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The Arabic Wikipedia (Arabic: ويكيبيديا العربية Wīkībīdyā al-ʿArabiyya or ويكيبيديا، الموسوعة الحرة Wīkībīdyā, al-Mawsūʿa al-Ḥurra) is the Arabic language version of Wikipedia. It started on 9 July 2003. As of April 2015, it has over 350,000 articles, 974,500 registered users and over 23,000 images. The Arabic Wikipedia is currently the 22nd largest edition of Wikipedia by article count, and was the first Semitic language to exceed 100,000 articles.[2] The design of the Arabic Wikipedia differs somewhat from other Wikipedias. Most notably, since Arabic is written right-to-left, the location of links is a mirror image of those Wikipedias in languages written left-to-right. Prior to Wikipedia's update to MediaWiki 1.16, Arabic Wikipedia had a default page background of the site inspired by Arabic/Islamic tiling or ornament styles. Switching from MediaWiki's new default Vector layout to the original MonoBook layout may restore this page background. "Edit" button on Arabic Wikipedia screenshot, old background in 2008 History Arab Wikipedians meeting during Wikimania conference in Hong Kong At the emergence of the Wikipedia project in 2001, there were calls to create an Arabic domain raised by Arab engineers.[3] The domain was created as "ar.wikipedia.org" but no serious activity took place except with anonymous users who experimented with the idea.[4] Until 7 February 2003, all contributors to the Arabic Wikipedia were non-Arab volunteers from the International Project Wikipedia[5] that handled the technical aspects. Elizabeth Bauer, who used the user name Elian in the Arabic Wikipedia, approached many potential Arabs who might be interested in volunteering to spearhead the Arabic project. The only group who responded were the ArabEyes team who were involved in Arabizing the Open Source initiatives. Elian's request were conservatively received and ArabEyes team were ready to participate but not take a leadership role[6] and then declined participating on the second of February 2003. During this negotiation time, volunteer users from the German Wikipedia project continued to develop the technical infrastructure of the Arabic Wikipedia backbone.[7][8] In 2003 Rami Tarawneh (Arabic: رامي عوض الطراونة), a Jordanian PhD student in Germany who originated from Zarqa, encountered the English Wikipedia and began to edit content. Contributors encouraged him to start an Arabic Wikipedia.[9] The Arabic Wikipedia opened in July 2003.[10] By that year a significant group of contributors included Tarawneh and four other Jordanians studying in Germany.[9] On 7 February 2004,[11] one member from the ArabEyes, Isam Bayazidi (Arabic: عصام بايزيدي), volunteered with 4 other friends to be involved with the Arabic Wikipedia and assumed some leadership roles. In 2004, Bayazid was assigned the SysOp responsibilities and he, with another 5 volunteers, namely Ayman, Abo Suleiman, Mustapha Ahmad and Bassem Jarkas[12] are considered to be the first Arabs to lead the Wikipedia project and they are attributed for working on translating and enforcing the English policies to Arabic. The Arabic Wikipedia faced many challenges at it inception. In February 2004, it was considered to be the worst Wikipedia project among all other languages. However, in 2005, it showed phenomenal progress by which in December 2005, the total number of articles reached 8,285.[13] By that time, there were fewer than 20 contributors and the administrators and contributors made efforts to recruit new users.[9] In 2007 the secret police in an unspecified country detained Tarawneh and demanded that he reveal the IP address of a contributor. To protect the Wikipedian, the administrators forged a dispute that was the presumed reason for Tarawneh losing his administrator access, so the secret police was unable to obtain the IP. In response to the incident, the rules now state that no one user may have access to all information about the Wikipedia's users.[9] Second Conference of the Wikipedia Education Program in Cairo University, Egypt, February 27, 2013 In 2008 the Wikipedia had had fewer than 65,000 articles and was ranked #29 out of the Wikipedias, behind the Esperanto Wikipedia and the Slovenian Wikipedia. Noam Cohen of The New York Times reported that, to many of the attendees of the 2008 Wikimania conference in Alexandria, Egypt, the "woeful shape of the Arabic Wikipedia has been the cause of chagrin."[14] Cohen stated that out of Egyptians, fewer than 10% "are thought to have internet access" and of those with internet access many tend to be knowledgeable in English and have a preference of communicating in that language.[14] The Arabic Wikipedia had 118,870 articles as of 15 January 2010. As of July 2012 there are around 630 active Arabic Wikipedia editors around the world. Ikram Al-Yacoub of Al Arabiya says that this is "a relatively low figure."[15] At the time there were hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles on the Arabic Wikipedia.[9] The Wikimedia Foundation and the nonprofit group Taghreedat established the "Arabic Wikipedia Editors Program" intended to train users to edit the Arabic Wikipedia.[15] By the end of June 2014, the number of articles has reached 384,000[16] Blocking The Arabic Wikipedia has been blocked in Syria with no official reasons given by the Syrian government.[17] The block began on 30 April 2008 while all other language versions of Wikipedia remain unblocked and freely accessible. And it is still blocked in the country so far[when?]. Wikimedia.org[when?] continues to be blocked, which causes all images on Wikipedia (in all languages) to be unavailable.[citation needed] Tarawneh stated that wasta was used to unblock Wikipedia in Syria.[9] In Saudi Arabia, a few articles on the Arabic Wikipedia are known to be censored; Tarawneh stated that articles about body parts are among the censored articles.[9] Evaluation and criticism Map showing which countries the page views for Arabic Wikipedia come from Page views to different Wikipedia language versions in Northern Africa and the Middle East, September 2009 to July 2010[18] In September 2012, Arabic Wikipedia scored 243 in terms of depth (a rough indicator of the encyclopedia's quality). This is better than the German version (89), the French version (159) or the Japanese version (59), making it the 2nd highest +100,000 articles Wikipedia in the terms of depth after English Wikipedia (696).[19] At Wikimania 2008, Jimmy Wales argued that high-profile arrests like those of Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer could be hampering the development of the Arabic Wikipedia by making editors afraid to contribute.[20] In 2010, Tarek Al Kaziri, from Radio Netherlands Worldwide, believed that Arabic Wikipedia reflected the Arabic reality in general. Low participation lowers the probability that the articles are reviewed, developed and updated, and political polarisation of participants is likely to lead to biases in the articles.[21] In 2008, an article from The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli newspaper, accused the Arabic Wikipedia of being biased against Israel and on many other issues. The article was written by a journalist who says that he doesn't "read or speak Arabic" and used Google Translations to understand the content of the Arabic Wikipedia.[22] According to Alexa Internet, on 26 November 2014, the Arabic Wikipedia is the 10th most visited language version of Wikipedia in terms of percentage of visitors on all of the Wikipedias over a month, with the "ar.wikipedia.org" subdomain attracting approximately 1.8% of the total visitors of the "wikipedia.org" website,[23] despite being ranked no. 22 in term of the article count. In terms of page views, it is ranked 12th with the same 10 Wikipedias above it plus the Polish and Dutch ones.[24] Usage and page views by country Florence Devouard, the former president of the Wikimedia Foundation, stated in 2010 that the largest number of articles on the Arabic Wikipedia were written by Egyptians and that the Egyptians were more likely to participate in the Arabic Wikipedia compared to other groups.[25] Percentage of page views from each country, in the period from 1 December 2014 - 31 December 2014:[26] Rank Country % of views 1 Egypt 20.5% 2 Saudi Arabia 17.9% 3 Algeria 12.5% 4 Morocco 11.4% 5 Iraq 4.1% 6 Jordan 3.6% 7 Tunisia 3.6% 8 Palestine 3.2% 9 United Arab Emirates 2.2% 10 United States 2.0% The share of Arabic Wikipedia edits and views by countries with more than 5% Rank Country % of views 1 Jan 2014 - 31 Mar 2014[27] % of views 1 Dec 2014 - 31 Dec 2014 % of Edits 1 Palestinian territories 73.2% 76.9 2 Yemen 72.1% 75.4 3 Libya 68.4% 73.4 4 Iraq 64.5% 63.9 5 Egypt 61.4% 64.5 6 Sudan 60.0% 62.7 7 Jordan 58.7% 60.7 8 Saudi Arabia 58.3% 59.7 9 Algeria 46.7% 48.5 10 Syria 38.3% 70.9 11 Morocco 37.5% 43.6 12 Kuwait 37.4% 33.6 13 Mauritania 37.0% 35.0 14 Oman 36.0% 39.0 15 Tunisia 31.7% 34.2 16 Bahrain 25.3% 30.5 17 Lebanon 22.1% 25.7 18 Qatar 18.5% 19.8 19 United Arab Emirates 9.9% 11.7 20 Somalia 9.4% 12.4 Milestones Arabic Wikipedia was launched in September 2001, yet due to MediaWiki software migration, the oldest surviving edit dates back to 9 July 2003. Article number 10,000 was نكاف (Mumps) created on 25 December 2005. Article number 50,000 was جامعة تكساس مدرسة الطب في هيوستن (University of Texas Medical Branch) created on 31 December 2007. Article number 75,000 was ترتيب الصحارى من حيث المساحة (List of deserts by area) created on 30 August 2008. Article number 100,000 was المعهد العالي للفنون والحرف بقابس (University of Gabès) created on 25 May 2009. Article number 200,000 was الجوازع، إب (A village in Yemen) created on 21 October 2012. Article number 250,000 was جانيت جاينور (Janet Gaynor) created on 6 December 2013. |
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