Arabic Wikipedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2008)

Arabic Wikipedia

Screenshot
URL	ar.wikipedia.org
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Registration	Optional
Available language(s)	Arabic
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
Created by	Arab wiki community
Launched	9 July 2003; 8 years ago (2003-07-09)

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 March 2012, it has over 170,000 articles, 400,000 registered users and over 12,000 images. The Arabic Wikipedia is currently the 25th largest edition of Wikipedia by article count, and is the first Semitic language to exceed 100,000 articles.^[1]

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.

Blocking

The Arabic Wikipedia has been blocked in Syria with no official reasons given by the Syrian government.^[2] The block began on 30 April 2008 while all other language versions of Wikipedia remain unblocked and freely accessible. This block continued until 13 February 2009, where the block on the Arabic Wikipedia was suddenly lifted by the Syrian government, again without any official notification on why it was blocked in the first place. Wikimedia continues to be blocked, which causes all images on Wikipedia (in all languages) to be unavailable.

Evaluation and criticism

Map showing which countries the page views for Arabic Wikipedia come from

This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (November 2010)

In March 2012, Arabic Wikipedia scored 225 in terms of depth (a rough indicator of the encyclopedia's quality). Which is better than the German version (88), the French version (152) or the Japanese version (57), but far behind the English Wikipedia (662).^[3]

In 2010, Tarek Al Kaziri, from Radio Netherlands, 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.^[4]

In 2008, an article from an Israeli newspaper (The Jerusalem Post) 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.^[5]

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.

See also

Wikipedia portal

• Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia

References

Arabic Wikipedia edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

External links

• (Arabic) Arabic Wikipedia
• (Arabic) Arabic Wikipedia mobile version