[Foundation-l] MENA Education Program?

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 1:34 PM, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 1:39 AM, Barry Newstead <bnewstead at wikimedia.org
> >wrote:
>
> > Hi Katie,
> > Just to build on Moushira's response to tackle your questions a bit
> > further.
> >
> > On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 5:26 AM, 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?
> > >
> >
> > 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?
>
> 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.  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.
>
>
+1

As someone a bit more familiar with Middle-east, I couldn't agree more.

Regards
Theo