Arabic-speaking countries in the MENA region are the main focus of WikiArabia 2016, hence figuring their local challenges and needs is one of our important objectives before the event.
WikiArabia is a conference mainly orientated towards the community of Arabic language Wikimedia projects. Although we welcome participants from all over the worldو and especially our neighboring Middle eastern or African countries, the primary objective of this event is to promote Wikipedia in the 21 countries compromising the Arab World region. In order to achieve this goal in the best possible way, it is crucial for us to figure the local challenges and needs for Wikimedia communities in each one of these countries.
Countries
Jordan
Strengths:
Small base of highly-experienced veteran editors, who has been active Wikimedians for several years.
Relatively active local community with periodic meetings, once every month or two.
Experience with organizational work; Wiki loves monuments, Wikipedia education program, and several workshops and community initiatives.
Affiliation with Wikimedia movement through a user group; Wikimedians of the Levant.
Growing community coordination along the past few years; represented by holding Wiki loves monuments yearly since 2013, foundation of Wikimedia Levant recently and now hosting WikiArabia.
Good resources coming through collaboration with other NGOs and few government agencies.
Weakness:
Little coordination between the experienced Jordanian Wikimedians and the local education program, resulting in relatively weak performance and low article quality.
Low involvement of new Wikimedians in the local meetings and activities.
Weak planning of local activities before holding them.
Weak community strategy and governance.
Presence in main-stream media.
Needs:
Higher engagement of new community members.
More technically experienced volunteers.
More collaboration with Wikimedia Levant and other Arab World user groups.
Gain experience on improving organizational effectiveness.
Morocco
Strengths:
Relatively large and enthusiastic Wikimedia community.
A newly founded user group, which allows Wikimedians in the country to focus their efforts together. The community is also highly motivated for their new group.
Plenty of societies and NGOs to cooperate with.
Strong public relations with the media sector, as well as some technology supervisors.
Strong bonds with other Wikimedian communities in North Africa.
Weakness:
High number of Moroccan contributors living in diaspora, or cities located afar from each other.
Multilingual community, making it harder to focus on a particular Wikipedia version, as contributors may either speak Arabic, French, English, Berber or Darijah.
Lack of financial resources, which makes it hard to organize meetings and activities.
Limited involvement in the international Wikimedia movement, since the group is only newly founded.
Lack of periodical meetings.
Needs:
Learning from the experiences of other Wikimedia groups, especially about things like organizing outdoor activities and dealing with routine issues.
More active members to participate in the meetings and events.
