On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 1:34 PM, 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. > > > > 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? > > 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. 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. > > +1 As someone a bit more familiar with Middle-east, I couldn't agree more. Regards Theo _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l