<CPOV> Egypte, brûle-t-elle?

[Dror Kamir]

Hi,

I suppose you have all noticed that Egypt is going through rough time, 
but I wonder if you looked into the history of the article about the 
events. It almost seems as if the article preceded the actual events. 
The article on the English-language Wikipedia is entitled "2011 Egyptian 
protests". It already exists in 39 languages (incl. English). In Arabic 
and Egyptian-Arabic it is entitled "The Egyptian Revolution of Wrath" 
(the demonstrations on Friday were called by the organizers "Friday of 
Wrath").

Now to the interesting part - The demonstrations were planned via 
FaceBook for about a week, and "D-Day" was Tuesday, 25 January (which is 
a public holiday in Egypt). The first version of the article on the 
English Wikipedia has a time stamp of 13:26 25 January 2011 (UTC I 
presume). The person who initiated the article is nicknamed "The 
Egyptian Liberal" and according to his userpage he is an Egyptian who 
lives in Dubai and speaks both Arabic and English as mother tongues. 
"The Egyptian Liberal" worked very fast to enrich the article, and it 
was practically written in the course of the events. In the list of 
things that Wikipedia isn't there is a paragraph saying "Wikipedia is 
not a newspaper". Indeed, Wikipedia did not function here as a 
newspaper, but rather as a tool serving the organizers of the 
demonstrations.

An equivalent article was initiated on the Arabic Wikipedia 3 and a half 
hours after its English counterpart. It was initiated by someone who 
apparently lives in Egypt, but "The Egyptian Liberal" joined him quite 
soon. The article on the Egyptian-Arabic Wikipedia emerged only on 28 
January, two and a half days after its English and Arabic counterparts. 
It was initiated by a person who lives in Egypt, and he is also the main 
contributor, but "The Egyptian Liberal" had his share here too.

These are just my first observation, which I find interesting because it 
is, in my opinion, another stage of Wikipedia losing its encyclopedic 
characteristics.

Dror


בתאריך 31/01/11 17:07, ציטוט Maja van der Velden:
> Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List
>
> In 10 short years, Wikipedia has accomplished some remarkable goals. More than 3.5 million articles in English? Done. More than 250 languages? Sure. But another number has proved to be an intractable obstacle for the online encyclopedia: surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.
>
> More here:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1296486151-4fB4AiSiCizUtpXNS2UGPA
>
> Greetings,
>
> Maja
>
>
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