“Switching from consumption mode to production mode.

Mission impossible in the Arab world?”

@donatelladr

http://mediaoriente.com

1998

And…

“REALLY??! Do Arabs have got their own TV

too?!”

“AREN’T THEY ONLY BEDUINS IN THE DESERT?!!!”

a Professor @ University of Rome, 1998

+

Wikipedia and the Arabs..“Arabic is the fifth most widely spoken language by number of native speakers (according to

Wikipedia), however the Arabic Wikipedia has lagged behind in

growth, with the level of participation remaining highly

disproportionate to the number of speakers.

As one measure, there are 1,521 admins on the English

Wikipedia, 301 admins on the German Wikipedia, while the

Arabic Wikipedia has only 14”.

????????

“Wikipedia has potential to serve a needed purpose of providing quality content in Arabic, though substantial challenges exist

for us to get further along towards that end. The potential to draw contributors from Arab countries is limited to the 8.5% who use the

Internet, though a good portion of these users rather communicate in English”

“The English Wikipedia has 6,663,710 registered users, however only a small fraction of are actually editors. As of September 2006, there were

approximately 43,000 users who made at least five edits, and approximately 4,330 users deemed "very active", with over 100 edits that month.[1] As of

March 2008, the English Wikipedia has 1,521 admins.[2]

The number of active Wikipedians on the Arabic Wikipedia is approximately 400, which means the number who have made at least five edits in the past month. When considered in proportion to the number of speakers makes the Arabic

Wikipedia, the number of users is disproportionately low — behind Vietnamese, Persian/Farsi, Ukranian, Turkish, and 27 other languages in representation.

Indian languages, including Hindi, Teluga, and Marathi, are also very disproportionate in number of editors, in relation to the number of speakers”.

Hope in sight for Arab internet users …

“This pursuit appears to be sorely needed - internet users in the Arab region constitute

only 5 per cent of the 1.5 billion users in the world, according to recent statistics”.

“Arabs are still consumers rather than producers when it comes to technology”.

http://gulfnews.com/business/technology/hope-in-sight-for-arab-internet-users-1.534587

Don’t forget!!

… wa merci kteer!