أرابيكا:الميدان/أرشيف/أخبار/2011/نوفمبر

Wikipedia Education Program: Pilot in Cairo

Hi All,

Some of the Wikipedians I met in Doha last month encouraged me to contact the Arabic Wikipedia community directly on this page. Preferably, I would write this in Arabic, and hopefully, I don't offend anyone by addressing you in English.

For those of you, who don't know me, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Frank Schulenburg and was born and raised in the small city of Uelzen in Northern Germany. I studied History and French and German Literature in Göttingen – a university town somewhere in the middle of Germany  – and spent some time of my life in France. I worked quite a while for the University of Göttingen (at the library and the Institute of Economic History). In 2005, I started to contribute to Wikipedia and between 2006 and 2008 I was a board member of the German Wikimedia chapter. In 2008, I got hired by the Wikimedia Foundation and moved to the United States. Today, I'm living with my wife and my two stepdaughters in Santa Rosa, about two hours north of San Francisco. In my free time, I still write Wikipedia articles – mostly biographies about people from the 17th and 18th century.

I've been thinking a lot over the last years about how to increase the number of people who contribute to Wikipedia. In 2010, the Wikimedia Foundation started a pilot project at U.S. universities that encouraged students to write Wikipedia articles instead of traditional term papers. This pilot project turned out to be a huge success. Students from a number of universities contributed a large amount of content to Wikipedia and they also liked this kind of an assignment better than a traditional one (mostly because they were excited that other people could benefit from their knowledge – just the opposite of an traditional term paper that might end up in the drawer of your professor).

That said, the Wikimedia Foundation would like to build on the past experiences and start a small pilot program in Egypt. That's why I'm here. I would like to get your feedback and I'm also asking for your support. I think there is a huge opportunity to improve the amount and quality of content of the Arabic Wikipedia by getting more people to start editing. I also believe that students are a good target group for us.

Now, what are the concrete plans and next steps?

  • The pilot: Based both on our learnings so far and the amount of resources at hand, we suggest to start really small. New Wikipedians always need feedback and handholding and I don't want to overwhelm the existing community with a large number of new contributors that need ongoing support. So we were thinking to start with 4–6 classes. Not all of the students in these classes will edit. We are planning to make the assignment optional, so that students can decide whether they want to improve a Wikipedia article or do something else instead. Instead of doing pilots in several countries, we will focus on one country. We rather want to get it right instead of doing too many things at the time.
  • How we are planning to set it up: We believe that there are many different models to make students contribute to Wikipedia. We know at least of two models that seam to work well: (a) students improve existing articles or write new articles based on their own research, and (b) students who are enrolled in translation classes translate existing articles from some other language. As we don't know which model will work better in this specific environment, we would like to set the pilot up as an A/B-testing. That means 2–3 classes will read books and improve articles accordingly and another 2–3 classes will translate existing articles (with feedback from their professors).
  • Next steps: My team member Annie Lin are planning a trip to Egypt in early December. We will talk to professors at different universities in Cairo and we will hopefully have the opportunity to talk to students as well. Moushira, who most of you know, will support us on our trip. Then, in January we would like to train some Wikipedia Ambassadors. That's people who support the students online and on Campus and who help them to make their first contributions.

Let me be really clear about the expected outcome. Only a small fraction of the students will stay and become a long-term Wikipedian. Instead, we are hoping for a long-term effect: as more and more professors start using Wikipedia in the classroom, the Arabic Wikipedia will become better every semester. This might take some time and we will learn a lot together along the way. I truly believe it's worth it. Between 2010 and 2011, the 800 students enrolled in our program added an equivalent of 5,800 printed pages to the English Wikpedia and improved its quality significantly. Here, we are starting with a smaller number of students – so don't set your expectations too high. The goal of starting with a pilot is not to get as much content as possible in the shortest amount of time, but to understand what works well and what doesn't and what needs to be done to make the model work. It will be ok to fail in some parts as long as we are able and willing to draw the right conclusions.

Finally, let me tell you how excited I am about this. I met some of you at the first Arabic Wikipedia convening in Doha. I was glad to meet you in person and I was overwhelmed by the Arab hospitality and friendliness. I am thrilled about the opportunities of this pilot project – in the long run it will hopefully help to make more content in Arabic freely available on the web.

What's your feedback? Does that make sense?

All the best. --Frank Schulenburg (نقاش) 01:31، 15 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Hello Frank, I am glad to read your introduction about the pilot program in Cairo here. It could take some efforts to translate your message into Arabic, but I will add hereinafter a summary for it and a comment to encourage contributions in Arabic for those who may not be able to write their comments in English. Me or some others may translate their comments into English later. By the way, it will be a good idea to have a simple userpage for you on Ar.Wp. Best regards. -- Ciphers

ملخص الرسالة في الأعلى : مرحبا للجميع أنا فرانك من مؤسسة ويكيميديا، مهمتي هي نشر فكرة التحرير في أرابيكا في الجامعات. عملنا خلال الأعوام السابقة في الولايات المتحدة، حيث حققت الفكرة الكثير من النجاحات. سنبدأ العمل على نشر فكرة تحرير أرابيكا في الجامعات بالتعاون مع الأساتذة الجامعيين من القاهرة بدءا من نهاية العام الجاري ونتطلع ليس فقط لزيادة المحتوى أو جلب بعض المحررين المميزين إلى أرابيكا فحسب، بل أيضا إلى تشجيع الأساتذة على إضافة مادة التحرير في أرابيكا إلى منهاجهم الدرسي ليتتابع النشاط بشكل مستمر في المستقبل. أتطلع إلى مشاركاتكم، آرائكم ومقترحاتكم. أطيب الأماني.

ملاحظة : بالإمكان وضع التعليقات باللغة العربية وسيقوم أحدهم بترجمتها إلى الإنكليزية لاحقا حسب الوقت المتاح. --سايفرز (نقاشمساهمات) 13:22، 15 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Thanks a lot, Ciphers! I really appreciate your help. I've just created a user page. --Frank Schulenburg (نقاش) 15:25، 15 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

مرحبًا (Frank Schulenburg), مع إحترامي للمشروع الذي سيقام في مصر, لكن المشروع لن يصل إلى الهدف المراد بإهمال باقي الدول العربية مثل: فلسطين وبالأخص جامعة النجاح الوطنية (المرتبة الخامسة عربيًا), وجامعة الملك سعود (الأولى عربيًا), ولن ننسى الجامعات السورية والأردنية: مثل جامعة تشرين والجامعة الأردنية وغيرهن الكثير. فلتكن مصر هي البداية في السنة الأولى وبعدها ضم كل من بلاد الشام ودول الخليج وتونس (بما أنا تحررت, فلربما يريدون الشباب والكبار بالعمر بتطوير أنفسهم ومهاراتهم والتعبير عن علمهم بإنشاء مقالات علمية في ويكيبديا العربية. حيث أن سكان المغرب العربي يجيدون اللغة الفرنسية بشكل ممتاز فهذه ستكون نقطة إيجابية لهم. وشكرًا (مع كامل الإحترام لهذا المشروع النبيل). --رائد 1991 (نقاش) 17:42، 15 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Hi 1991 رائد, if I understand you correctly, you are pointing out that we shouldn't just try to increase participation in Egypt, and that in the long run we should target other countries as well. I strongly agree with you. On my last trip, I also visited the University of Jordan in Amman and as far as I can tell you now, there has been a strong interest in the program as well. So, yes, you are absolutely right: Cairo is just a start and we should then investigate (based on the learnings from the pilot) which other universities and other countries should be included in the second round. Here is where we will need your advice: once we have successfully completed the pilot, we will need your expertise to decide which universities we should reach out to next. That said, I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate this kind of feedback. The Wikipedians here know the region much better than we do and I truly believe that we can only be successful if we work together. So, again, thank you very much for your help. Is there anything else we should think about? --Frank Schulenburg (نقاش) 01:01، 16 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

> Frank, I see that you could understand the question well, so I will just add a brief translation for your reply down here. best -- Ciphers
ملخص لجواب فرانك على سؤال رائد : أنا أوافقك تماما، أثناء زيارتي السابقة للمنطقة قمت أيضا بزيارة لجامعة الأردن ولاحظت الاهتمام الكبير بالبرنامج. أنت محق يجب علينا أن نتوسع في البرنامج مستقبلا إلا أن القاهرة هي نقطة البداية فقط، وبعد نجاح هذه التجربة سيكون علينا التوسع في جامعات ومناطق أخرى، وهنا سيكون دوركم في تقديم النصح لنا حول الأماكن الأكثر مناسبة لذلك فخبرتكم تفوق معرفتنا حول الموضوع. شكرا على تعليقك.

--سايفرز (نقاشمساهمات) 23:02، 16 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Yes, Google Translate actually works quite well here. I will always rephrase the question though – it's just to easy to misunderstand someone when communicating online ;-) Thanks a lot for your help with the translations. I appreciate it a lot! --Frank Schulenburg (نقاش) 23:54، 16 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Direct collaboration between Egyptian students and American students?

Hi everyone! Let me introduce myself a bit on here as well. My name is Annie Lin; I am the Global Education Program Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, and I am working with Frank Schulenburg to support the development of a Wikipedia education program in the Middle East / North Africa region. I wholeheartedly agree with Frank that this kind of program can only be successful with the involvement of the Arabic community - you all know so much more about the local education system and culture, so I really appreciate all the insights and suggestions that you have already shared and will hopefully continue to share. A bit more about me personally: I was born in southern Taiwan, and spent a significant chunk of my formative years there. I lived for a while in Los Angeles, and got my academic degree from the University of California at Berkeley, where I studied Sociology and Public Policy. At Berkeley I actually took one semester of Arabic because I am very interested in Arabic language, culture, and history - so I can sort of sound out Arabic words, although I do not really speak the language (but I'd love to learn to speak and write Arabic more fluently! Maybe some of you can help me with that, too). I am super excited about the Cairo pilot next semester, and I agree with the comment made earlier that we should expand the program to other schools and other countries down the line as well. I genuinely look forward to working with you all on developing these programs over the next months.


As Frank mentioned above, our plan right now is to start a very small pilot of the education program next semester (spring 2012), in Cairo. As Frank also mentioned, we'd like to do some A/B testing - we'd like to have half of the classes in the pilot write new content for the Arabic Wikipedia, while the other half of the classes will translate Wikipedia articles from another language into Arabic.

Yesterday, Frank and I had a very productive call with Professor Adel Iskandar (currently a professor at Georgetown University in the U.S. who has been intimately connected with the Middle East / North Africa region for many many years both professionally and personally - he accompanied Frank to the Middle East / North Africa area a month ago because he is very knowledgeable about the area). From that call, a potential third option emerged. I'd like to share that here with you all to get your input on it. What we talked about was that besides having classes that write new content and classes that translate articles, it might be nice to also have classes that will pair up with a U.S.-based class (like a class at Georgetown University) that is also contributing to the Arabic Wikipedia. Professor Adel Iskandar informed us that Georgetown University has one of the best Arab Studies programs in the United States, and some classes at Georgetown require students to write in fluent Arabic. We discussed that it could be a great opportunity to directly connect students in an university in Cairo with students in a school like Georgetown. The two classes can maybe collaborate on writing or translating a Wikipedia article, can review each other's work on the Arabic Wikipedia, and can in general be "buddies" for each other on contributing to the Arabic Wikipedia.

What does everyone think about this idea? I think it will be very exciting both for professors/students in Cairo and professors/students in the U.S. to have this kind of opportunity for truly global collaboration. Please share your thoughts about this here! I'd love to know what you think. Annie Lin - Wikimedia Foundation (نقاش) 18:33، 22 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Hello Annie. I will add a summary for your message in Arabic down here. Personally, I see the idea of collaboration between university students is fascinating! --سايفرز (نقاشمساهمات) 15:25، 26 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

ترجمة لملخص الرسالة في الأعلى: مرحبا، اسمي أني لين أعمل مديرة لبرنامج التعليم الدولي في مؤسسة ويكيميديا مع فرانك. أوافق فرانك على أهمية مشاركة مجتمع أرابيكا من أجل نجاح برنامج التعليم في العالم العربي. أنا شخصيا درست اللغة العربية لفترة قصيرة في الجامعة، وأتطلع إلى زيارتي القادمة إلى القاهرة في الفصل القادم. كما ذكر فرانك فإن برنامجنا الحالي هو بداية صغيرة في ربيع عام 2012 في القاهرة عن طريق تعليم أرابيكا في المحاضرات، حيث سيقوم نصف الطلاب بكتابة مقالات، وسيقوم النصف الآخر بترجمة مقالات إلى العربية. في الأمس اتصلنا مع البروفسور عادل ألكسندر من جامعة جورج تاون والذي كان قد نفذ برنامج مماثل عن المساهمة في أرابيكا من قبل الطلاب في مطلع هذا العام، وقد ناقشنا فكرة إنشاء فرق عمل طلاببة مشتركة بين جامعة القاهرة وجامعة جورج تاون من أجل تطوير المحتوى العربي حيث أن هناك الكثير من الطلاب المتقنين للغة العربية في جامعته. وستكون تلك فرصة لتكون علاقات صداقة بين طلاب الجامعتين. ما رأي الجميع بهذه الفكرة. أتطلع إلى مساهماتكم. --سايفرز (نقاشمساهمات) 15:25، 26 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Sorry for the late response. Actually i am not Egyptian nor residing in Egypt, so i can't help you so much, but i will be glad if there is anything could i help you with. perhaps it is important that you know we had some similar projects before, but it have not made a significant success; the students mostly don't learn well how to deal with Wikipedia and its editing style/rules, and the result is several dozens of badly-written articles which requires a big work and and time to meet Wikipedia standards, and sometimes more than what required for an old editor to write the article from the start. I don't know so much, actually, about how those projects were organized and planned for, nor how much the students were prepared and given knowledge about the basics, or let me say the very basics, of editing in Wikipedia before they were just brought to here, But anyway, the results was suddenly far from good or even very bad, and even after the articles were written and left in this horrible way, it does not seems that anyone of our editors have given a least attention for maintaining them and helping the students created them to learn more about Wikipedia. I am not saying that your project will face necessarily the same fate as these, but you have to make sure this time that the students have a good background about the editing basics, and to be sure, as well, that there is at least two or three Arabic editors ready to introduce any required help for the students if some problems faces them and for improving their articles to meet the standards (may i help in this), because the previous projects had a bad influence on Arabic Wikipedia rather than good.

الترجمة العربية: أعتذر لتأخري في الإجابة. في الحقيقة أنا لست مصرياً ولا أقيم في مصر أيضاً، لذلك فلا أستطيع مساعدتكم كثيراً، لكن سأكون سعيداً في حال كان يُوجد ما يمكن أن أساعدكم به على الرغم من هذا. ربما من المهم أن تعرفوا أنه كانت لدينا بعض المشاريع المشابهة في ما مضى، لكنها لم تحقق نجاحاً كبيراً، إذ غالباً ما كان الطلاب لا يتأقلمون مع طرق وقواعد التحرير في أرابيكا، وتكون النتيجة عدة دزينات من المقالات الرديئة وسيئة التنسيق التي تحتاج تعباً وجهداً كبيرين لتصبح موافية لمعايير الموسوعة، وأحياناً يكون الجهد الذي تحتاجه أكبر مما تحتاجه كتابة المقال من الصفر. في الواقع أنا لستُ مطلعاً على الكيفية التي رتب بها أي من هذه المشاريع ولا على إلى أي حد تمت توعية الطلاب وتلقينهم المبادئ الأساسية للتحرير في أرابيكا قبل أن يُجلبوا إلى هنا وينتهي الأمر بهذه الطريقة، لكن النتائج كانت أبعد ما تكون عن جيدة بل وربما كانت سيئة جداً، وحتى بعد أن كتبت المقالات وتركت بهذه الحالة الكارثية، فلا يبدو أن أحداً من محررينا أعطى أدنى اهتمام للاعتناء بها وتنسيق كتابتها بالشكل المطلوب لتوافي المعايير، ولا بمساعدة الطلاب الذين كتبوها لتعلم مبادئ الكتابة في أرابيكا. أنا لا أقول أن هذا المشروع سيواجه نفس مصير تلك المشاروع بالضرورة، لكن يجب أن تتأكدوا في البداية هذه المرة من أن الطلاب يَملكون خلفية واطلاعاً جيدين عن سياسات التحرير ومبادئه، وأيضاً من التنسيق مع محررين أو ثلاثة على الأقل من محرري أرابيكا العربية بحيث يكونون مستعدين لمساعدة الطلاب في حال واجهتهم أي مصاعب وجاهزين لتنسيق مقالاتهم بالشكل المطلوب (ويُمكنني أن أساعد في هذا)، وذلك لأن المشاريع السابقة أضرت بأرابيكا العربية أكثر من أفادتها في الواقع --عباد (نقاش) 17:43، 26 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م).

Thanks for the comment, عباد! I totally understand your concerns. In the United States, we heard about professors who wanted their students to edit Wikipedia as part of class but did not provide the students with Wikipedia guidance - some of these classes did fine on Wikipedia, but others ran into huge problems, including students' work getting reverted in large scale by the editor community because students were adding poor content that violated Wikipedia standards. That is why we developed an extensive support infrastructure for professors and students when we created the Wikipedia Education Program - to make sure that students in the program are getting the Wikipedia mentorship that they need to contribute good content to Wikipedia. For example, our Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors teach students about the basics of Wikipedia on face-to-face basis; Wikipedia Online Ambassadors (who are experienced Wikipedians from the community) closely guide students on-wiki as students begin editing articles; and the various brochures, instructional videos, and other materials that we've created help students learn more about editing Wikipedia. Even with all this support, students will make newbie mistakes (as all newbies do), but the Ambassadors help them learn from their mistakes so that most students ultimately contribute quality content to Wikipedia. We definitely would like to involve the Arabic community as we develop the education pilot in Cairo (and also afterward) - for example, we need community members who are willing to support students as either Campus Ambassadors or Online Ambassadors - the involvement of the community has been and will continue to be a crucial factor to the success of the program, as we continue to improve our support resources and the program as a whole together.
Thanks for your feedback - I really appreciate it, and I'd love to hear more feedback! Annie Lin - Wikimedia Foundation (نقاش) 19:18، 30 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Actually, عباد, would you be interested in being a Wikipedia Online Ambassador yourself? Online Ambassadors mentor students online, so they can be physically located anywhere in the world. We need many enthusiastic Arabic community members interested in supporting students as they edit articles. Is this something you would be interested in?
Is anyone else interested in being an Online Ambassador? Please let me know if you are. We need your help! Annie Lin - Wikimedia Foundation (نقاش) 19:22، 30 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

First, for making conversation easier, my name is pronounced in English as Abbad. I am so glad that you have prepared the things well for students, so they will be able to contribute here with a good knowledge and background about the basics. As i said before, i will be glad if there is anything i could help you with, so if there is more online Ambassadors needed for the project i am ready to join. Also, if you still don't have enough Ambassadors, we (me and the other Arabic editors here) may try to make a better contact with the community, and i am sure that we will find more people who are interested in being Ambassadors (campus or online) --عباد (نقاش) 10:08، 1 ديسمبر 2011 (ت ع م).

Thanks, Abbad. I am happy to hear that you are interested in helping out as an Online Ambassador, and that you know other Arabic editors who would also be interested! How about we talk about this again in a few weeks, when I'll have more information about the Online Ambassador role in the Middle East / North Africa region. In the meantime, if you could keep thinking about which other editors might also be interested in being Ambassadors (maybe even start communicating with them about it), that would be really helpful. Thank you, and let's talk again soon! Annie Lin - Wikimedia Foundation (نقاش) 00:17، 2 ديسمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

Thanks

Hi Ciphers, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for translating my posts (and Frank's posts) on the Arabic Wikipedia! I really appreciate your help! Annie Lin - Wikimedia Foundation (نقاش) 00:22، 2 ديسمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

أفكار الآخرين عن أرابيكا

مرحبا، لاتتصوروا مقدار ألمي عندما أجد موسوعة أرابيكا يُقال عنها هذا، فبحسب هذا الرابط عبر الفيسبوك [1] لانرى مدى جدية إداريي أو محرري الموسوعة، حيث أنه تستقبل انتقادات لاذعة بسبب الإهمال لصفحاتها وعدم مراقبتها. أرجو أن تعتبروا.أحد المستخدمين القدماء.--197.1.123.161 (نقاش) 12:13، 26 نوفمبر 2011 (ت ع م)

من رأيي أنّ حلّ هذا النوع من المشكلات يكمن في تبنّي سياسة (لا ننشر أيّ شيء مطلقًا إلا لو كان منظورًا من قبل محرّر أو إثنين ومثبّت بمصادر). وأودّ نقاش المشكلات الحالية على صفحة الاقتراحات | عبدالمؤمن (نقاش) 04:37، 6 يناير 2012 (ت ع م)

تحديث شروط الاستخدام

مرحبا,

تناقش مؤسسة ويكيميديا التغييرات على شروط استخدامه. يمكنك الاطلاع على المناقشة في Talk:Terms of use. الجميع مدعوون للانضمام, بسبب ان الاصدار الجديد من Terms of use ليست في صيغتها النهائية كما اننا غير قادرين على تقديم الترجمات الرسمية لها, نرحب بالمتطوعين لترجمتها كما فعل المتطوعون الالمان لترجمتها إلى النسخة الألمانية في m:Terms of use/de كما نطلب منك ايضا ان تلاحظ في الجزء العلوي لها ان الترجمة غير رسمية وربما تصبح قديمة على اعتبار انه ربما يتم تغيير النسخة الاصل لها ويمكنك الاطلاع على طلب الترجمة في m:Translation requests/WMF/Terms of Use 2 -- Maggie Dennis, Community Liaison 22:05، 21 أكتوبر 2011 (ت

Updates about Cairo pilot

مرحبا بالجميع

أراسلكم اليوم لإطلاعكم على آخر مجريات رحلتنا الأخيرة إلى مصر ولطلب آرائكم حول البرنامج التجريبي الذي ننوي القيام به في جامعات مدينة القاهرة.

قام فرانك شولينبرغ، مشيرة العمراوي وعصام شرف بالإضافة لي في الفترة بين 7 و 14 ديسمبر بالعديد من اللقاءات مع أساتذة وطلاب ومستخدمين في مصر لنقاش خطتنا حول البرنامج التجريبي في ربيع عام 2012. قبل أن نذهب في تلك الزيارة لم نكن نعلم بمدى اهتمام الأشخاص في جامعات القاهرة حول برنامج التعليم. لكن الرحلة أوضحت بأن هناك اهتماما كبيرا في برنامج التعليم. كما قمنا بتقديم فكرة جعل الطلاب يساهمون في ويكيبديا العربية وحصلنا على نتيجة إيجابية. في الواقع فقد كنا متفاجئين بكيفية تفاعل الأساتذة والعدد الكبير منهم المتحمسين لفكرة البرنامج، ووافق الكثير على أن رفع مستوى جودة محتوى أرابيكا العربية هو أمر مهم جدا.

قابلنا العديد من الأساتذة أثناء رحلتنا وقمنا باختيار ستة منهم للمشاركة في البرنامج التجريبي (كما ذكرنا سابقا، من المخطط أن يبقى البرنامج التجريبي صغيرا من أجل تسهيل عملية التقييم ومن ثم يتم التوسيع في أماكن أخرى)، هؤلاء الأساتذة الستة يتبعون لاختصاصات متنوعة منها العلوم السياسية والاتصالات واللغة الفرنسية. سيقوم بعضهم بطلب كتابة مقالات من طلابهم والبعض الآخر سيقوم بطلب ترجمة مقالات من طلابه.

كما أننا تواصلنا مع طلاب من جامعة القاهرة وعين شمس وكان معظم الطلاب مهتمين بالمشروع وبمعرفة المزيد عن أرابيكا. بالإضافة إلى ذلك التقينا بعض المستخدمين وأنا سعيدة بوجود من يهتم منهم بدعم البرنامج التجريبي في الجامعات أو على الموقع.

أرغب بالحصول على بعض الآراء حول أفكارنا وخطواتنا اللاحقة. حيث سنبدأ في يناير 2012 ببرنامج تجريبي مع 5 – 6 صفوف في جامعة القاهرة وعين شمس. وهدفنا هو أن يقوم بين 70 – 90 طالب بالتحرير في أرابيكا. سيتم تدريب عدد من الطلاب من كل صف على طرق التحرير في أرابيكا وكيفية إنشاء حسابات. كما أننا سنقوم بتنفيذ دورات تدريبية لسفراء أرابيكا في منتصف يناير للأساتذة. سيكون من مسؤولين السفراء دعم الطلاب خلال الفصل (سنقوم بتزويدكم بتعريف بدور سفراء أرابيكا عما قريب). بالإضافة إلى ذلك سنقوم بعمل جولات في الجامعات للتعريف بأرابيكا.

في نهاية الفصل سنقوم بقياس خرج المشروع ونوثق ما تعلمنا ونقرر ما إذا كان من المجدي تكرير المشروع في دول عربية أخرى. سنعتبر البرنامج التجريبي ناجحا إن :

  • استطعنا تطوير محتويات أرابيكا بمساعدة الطلاب
  • تعلمنا ما يكفي لتمكيينا من اتخاذ قرار حول الخطوات اللاحقة
  • استطعنا الحصول على اهتمام كافي من أساتذة الجامعات، والطلاب، وأنتم، وذلك من أجل التوسع خارج نطاق مصر.


هذه هي نسخة قصيرة من خطتنا، وندعوكم لطرح آرائكم حول الموضوع. إن مساعدتكم أمر ضروري لنجاح هذا البرنامج، ودعمكم للطلاب المساهمين الجدد أمر أساسي لتحقيق الأهداف. ونتطلع لتعاونكم وصبركم خاصة بأنهم قد لا يكونوا على دراية كافية بسياسات أرابيكا من اللحظة الأولى.

هل لديكم أي آراء أو أسئلة؟
شكرا مقدما. آني/سمر

(and now in English:) Hi all,

This is to give you a short update on our past trip to Egypt and to ask you for feedback when it comes to our proposal for the small pilot we would like to run at Cairo universities.

Between December 7 and 14, Frank Schulenburg, Moushira Elamrawy, Essam Sharaf and I had a number of meetings with professors, students, and local Wikipedians in Cairo to discuss our plans for the pilot program in spring 2012. Before we went on this trip, we were not sure how interested the people in universities in Cairo would be about the education pilot. The trip made clear that interest is very high! We introduced the idea of letting the students contribute content to the Arabic Wikipedia and we got a lot of positive feedback. Actually, we were surprised by how many teachers were excited about participating in the project. Everybody we talked to was convinced that growing the amount and the quality of content on the Arabic Wikipedia would be a good idea.

We met many, many professors on the trip, and have identified about six professors for participation in the pilot (as we mentioned earlier, we'd like to keep the pilot very small in order to evaluate what works and doesn't work before we expand it to more people and more places) – these six professors come from a diverse range of disciplines, including Political Science, Mass Communication, and French. Some of them will have students write new content for the Arabic Wikipedia, and others will ask students to translate articles from another language into Arabic on Wikipedia. We selected these professors based on their understanding of Wikipedia, their genuine interest in enhancing the Arabic Wikipedia, and the writing skills of their students.

We also talked to students at Cairo University and at Ain Shams University and almost all of those students were interested to learn more about Wikipedia. At the same time, we had a couple of meetings with Wikipedians and I am more than happy that some of them already told us that they were eager to support the pilot either online or on campus.

That said, I would like to get some feedback from you on our ideas for the next steps. Starting in January 2012, we are planning to run a small pilot with 5–6 classes at Cairo University and Ain Shams University. Our goal would be to introduce 70–90 students to editing Wikipedia. A small number of select students per class would get trained at how to get a user account, how to make their first steps on Wikipedia and how to write articles as part of their courses. In order to give them the necessary amount of support, we would run editing workshops for teachers and for Wikipedia Ambassadors in mid-January. The Ambassadors would be responsible for supporting the students throughout the semester (we will provide you with more information on the Wikipedia Ambassador role shortly). At the same time we would run a couple of general outreach events on university campuses.

At the end of the semester we would measure the outcome, document the lessons learnt and determine whether we can replicate similar projects in other Arabic speaking countries. We would consider the pilot a success if

  • we could grow and improve the content on Wikipedia with the help of the students
  • we could learn enough to make an informed decision on what the road ahead would look like
  • we could get enough interest from university teachers, students and you, the community, to grow the program beyond Egypt


This is a short version of our proposal and I invite you to give us some feedback. Introducing even a small number of students to Wikipedia editing will be a lot of work and we won't be able to achieve our goals without your support. New users always make mistakes in the beginning and we hope that we all have enough patience to help them whenever they're not getting all the rules and policies of Wikipedia right from the first moment on.

How does that sound? What are your questions?

Thanks a lot in advance,

Annie (آني/سمر)


Annie Lin - Wikimedia Foundation (نقاش) 16:33، 3 يناير 2012 (ت ع م)

I mentioned above that the success of the Cairo pilot will depend a lot on “Wikipedia Ambassadors,” who are volunteers who will help students learn how to edit Wikipedia. There are two kinds of Wikipedia Ambassadors:
  • Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors (سفراء الجامعة) teach students on a face-to-face basis about how to contribute to Wikipedia (more details about the Campus Ambassador role are on this page)
  • Wikipedia Online Ambassadors (سفراء الوب) mentor students online to make sure that student contributions to the Arabic Wikipedia are high-quality (more details about the Online Ambassador role are on this page).
We currently need more people to take on these roles, so please contact me if you're interested in being a Campus Ambassador or an Online Ambassador! Thank you. Annie Lin - Wikimedia Foundation (نقاش) 16:44، 3 يناير 2012 (ت ع م)

اقتراح ممتاز welcome guys

الفكرة ممتازة ، وكنت سأشارك لو كنت أسكن في مصر لكنّي للأسف من مصريي المهجر ، عمومًا أنا على استعداد للمساهمة الجدّية بأيّ شكل مفيد بدءًا من الشهر المقبل. الجهد في هذا النحو سيؤتي ثمارًا وفيرة لأنّ الإنترنت في الوطن العربي يشهد طفرة حقيقية كما أنّ المجتمع عندنا يقدّر أن يكون العلم متاح للجميع. فالجامعات مستقبل هذا المشروع وكان هذا حلمي منذ سجّلت اشتراكي قبل سنتين... أمّا بخصوص دقّة المعلومات فأظنّ ساحة الاقتراحات أنسب مكان نناقش فيه الحلول.

English
First of all 1000×Welcome! Excellent idea, I would participate if I were residing in Cairo, but unfortunately I am an Egyptian expat, but in any case I am willing to participate seriously in any useful way starting next month. Putting effort in towards these ends would inevitably be very successful because the internet across the Arab world is witnessing a real explosion and our societies highly value the availability of knowledge accessible to everyone. Universities are the future of this project and this idea was my aspiration - as I wrote on my personal page - when I joined a couple of years back. As for 'quality control' maybe this is best discussed on our 'suggestions' page

عبدالمؤمن (نقاش) 04:33، 6 يناير 2012 (ت ع م)

Thanks a lot for the warm welcome. I really appreciate your feedback! --01:26، 10 يناير 2012 (ت ع م) (حازم)

Planning document publicly available

Hi all, in order to achieve the highest level of transparency, I just published a detailed program plan for the pilot on the outreach wiki. I apologize that it's in English only, but if you're interested in more information about the pilot (e.g. more details about the program design, about the timeline, about the support structure for students and professors, the participating instructors, etc.), I invite you to take a look at this document. I also encourage you to ask questions if anything is unclear and to leave a note on the discussion page if there are things that should be done differently. All kind of feedback is highly appreciated. --01:26، 10 يناير 2012 (ت ع م) (حازم)

ترجمة ملخص لما في الأعلى. مرحبا. لقد قمت بإعداد نسخة من مخطط برنامج العمل لبرنامج التعليم ونشرتها على الوصلة program plan. رجاء الاطلاع على الخطة وإدراج أي اقتراحات عنها. (أعتذر لأن الخطة ما زالت باللغة الإنكليزية). أرحب بجميع الآراء والأسئلة. (حازم/فرانك). --سايفرز (نقاشمساهمات) 08:21، 10 يناير 2012 (ت ع م)