Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Sources/Arabic Wikipedia village pump

Information edit

What group or community is this source coming from?

name of group Arabic Wikipedia
virtual location (page-link) or physical location (city/state/country) discussion link
Location type (e.g. local wiki, Facebook, in-person discussion, telephone conference) local wiki
# of participants in this discussion (a rough count)
  • Village pump (discussion link).
  • Village pump is the most active place for discussions on all Arabic language WikiProjects.
  • Arabic Wikipedia village pump is divided into seven separate sections, roughly translating to: administration, policies, proposals, linguistics, technical, news, and other.
  • The discussion should be held in only a single section of the above, with the most convenient one probably being proposals.

Summary edit

The summary is a group of summary sentences and associated keywords that describe the relevant topic(s). Below is an example.

The first column (after the line number) should be a single sentence. The second column should be a comma-separated list of keywords about that sentence, and so on. Taken together, all the sentences should provide an accurate summary of what was discussed with the specific community.

Summary for the discussion:

Line Statement (summary sentence) Keywords
1
  • I believe that focusing on Wikipedia Education Program, through introducing Wikipedia to university/school curriculum, will be essential for the future progress of Wikimedia. Every university student should be able to contribute something to Wikipedia, even if it is only a small stub.
  • Opening permanent local offices of Wikimedia, especially in educational institutions, in order to increase collaboration and partnerships with domestic organizations.
Wikipedia Education Program, university, students
2 Referring to comment 1: What, do you think, are the most effective steps that need to be taken to expand Wikipedia Education Program, knowing it already has its own independent foundation? Wiki Education Foundation
3 Answering previous comment: Two reasons:
  • Shortage of education's instruction pages that are translated to Arabic.
  • Lack of an official headquarters in any Arab university or country, which other interested institutions could possibly refer to/communicate with, or which volunteer individuals can ask for logistics and financing to start Education Programs in their own universities.
Wikipedia Education Program, communication, financing
4 We have two essential problems: Vandalism, which is so prominent that we need special software to aid editors in monitoring and controlling it, and the rising competition by new Wikipedia versions in other Arabic dialects (like Egyptian, Moroccan and such). Vandalism, non-English Wikipedia
5 I like the suggestion by Polish Wikipedia users ("To focus on creating one multilingual Wikipedia", which was translated from the Polish source page), I think implementing this idea might finally revive dead sister WikiProjects such as Wikiversity, Wikibooks and Wikivoyage WikiProjects, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, translation
6 Referring to comment 5: I agree, I do not really understand why should we have a separate language version for each Wikiproject, especially in the case of something like Wiktionary. Wiktionary
7 I support the idea of German users ("To have editiorial expert boards", which was translated from the German source page), I believe we are going to be much better off with a paid staff to review Arabic Wikipedia's content, especially language and grammar wise. Paid staff, grammar
8 It might be a good idea to let every Wikimedian community of a particular geography maintain their own content, while accepting feedback from other geographic communities. Community
9 Deletion authority should not be solely held by admins, reviewers (or such experienced users) should also be able to delete articles on Wikimedia projects. Deletion
10 Referring to comment 4: I agree that it is wrong to have Wikipedia versions in each dialect, since it is going to generate plenty of tension between these versions. Voting on new Wikipedia versions should be made by the broader global community of Wikimedia. New Wikipedia version
11 The most successful approach to developing Arabic Wikipedia is through the Education Program: we need to invest more energy in introducing it to new universities and schools Arab-wide. It should not only focus on creating new articles, but also on providing pictures/media just as much, as we should also find new ways to invite photographers to Wikimedia projects and to convince them how much their work could be useful to us. Wikipedia Education Program, university, school, photography
12 Arabic Wikipedia needs a more organized framework. We should have an elected committee to receive suggestions and complaints from admins, editors and new users alike and work on implementing them positively. Committee, board
13 I support the idea of German Wikipedians as well ("To have editiorial expert boards", which was translated from the German source page) Committee, board
14 One essential problem of Arabic Wikipedia is its user rights system. In English, new users are automatically granted auto-patrolled status upon exceeding 500 edits, while the Arabic version troubles them with way too many restrictions (currently, editor flag can only be granted when a request is manually made by the user then approved by a sysop). User rights
15 Arabic Wikipedia, as of now, is extremely biased in three particular areas: Islam, Christianity and Palestine related articles. We need to implement serious measurements to resolves such bias. POV, neutrality
16 Referring to comment 15: English Wikipedia is just as biased in articles related to Germany and Jewish people. POV, neutrality
17 Improve Wikipedia's editing by adding automatic grammar check tool, to help in eliminating countless grammar mistakes. Create a team of contributors who are specialized in uploading photos, since the licensing/uploading process seems plain impossible to new comers. Make Wikipedia social media-friendly in order to reach a new, wider audience. Admins should not hold all the important user rights on Wikipedia, revision and deletion authorities should be granted to other experienced users. Stop creating new language projects (e. g. Egyptian Wikipedia), as they are wasting so much energy while serving very little of an audience. Offer paid salaries to some contributors as an encouragement (just as famous users on Youtube profit from their channels so that they thrive to improve their videos). Add a tool to support formal communication with outside entities, like universities or important people, in order to verify information on Wikipedia. Grant regular rewards to the active Wikimedia users to appreciate their hard work. Photos, grammar, social media, new Wikipedia version, salary
18 Wikipedia's science related articles are ridiculously hard to understand. Contributors should consider a more straightforward writing style, and they need to keep in mind they are writing to non-expert audience. Science, writing style
19 We need to support more audio articles. Audio
20 I had like to adjust the suggestions of German Wikipedians ("To have editiorial expert boards", which was translated from the German source page) so that it fits the needs of our community. We have a severe POV problem, a possible solution could be to have an elected board from outside of Arabic Wikipedia to ensure the neutrality of our content. POV, neutrality
21 New comers are not currently welcome on Wikipedia, which is one major thing we have to think about for the upcoming 15 years. While the veteran community should be a little more open to them, Wikipedia's infrastructure should be also improved to encourage creating new articles and make it easier for inexperienced people to contribute. Newcomers
22 Mediawiki should be developed to support tabs and smartphones better. We also must rethink the current tools of inserting content on Wikiprojects, since they seem pretty primitive. Another issue is that Toolslab seems to have a ton of extremely useful softwares, but no one really uses them. Mediawiki
23 GLAM projects should be a major focus for the next few years, we need to get more data from public libraries. GLAM
24 Depending on the mere web to make Wikimedia projects known may have been effective in the past, but it is definitely not going to work for the next 15 years. Wikipedia needs to adopt a more social media orientated approach, Facebook and Twitter are of utmost importance for internet readers today and they will bring so much new traffic. Social media
25 Wikimedia projects should allow users to make a unified login through all their devices. Just like you could be logged in on your google account from both your phone and PC at the same time, same should be possible for Wikipedia. Login, Wikimedia projects
26 Most dictionary apps on phones use databases that are practically identical to Wiktionary's, but most people would not use Wiktionary only because it has such a complicated interface and a poor mobile support. If apps do not meet the users desires, people will simply go for substitute options. Wiktionary
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If you need more lines, you can copy them from Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Sources/Lines.

Detailed notes (Optional) edit

If you have detailed notes in addition to the summary, you may add them here. For example, the notes may come from an in-person discussion or workshop. If your discussion happened on a wiki or other online space, you do not need to copy the detailed notes here.