Offline Projects/Case Studies/2012 ARWP Site Notice

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Beginning in May 2012, the Arabic Wikipedia put up a site notice introducing Kiwix as an offline tool, with links to downloading the Arabic Wikipedia ZIM file (that is, an offline edition of the Arabic Wikipedia.

Process

Note: this should be the community decision to get the ZIM file created and the site notice up...

Timeline

March, 29, 2012: Prepared the Arabic version of Kiwix
April, 7, 2012: Contacted Emmanuel from Kiwix to update the ZIM file for the Arabic Wikipedia
April, 26, 2012: Latest version of Arabic Wikipedia ZIM file created
March, 30, 2012: Decided to put up site notice
March, 29, 2012: Wrote Kiwix Wikipedia article in Arabic
April, 27, 2012: Wrote site notice text
(Insert dates/or # of days): Kept site notice up.

Other

The Kiwix project had to set up a new mirror server to be able to provide both the software and ZIM files in the best conditions to cater to the new visitors in the Middle East.

Impact

Qualitatively

Qualitatively, impact is TBD! But some feedback we have heard via the Kiwix Feedback Tool, on why people downloaded Kiwix:

"افضل متصفح" ("A better browser") -- Saudi Arabia
"initial interest came for getting info from wikipedia whenever i needed." --UAE
"Because get information with out internet" --Egypt
"to search for medical info" --Jordan
"to use it in my life and to use it without connecting to the internet .also to have more information about the world and to use in my life .i think it will be useful for ma thank for every body " --Oman
"KNOWLEDG" --UAE
"for more information" --Egypt
"عالم من المعرفة" ("A world of knowledge") --Egypt
"it would be useful for quick information that may be needed when i have no internet connection" --Palestinian Territory'

Quantitatively

Quantitatively, however, the impact seen has been enormous! So far:

Kiwix article on Arabic Wikipedia seeing about 2000 views per day
- Kiwix article is also seeing continued improvement by registered and unregistered users
About 50% of total Kiwix downloads since May 1, 2012 have come from the Middle East / North Africa (As of 28 June, 2012)
A few bug reports and feature requests (non exhaustive list):

Open questions

Is this the best content package to provide in Arabic?
Is this a good idea for other projects to do too? (Can the Kiwix infrastructure support it?)

This was a great idea! I hope to see it copied on other Wikimedia projects. The Kiwix infrastructure will be able to deal with additional traffic if such a system is replicated. But, this need to be prepared. So if you want to do it, please announced it a little bit before to the Kiwix Webmaster. Kelson (talk) 21:04, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]