[Foundation-l] MENA Education Program?

[Moushira Elamrawy]

Hi Aude,

Hope all is well. Glad to see your interest in Arabic Wikipedia, and I have
a couple of comments to some of your questions:

1) The issue with flagged revisions and handling a massive influx of
articles should ideally be addressed to the Arabic Wikipedia community. It
has already been raised in Doha last month [0] and as a result, a survey
was made; some changes are being applied; and there is a discussion
currently taking place on ARWP [1]. On the other hand, MENA educational
program isn't the first of its kind on Arabic Wikipedia: In the last couple
of years, there were at least 3 previous major projects carried out by
different MENA based organizations, where all three of them targeted
increasing content and resulted in an increased number of new users and a
massive number of new articles and there are lessons learned from how each
project was handled. In Doha, we had discussions with some of the most
active Arabic Wikipedia admins and editors and the meeting updates are
shared with the community at this very early research phase, making things
transparent and making decisions collaborative, which should help lessen
possible problems in the future.

Allow me to disagree with the word "duplication" :) - since it kind of
ignores the localization efforts and the detail oriented research that is
currently carried out by the GEP team (which I am not part of, btw). I
guess the program can only duplicate its structure, while adapt all its
other aspects to the geographies, cultures, and language projects that it
operating within.


2) The "idea" of an Egyptian chapter, has been subject to discussion since
over 4 years now. One of its main goals [2] was developing the status of
Arabic Wikipedia, same for the idea of Saudi, Tunisian, Algerian and
Moroccan chapters. The MENA catalyst project is a language aligned
initiative rather than geography based one, which means that it brings
new possibilities, more organized programs, and funding, to all those
scattered groups that were targeting the same language project. Forming a
chapter in Egypt is not a target itself, i.e. the operational model doesn't
make a difference as long as the main goals are achieved. Again, this
should ideally be discussed with the group that was supporting having a
chapter in Egypt and as long as they are supporting the new initiative _and
they are_ then there should be nothing to worry about :).


Cheers,
Moushira


[0]http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/23/arabic-wikipedia-convening
[1]
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A7:%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86/%D8%A3%D8%B1%D8%B4%D9%8A%D9%81/%D8%AA%D9%82%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9/10/2011#.D8.A7.D8.B3.D8.AA.D9.82.D8.B5.D8.A7.D8.A1_.D8.B9.D9.86_.D9.86.D8.B8.D8.A7.D9.85_.D8.A7.D9.84.D9.85.D8.B1.D8.A7.D8.AC.D8.B9.D8.A7.D8.AA_.D8.A7.D9.84.D9.85.D8.B9.D9.84.D9.85.D8.A9
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Egypt

On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 3:26 PM, aude <aude.wiki at gmail.com> 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?
>
> 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?
>
> 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.
>
> I am also concerned if you setup a trust in, say Egypt, that will put
> a damper on any efforts to form a chapter, which I know has been
> discussed.
>
> If done carefully and well, I would be very delighted to see outreach
> programs be a success for Arabic Wikipedia, and hope that will be the
> case.
>
> Cheers,
> Katie
>
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