the Arabic Wikipedia is vastly underused, staffed, and content: people like writing in their native language.
Actually a lot of people (as with India) in Egypt and other places edit English Wikipedia. (about 50% edits to English / 50% to Arabic)
Cheers, Katie
The Indian project is a different matter- I'd say the exception to the rule. I can understand Egypt and a couple other countries being interested in the Arabic project, but in my amateur opinion such an undertaking by the WMF's education program should hold off for a bit until there's a solid community to help. We can't use wikis and Wikimedia projects as educational tools without guidance from a solid community.
Again, just my opinion as someone keenly following the use of Wikimedia for education. I hope the best for the MENA project. Annie, Frank, Moushira, any others involved I'm more than happy to help if needed.
-- ~Keegan
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