On Nov 16, 2011, at 3:04 AM, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 1:39 AM, Barry Newstead <bnewst...@wikimedia.org > >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... except for some reply to Keegan now >> >> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 5:26 AM, aude <aude.w...@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? 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 > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
