[Foundation-l] MENA Education Program?

[Muhammad Yahia]

>
> >
> > 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
>

I don't want to open a hornet's nest, but as someone who has actually lived
most of his life in the middle east, I couldn't disagree more.

Local dialects/languages have not been formally adopted in any Arabic
speaking country that I know of as an everyday *written* language, so I
don't know how ppl would love to write in their native dialect/language
when they have never been writing it before. And the Egyptian Arabic
wikipedia that Gerard refers to as doing 'relatively well' suffers from
exactly the same issues as the Arabic wikipedia in general on a smaller
scale (add to that antagonism by a lot of ppl as evident on OTRS not
familiar with reading their spoken dialect and thinking it's weird). Issues
that has nothing to do with the dialect the material is written in.

Let's please not derail the conversation from the good initiatives being
developed.



-- 
Best Regards,
Muhammad Yahia