WikiArabia 2019/Program/The State of Cultural Diversity in Arabic Wikipedia: Insights and Challenges

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Submission no. مداخلة رقم
Title of the submission عنوان المداخلة

The State of Cultural Diversity in Arabic Wikipedia: Insights and Challenges


Author(s) of the submission صاحب المداخلة

Marc Miquel

Username اسم المستخدم

marcmiquel

Slides used for the talk
E-mail address البريد الإلكتروني

marcmiquel@gmail.com

Country of origin بلد الأصلي

Catalonia

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc. .الانتماء، إن كان (مجموعة، مؤسسة الخ

Amical Wikimedia (Catalan Community) / Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory


Type of session نوع الجلسة

Talk (with some invitations to interaction)

Language of session لغة الجلسة

Engilsh

Length of session مدة الجلسة

20-25 minutes + questions

Theme of presentation موضوع الجلسة
  • Wikimedia Research
  • Project content
  • Outreach and education

Abstract ملخص
In this talk I will explain how Arabic Wikipedia is one special case for the study of cultural diversity in Wikipedia language editions along with some specific challenges and recommendations in order to improve it, following the analysis of the data provided by the project Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory.
Around a 40% of Arabic Wikipedia is dedicated to content that relates to Arabic Cultural Context Content. Cultural Context Content (CCC) is the group of articles in a Wikipedia language edition that relates to the editors' geographical and cultural context (places, traditions, language, politics, agriculture, biographies, events, etcetera.). This 40% implies a strong sense of importance of the own contexts, considering the absolute size of the encyclopaedia (over 600 thousand article). At the same time, while looking at Arabic cultural context content we need to consider the fact that articles concerning the Arabic speaking countries are much spread across other Wikipedia language editions even than those from the contexts of larger language editions like Italian, Russian or Swedish.
Arabic CCC is more valuable to other Wikipedias than the other way around. Resuls show some uniqueness in the Arabic CCC; throughout some examples I will dig into understanding some particular aspects of Arabic Cultural Context such as a) the degree of overlap between Arabic Wikipedia and Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, b) the overall gender gap in Arabic Wikipedia and considering only women from Arabic countries c) the recurring topics in those more relevant articles from the Arabic cultural context.
All in all, the major challenge for Arabic Wikipedia is to try to include articles from every other culture from the world. I will zoom into the Arabic case in order to compare its coverage of other languages' cultures in relation to other similar Wikipedias in terms of number of articles. To conclude, I will provide some tools from the Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory and an overview of the Arabic Wikipedia case in order to understand better its relationship to the own cultural contexts and the state of cultural diversity so, in case the editors find it valuable, they can deploy some strategies (e.g. contests and challenges) to work on the main issues.
What will attendees take away from this session? ماذا سيستفيد الحضور من هذه الجلسة؟
  • Awareness on the implications of building cultural context content for every Wikipedia, especially in the Arabic case.
  • Specific lists of top priority articles from Arabic Cultural Context Content that should be in every other language editions.
  • An assessment of the degree of overlaping between Egyptian Arabic and Arabic Wikipedia.
  • Some results of which Arabic speaking countries are more represented within the 40% of local content in Arabic Wikipedia.
  • Article lists with specific groups of articles about Arabic Wikipedia written in other Wikipedias.
  • Some specific challenges in order to improve the Arabic Wikipedia cultural diversity.
  • Introduction to the website Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory so they can check the data by themselves.
Will you attend WikiArabia if your submission is not accepted? هل ستحضر لويكي عربية إذا لم يتم قبول مداخلتك؟

No. I want to disseminate research and engage communities into filling the gaps.

Special requests طلبات خاصة
Is this Submission a Draft or Final? هل هذا الطلب مسودة أم نهائي؟

Final.

Interested attendees مهتمون بالحضور[edit]

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest.

إذا كنت مهتمًا بحضور هذه الجلسة، فرجاءا قم بإضافة اسم المستخدم أدناه. سيساعد هذا المراجعين على تحديد ما هي الجلسات ذات الاهتمام الكبير

  1. Looks quite interesting. I will make sure to be there --Abbad (talk) 04:37, 22 November 2018 (UTC).[reply]