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With more than 280 million native speakers, Arabic is one of the world’s most spoken languages, but the Arabic Wikipedia has lagged behind other language Wikipedias in terms of the amount of articles. The Arabic Wikipedia has only 205,000 articles — a tiny fraction in comparison to the English Wikipedia, which has 4.2 million articles. But the Arabic Wikipedia has been steadily growing over the last year, thanks in part to the efforts of college students in Egypt participating in the Wikipedia Education Program.

The Wikipedia Education Program kicked off in Egypt with a Cairo pilot at two universities, Ain Shams University and Cairo University. The chart at right shows the amount of content added to the Arabic Wikipedia by students participating in the program. In the first term of the pilot, students added about 1.85 million bytes of content to the Arabic Wikipedia — an incredible achievement celebrated at a conference in Cairo in July 2012. In the second term of the pilot, which wrapped up in February 2013, students contributed even more, with over 5.97 million bytes of content added to the Arabic Wikipedia. In addition, students who we’ve introduced to editing through the Wikipedia Education Program have contributed an additional 515,000 bytes, meaning the program has brought a total of more than 8.34 million bytes to the Arabic Wikipedia.

Volunteer program leaders organized a second celebration conference at Cairo University on February 27, 2013. Dr. Abeer Abd El-Hafez, a professor of Spanish from Cairo University, opened the conference and spoke about the spirit of the program and its importance in the lives of students and teachers in terms of skills development and new experiences. Faris El-Gwely, the education program consultant who runs the program in Egypt, shared results from the second term, and the best students and Ambassadors from the program received certificates recognizing their hard work. Students and professors also shared information about their experiences in the program. See more photos from the conference.

The second celebration conference was a catalyst for the program to grow. Two more universities in northern Egypt have joined the program, Damanhour University and Kafr El-Sheikh University, as has Saint Khadija High School for Girls in Cairo. The drive from these programs comes from past students and Wikipedia Ambassadors who want to volunteer their time to further the spread of the Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt:

• Walaa Abd El-Moneim, leader of the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University
• Doaa Saif El-Din, leader of the Faculty of Al-Alsun (Languages), Ain Shams University
• Helana Raafat and Mina Saber, leaders of the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University
• Samir El-Sharabaty, commander of the Faculty of Education, Damanhour University

Egypt is not the only Arab World country to see growth in the Wikipedia Education Program. In the term that’s just beginning, universities in Algeria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have joined the program. All told, more than 45 classes will be editing the Arabic Wikipedia as part of their coursework this term.

In Jordan, Dr. Nidal Yousef of Isra University is one of five university professors teaching Wikipedia classes this term through the program. The Jordanian Teachers Association is also leading a program where high school students in every governorate in Jordan will be editing Wikipedia as part of their schoolwork, assisted by volunteer Wikipedia Ambassadors. Dr. Abd El-Haq Fareh of Algeria is also incorporating Wikipedia editing into his free software class this term. And Dr. Mohammed Alghbban and Dr. Sami Bin Slimah of King Saud University are leading a Wikipedia translation program in Saudi Arabia in their school’s languages department.

We look forward to seeing the Arabic Wikipedia continue to grow, thanks to these dedicated faculty leaders and students.

Faris El-Gwely, Education Program Consultant, Arab World
LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

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Walaa Abdel Manaem

Walaa Abdel Manaem had browsed Wikipedia whenever she needed to find information about something, but she’d never contributed until March 2012. Walaa, a native of Giza, Egypt, was enrolled in Dr. Abeer Abd El-Hafez’s Spanish course at Cairo University. The course was participating in the pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt, and Dr. Abeer asked Walaa and her classmates to translate articles from the Spanish Wikipedia to the Arabic Wikipedia about Latin American authors.

For Walaa, the experience was eye-opening. A master’s student in modern Spanish literature at Cairo University, Walaa found that she loved contributing to Wikipedia. She started by creating an article on Juan José Arreola, a Mexican short story writer, on April 5, 2012. And Walaa was hooked.

“I was very happy to participate in Wikipedia,” Walaa says. “I like studying Spanish and Latin American literature. Dr. Abeer was teaching us the method and the application of the translation of Spanish to Arabic and vice versa, and her specialty is Latin American literature. She told us that there is a little information about the Latin American writers in the Arabic Wikipedia.”

So Walaa set out to change that. Today, she has more than 8,500 edits, with 68 articles created. Her article on Juan José Arreola has reached Good Article status on the Arabic Wikipedia, and her article on The Well of Loneliness, a novel by British writer Radclyffe Hall, is soon to be a Featured Article on the Arabic Wikipedia. And Walaa is steadily climbing in the list of the top 500 editors to the Arabic Wikipedia.

More recently, Walaa has expanded her volunteer work for Wikipedia to include serving as a Campus Ambassador for Dr. Abeer’s class. She’s also helping out other classes doing Spanish and English translations as an Online Ambassador.

“I like working with Dr. Abeer because of her enthusiasm with her students to publish free knowledge,” Walaa says. “This assignment is very good and more suitable to our time, because our generation doesn’t use papers like a more traditional assignment.”

Although Walaa finished her M.A. preliminary year at Cairo University, she intends to keep contributing to the Arabic Wikipedia and expanding the availability of information available, especially in her favorite area, literature.

“My knowledge is published for all the world,” Walaa says about why she likes contributing to the Arabic Wikipedia. “I’m very happy when my work appears in Google as a part of Wikipedia and everyone can use it easily.”

LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

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Helana Fola and Mina Saber are students of French Literature at Ain Shams University in Cairo, and neither had given much thought about contributing to Wikipedia or doing translations until they enrolled in Dr. Hoda Abaza’s French course in spring 2012. Dr. Hoda had signed up to participate in the Cairo Pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program, and was encouraging her students to translate high-quality articles from the French Wikipedia into the Arabic Wikipedia.

Helana Fola

“When I learned that I would write content for the Arabic Wikipedia, I was scared,” Helana says. “How will I write information that’s will be readen by millions?”

Helana didn’t want to translate articles from the French Wikipedia; she wanted to improve content about the Arab world on the Arabic Wikipedia. So Helana created the article on the Arabic Wikipedia events of 2011 in Egypt . She revised the article over and over, and with input from Wikipedia Ambassadors and other Arabic Wikipedia editors, she brought the article up to a Featured Article status on the Arabic Wikipedia.

“My favorite part about writing for Wikipedia is that I learned something new that’s useful to me and to my community,” Helana says. She’s also working on an article that had the chronology of the January 25 revolution in Egypt and has signed up to continue helping new students in the Wikipedia Education Program as an Ambassador in Cairo.

Mina Saber

Mina has also discovered translation skills from the Wikipedia assignment in Dr. Hoda’s class. He chose to translate and expand the article on the 2012 French presidential election (French original) (Arabic version).

“I was interested to know about the election and the political parties in France,” Mina says. “Dr. Hoda gave me the idea and I wrote the article using a lot of French newspapers and French Wikipedia articles as reference.”

Mina really enjoyed working on Wikipedia, and he was looking for his next topic to work on when tragedy struck the Ain Shams campus. Dr. Alaa Fayez, the president of Ain Shams, died in a car accident, and Mina decided he would write the article about him on the Arabic Wikipedia. Mina followed that by translating a Featured Article from the French Wikipedia about the history of Jews in Germany.

“My translation skills have improved, as have my knowledge and performance,” Mina says of the Wikipedia assignment. “My favorite part was having a new experience writing long articles on Wikipedia and seeing the page view statistics.”

Like Helana, Mina is now serving as a Wikipedia Ambassador to help new students learn how to edit Wikipedia in the next term of the Wikipedia Education Program. He credits Dr. Hoda and the Ambassadors, especially Faris El-Gwely, with helping him discover a passion for editing Wikipedia.

“I really liked the Wikipedia program, and I am happy we were given the opportunity to participate in this project,” Helana says.

LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

العربية

طلاب الأدب الفرنسي في القاهرة يكتشفون مهارات الترجمة من خلال مشروع ويكيبيديا

هيلانا رأفت و مينا صابر من طلاب الأدب الفرنسي في جامعة عين شمس في القاهرة، وكلاهما لم يفكرا كثيرا في المساهمة أو الترجمة في ويكيبيديا حتى التحقا بمادة الأدب الفرنسي لدى الدكتورة هدى أباظة في ربيع عام 2012. كانت الدكتورة هدى قد قامت بالتوقيع على المشاركة في مشروع برنامج ويكيبيديا التعليمي التجريبي في القاهرة، وقامت بتشجيع طلابها على ترجمة مقالات ذات جودة عالية من ويكيبيديا الفرنسية إلى ويكيبيديا العربية، أو كتابة مقالاتهم الخاصة.

هيلانا رأفت

“لقد أصبت بالرعب عندما علمت أنني سأكتب محتوى لويكيبيديا العربية،” كما تقول هيلانا. “كيف سأتمكن من كتابة معلومات سيقرأها الملايين؟”في البداية لم ترغب هيلانا في ترجمة المقالات من ويكيبيديا الفرنسية، لقد أرادت تطوير محتوى عن العالم العربي على ويكيبيديا العربية. أنشأت هيلانا مقالة أحداث 2011 في مصر على ويكيبيديا العربية ، وتعلقت بها. قامت بتنقيح المقالة مرارا وتكرارا، وبمساهمة من سفراء ويكيبيديا وغيرهم من محرري ويكيبيديا العربية، أوصلت المقالة إلى حالة المقالة المختارة على ويكيبيديا العربية.

“الجزء المفضل لدي حول الكتابة في ويكيبيديا هو أنني تعلمت شيئا جديدا مفيدا لي ولمجتمعي ،” كما تقول هيلانا. وهي تعمل أيضا على مقال عن التسلسل الزمني لثورة 25 يناير في مصر. ووافقت على الاستمرار في مساعدة الطلاب الجدد في برنامج ويكيبيديا التعليمي كسفير في القاهرة.

مينا صابر

وقد اكتشف مينا أيضا مهارات الترجمة من خلال التحرير على ويكيبيديا في صف الدكتورة هدى أباظة. ولقد اختار ترجمة وتوسيع مقالة 2012 انتخابات الرئاسة الفرنسية.

وقال مينا “كنت مهتما بالتعرف على الانتخابات والأحزاب السياسية في فرنسا، قامت الدكتورة هدى بتزويدي بالفكرة وكتبت المقالة باستخدام الكثير من مقالات الصحف الفرنسية ومقالات ويكيبيديا الفرنسية كمرجع.”

استمتع مينا حقا بالعمل في ويكيبيديا، وكان يبحث عن موضوع للعمل المقبل حين وقعت مأساة في حرم عين شمس حيث توفي الدكتور علاء فايز رئيس جامعة عين شمس في حادث سيارة، وقرر مينا انه بإمكانه كتابة مقالة عنه في ويكيبيديا العربية. تبع مينا ذلك بترجمة مقالة مختارة من ويكيبيديا الفرنسية عن تاريخ اليهود في ألمانيا.

يقول مينا عن فوائد ويكيبيديا “تحسنت مهارات الترجمة لدي، وكذلك معرفتي وأداءي، كان الجزء المفضل لدي هو حصولي على تجربة جديدة لكتابة مقالات طويلة في ويكيبيديا ورؤية إحصاءات مشاهدة الصفحة.”

هيلانا ومينا يخدمان الآن كسفيرا لويكيبيديا لمساعدة الطلاب الجدد في المرحلة التالية على تعلم كيفية تحرير ويكيبيديا في برنامج ويكيبيديا للتعليم. ويدينان بالشكر للدكتورة هدى أباظة وللسفراء، وخاصة فارس الجويلي، لمساعدته على اكتشاف شغف تحرير ويكيبيديا.

“أنا أحب حقا برنامج ويكيبيديا، وأنا سعيدة لإعطاءنا الفرصة للمشاركة في هذا المشروع،” كما تقول هيلانا.

ليانا ديفيس، مدير اتصالات برنامج ويكيبيديا للتعليم

Dr. Abeer El Hafez teaches Spanish to undergraduate and master’s students at Cairo University, but she understands the importance of making information available to her students on Wikipedia in their native language of Arabic. So she jumped at the chance to participate in the Wikimedia Foundation’s Cairo Pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program. Dr. Abeer received support from trained Wikipedia Ambassadors in exchange for having her students edit Wikipedia articles as part of their coursework.

Dr. Abeer talks about her experiences in Arabic.

With 13 students who all added significant information to Wikipedia, Dr. Abeer’s course ranked at the top of pilot participants in terms of contributions. Her students worked on a total of 31 articles on the Arabic Wikipedia, with some students making edits to the corresponding Spanish Wikipedia entries as well. To teach students the subject matter, Dr. Abeer told students to pick a writer from Latin America or Spain who had a high quality article on the Spanish Wikipedia. Students translated the article from the Spanish Wikipedia into Arabic.

In a few cases, when articles weren’t available on the Spanish Wikipedia, students researched and wrote articles from scratch for the Arabic Wikipedia, then updated the Spanish Wikipedia versions of the articles. One such example is the article on Laura Restrepo (in Arabic) (in Spanish), an author and journalist from Colombia. The article on the Spanish Wikipedia was a stub article, so Dr. Abeer’s student researched more information and expanded the article on the Spanish Wikipedia and created the article on the Arabic Wikipedia.

“The students were very motivated to do something practical,” Dr. Abeer said. “They got a chance to enhance the knowledge available to Arabic readers. The Wikipedia assignment is a great way to visualize their text for all of the Arabic world.”

Dr. Abeer says the traditional knowledge production at the university level can be mechanistic for some students, and mixing it up with an assignment like contributing to Wikipedia is a good way of challenging students. She looks forward to using Wikipedia with her undergraduates next term.

LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

تطوير مقالات ويكيبيديا العربية والإسبانية في أحد صفوف جامعة القاهرة

تدرس الدكتورة عبير عبد الحافظ اللغة الإسبانية لصفوف المرحلة الجامعية الأولى ومرحلة الماجستير في جامعة القاهرة، وهي تدرك أهمية

الدكتورة عبير عبد الحافظ تتكلم عن تجربتها في برنامج ويكيبيديا في التعليم.

جعل المعرفة متاحة لطلابها على ويكيبيديا بلغتهم الأم، اللغة العربية. لذلك قررت الاشتراك في تجربة القاهرة من برنامج ويكيبيديا التعليمي في مؤسسة ويكيميديا. تلقت الدكتورة عبير الدعم من سفراء ويكيبيديا المدربين بهدف أن يقوم طلابها بتحرير مقالات ويكيبيديا كجزء من واجباتهم الدراسية.

وبوجود ١٣ طالب قاموا بإضافة كم كبير من المعلومات إلى ويكيبيديا، حصل صف الدكتورة عبير على الترتيب الأعلى في البرنامج من قبل كمية المساهمات، حيث أن طلابها عملوا على ٣١ مقالة في ويكيبيديا العربية، بالإضافة إلى أن بعض الطلاب عملوا على مقالات مقابلة في ويكيبيديا الإسبانية أيضا. ومن أجل أن توصل الدكتورة عبير المعلومة بشكل جيد طلبت من طلابها اختيار أحد الكتاب من أمريكا اللاتينية أو إسبانيا والذي قد ألف عنه مقالة جيدة المستوى في ويكيبيديا الإسبانية، وقام الطلاب بترجمة تلك المقالات من الإسبانية إلى العربية.

وفي بعض الحالات التي لم تكن بها المقالات متوفرة باللغة الإسبانية، قام الطلاب بكتابة المقالات باللغة العربية بدءا من الصفر، ومن ثم أضافوا المعلومات إلى مقالات ويكيبيديا الإسبانية. أحد تلك الأمثلة هو مقالة لورا ريستريبو (بالإسبانية)، مؤلفة وصحفية من كولومبيا. كانت المقالة في ويكيبيديا الإسبانية عبارة عن بذرة قصيرة، حيث قام طلاب الدكتورة عبير بالبحث عن المعلومات وتطوير المقالة على ويكيبيديا الإسبانية وأنشأوا مقالة عنها باللغة العربية أيضا.

تقول الدكتورة عبير “إن الطلاب كانوا متحمسين جدا للقيام بشيء عملي، وقد حصلوا على الفرصة لتطوير المعرفة المتاحة للقارئ العربي. إن الواجب الدراسي على ويكيبيديا هو وسيلة رائعة لتحويل نصوصهم إلى مادة قراءة لجميع العالم العربي”

كما تضيف الدكتورة عبير بأن الإنتاج المعرفي التقليدي في المستوى الجامعي من الممكن أن يكون شيء آلي بالنسبة لبعض الطلاب، وبخطلها مع واجب مثل المشاركة في ويكيبيديا هو شيء جيد لتحدي الطلاب. وتتطلع الدكتورة عبير إلى استخدام ويكيبيديا مع طلابها في صفوف المرحلة الجامعية الأولى في الفصل القادم.

Group photo of Cairo end-of-term conference participants on the second day of the conference.

More than forty professors, Ambassadors, students, and supporters of the Cairo Pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program gathered at Ain Shams University in Egypt this week for an end-of-term conference wrapping up the first term of the pilot.

By all accounts, the first term of the Cairo Pilot was a success. Professors encouraged their students to edit Wikipedia in the program, with assistance from Campus Ambassadors at Ain Shams University and Cairo University and Online Ambassadors from around the world who helped students virtually. We started small; seven classes joined, with a handful of students participating in each class. For most students, the assignment was optional, either for no grade or for extra credit, which meant that fewer students actually edited Wikipedia than initially signed up, but the results are stunning even given this caveat. A total of 54 students created user accounts through the pilot, and those students edited an incredible 246 Arabic Wikipedia articles. All told, they added 1.1 million bytes of content to the article namespace on the Arabic Wikipedia, which translates to about 372 printed pages of content.

For the Wikimedia Foundation, the Cairo Pilot served as a showcase and learning experiment that will pave the way for future projects on the Arabic Wikipedia. As a pilot, the program served as a proof of concept for using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in universities in Egypt. We had no idea if students would be excited about the assignment, nor if professors would feel like it was worthwhile in meeting course goals. But over the Cairo Pilot, we learned that the Wikipedia Education Program was a good fit for Egyptian universities, and the enthusiasm displayed by students, professors, and Ambassadors significantly exceeded our expectations.

Participants had the opportunity to share learnings with each other.

Although the project only served as a feasibility study, the information students added already made a difference. Mina Saber, a student in Dr. Hoda Abaza’s French class at Ain Shams University, started the article on the 2012 French Presidential Election on the Arabic Wikipedia. Soon, an experienced Arabic Wikipedian stumbled across the article and added more content, collaborating with Mina to make the article even better. Within the 30 days of the election, the article received more than 2,000 visits, meaning Mina’s work had a direct impact on Arabic speaking people looking for information on the French presidential election. His contributions came as an extracurricular activity, but one he truly enjoyed.

“When we do it for marks, we don’t have as much enthusiasm as when we do it for ourselves,” Mina said. “I prefer Wikipedia articles because it benefits other people, not just me.”

Ain Shams Professor Dalia El-Toukhy organized a group of her postgraduate French translation students to translate articles from French to Arabic as an extracurricular activity. She’s looking forward to continuing the project in the future.

“This was the first time the effort in translation for class was useful to a large number of people,” she said. “It exposes the students’ work to real-life experience.”

Dr. Hany Hosseiny, a mathematics professor at Cairo University, agreed. He asked his students to write articles on the historical origins of math topics, including the evolution of the subject. He’d edited the Arabic Wikipedia in 2006 when he noticed some errors in the coverage of mathematics topics, but he’d fallen away from the habit until he heard about the Cairo Pilot, which he eagerly joined.

“I wanted to give my students the opportunity to see what we do not teach, the history of these topics,” he said. “Doing something like this for themselves is the best way to learn what we don’t teach outside the classroom.”

Students and professors were assisted by Wikipedia Ambassadors, who provided technical support and information about Wikipedia. And at the conference, many students reported they would like to serve as Campus Ambassadors next term, assisting more students as they learn to edit the Arabic Wikipedia.

“I feel that I am serving Egypt,” said Campus Ambassador Doaa Seif. “As an Arab, I would like to see us serving our countries. I’m looking forward to the day when we have an even larger Arabic Wikipedia.”

LiAnna Davis, Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

As students in Cairo enter their last month of Wikipedia-editing before their final exam period, we are more than happy to report that the outcomes of the Cairo Pilot so far have been truly impressive. In an earlier blog post one of us (Annie Lin) described the plans and goals of the Cairo Pilot — how and why we are working with university professors who are assigning students to edit the Arabic Wikipedia — and in a more recent blog post Annie provided mid-term updates. Now, as we near the end of the academic term in Cairo, we look back at all that the professors, students, and Wikipedia Ambassadors have accomplished, and we are amazed. Overall, the Cairo Pilot has been a huge success.

Students in Dr. Iman Ezzeldin's class work on Arabic Wikipedia articles about famous theatrical productions and playwrights.

Just to provide some examples: in one of the participating classes at Ain Shams University, a student created the Arabic Wikipedia article on the French presidential elections of 2012, and has built it into a long, substantial article, updating the content as results from the French presidential elections emerge. In the past 30 days alone, this article has received more than 4,000 unique views, demonstrating the public impact that students in the Cairo Pilot are having. In the same class, other students have added more than 100 kilobytes worth of content to an article about Egyptian events that took place in 2011.

We’ve also seen that having students translate articles is a highly effective way to improve the quality and quantity of the Arabic Wikipedia. At Cairo University, students have translated multiple Wikipedia articles about famous Latin American writers from Spanish to Arabic. At Ain Shams University, after translating two lengthy articles (on civil disobedience and the U.S. Bank Panic of 1907), students are moving on to translate yet another long article (on Cholangiocarcinoma, a type of cancer).

At the time of this writing, students in the Cairo Pilot have contributed more than 847,000 characters to the Arabic Wikipedia, which is the equivalent of approximately 565 whole pages. These numbers will increase further as students finish editing this month. We are also very excited that some students have already expressed strong interest in continuing to edit the Arabic Wikipedia even after the academic term ends.

We certainly also faced many challenges in the past months: for example, Ambassadors and students often have to cope with unreliable internet connections, the unstable political situation in Cairo occasionally disrupts schedules, and a few classes took longer to start editing Wikipedia. These challenges — as well as the successes — have given us many insights into what factors are important for the Wikipedia Education Program to be more effective, and these insights will be highly valuable as we begin working with the community to plan for future terms (more about this to come!).

Faris El-Gwely, Education Program Coordinator, Cairo
Annie Lin, Global Education Program Manager 

Having just returned from a weeklong trip to Cairo, I am happy to report that the Cairo education pilot project is off to an exciting start! As one of the newest wings of the Wikipedia Education Program, the Cairo Pilot aims to increase the quality and quantity of the Arabic Wikipedia by working with university professors who incorporate Wikipedia-editing into their classes. As described in my earlier blog post, to keep this pilot small we are involving only the top 5-15 students from a small number of classes this term (see the detailed Cairo Pilot program plan).

Cairo University students practice editing Wikipedia in a workshop led by Campus Ambassadors, March 2012.

The academic term began last month, and already the participating classes are showing great enthusiasm and promise. After participating in a faculty workshop in January — where the Cairo professors learned more about how Wikipedia works and tips around designing Wikipedia assignments from local Wikipedians and a Wikipedia Education Program faculty veteran (Rochelle Davis of Georgetown University) — the participating faculty members have incorporated innovative Wikipedia projects into their respective classes. For example, in Professor Hany Hosseiny’s mathematics class at Cairo University, students will do extensive research and write Arabic articles about famous mathematicians and mathematical concepts. Most of the students in the Cairo Pilot will do the majority of on-wiki editing in April and May, although Professor El-Toukhy’s postgraduate French students at Ain Shams University have already begun translating entire Wikipedia articles from French to Arabic (they plan to finish translating the entire 12-page-long article Civil Disobedience within the next ten days, after which they’ll move on to translating at least three other long articles). It is also worth mentioning that the vast majority of students in the pilot are women.

The Wikipedia Ambassadors in Cairo have been doing a great job explaining Wikipedia policies and editing skills to students, and the participating professors and students are very excited to play such a big role in growing Arabic free knowledge.

-Annie Lin (آني/سمر)
Wikipedia Education Program Manager

For about ten days in December, Frank Schulenburg, Moushira Elamrawy, and I met with various professors, students, and local Wikipedians in Cairo, Egypt. The initial Arabic Catalyst Project trip from October showed that there is potential in working with faculty members and students on improving the Arabic Wikipedia; this December trip made clear that there is a very high level of interest among people at universities in Cairo to do so.

The Cairo pilot project – the newest part of the Wikipedia Education Program – will begin in early 2012. Its primary goal will be to improve the quality and quantity of the Arabic Wikipedia, which is currently very small (only about 150,000 articles) even though as the fifth most common language in the world Arabic has about 400 million speakers worldwide (compare this to Japanese, which has about 130 million speakers worldwide but almost 800,000 Wikipedia articles). As part of the Cairo pilot, students from Ain Shams University and Cairo University will contribute new content to the Arabic Wikipedia or translate content from another language into Arabic on Wikipedia. The plan is to have about 4-6 classes in the pilot, and only the top 3-15 students from each of these classes will actually contribute to Wikipedia. We want to keep the pilot very small, to make sure that we’ve figured out what works and doesn’t work before we expand the project to more people and more places.

Wikipedia Education Program staff meet with Arabic Wikimedians in Cairo, Egypt, in December 2011.

We were surprised by how many instructors in Egypt were excited about participating in the project. Everybody we talked to was convinced that growing and enhancing the Arabic Wikipedia would be a good idea – in fact, many professors and students told us they felt the responsibility to make free knowledge in Arabic better. We have identified about six professors for participation in the pilot, based on their understanding of Wikipedia, their genuine interest in enhancing the Arabic Wikipedia, and the writing skills of their students. Almost all the students we met also showed genuine interest in learning more about Wikipedia and contributing to it.

We are also very happy to have the support of local Wikipedians. Essam Sharaf – a long-term Wikipedian and a student at Cairo University – connected us with professors and students, helped us maneuver the streets and campuses of Cairo, and enhanced our understanding of Egypt’s social, cultural, and political context. Frank, Moushira, and I also met with an active group of Cairo-based Arabic Wikipedians and went on a photo-walk with them, during which we took pictures of Old Cairo and then uploaded them onto Wikimedia Commons (including the panoramic photo now on this Wikipedia article). We’ve also been communicating with other members of the Arabic Wikipedia community, whom we’ve found to be extremely helpful and inspiring. We feel very fortunate that this group of enthusiastic, smart, and motivated volunteers has expressed genuine interest in becoming Wikipedia Ambassadors (who teach students how to edit Wikipedia) and laying the foundation to make the Cairo pilot a success.

-Annie Lin (آني/سمر)
Wikipedia Education Program Manager