Wikimedia Tunisie/WikiLingua Maghreb/Principles

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WikiLingua Maghreb

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Presentation

Principles

Mission

Participants

Partners

Achievements

Unlike MedinaPedia Sfax and TunSci, WikiLingua Maghreb contributes to four Wikimedia projects : Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Incubator, and Wikisource. There a set for principles for the contribution to each one of them.

Wikipedia

• Selection of articles to be created or adjusted:
  • We begin our work by working on articles about our field of interest in English Wikipedia.
  • We can create new articles about our topic of interest in English Wikipedia.
  • We can translate non-stub articles about our field of interest in other Wikipedias and publish them in English Wikipedia.
• Information seeking:
  • We use citation analysis to retrieve significant research findings about the topic of the article to be adjusted.
  • We ask Professors Emeriti to provide detailed information and references about the topic of the article to be adjusted. Professors Emeriti can provide better support to the project than full, associate and assistant professors because they work for a few hours per week and have more than 35 years of research experience during which they were the doctoral advisors of most of the currently influential scientists working on our field of interest · .
  • We ask scientists who are concerned by the topic of the article to provide in-depth information about it. Although a conflict of interest exists when using this method, such scientists are the best ones who can provide important, updated and accurate information about the topic of the article to be adjusted.
  • After having needed information from Professors Emeriti and concerned scientists, we search for references proving them online (Google search) and offline (University libraries).
• Article creation and adjustment:
  • The article is first created or adjusted in the English Wikipedia.
  • Each article should include all the available information about its topic.
  • We put references in the lead of the article so that if someone would like to translate a brief edition of the article, he can translate the lead without having to find references for it in the body of the article.
  • To be sure that the quality of the article is excellent, we verify that we put a reference for each included idea.
• Article translation and update:
  • After the verification of the quality of the article, it can be translated to other languages in other Wikipedias.
  • The structure and references should be kept as they are in the English Wikipedia.
  • If a user likes to add further information to the article, he should first add them in English Wikipedia with the references proving them. If agreed, they can be added later to the editions of the article in other Wikipedias.

Wikimedia Incubator

Wikimedia Incubator is used to create editions of Wikimedia projects in Maghrebi Arabic dialects.

• First requirements: Before starting creating the test wiki in Wiki, a request about it should be posted and discussed in Meta. Then, all the Mediawiki system messages should be translated to the language of the test using Translatewiki.
• Begin the test wiki: After the verification of the eligibility of the project by the Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee, it becomes supported by Mediawiki. Consequently, we can begin the test wiki in Wikimedia Incubator by creating the main page, the help pages, and the templates of the project.
• Enriching the test wiki: The test wiki should involve at least 1000 non-stub articles to be finally approved. To achieve this mission, we require editors:
  • If the test wiki is a Wikipedia: to put a reference for each idea that has been included in their articles and to let the article limited to one or two structured paragraphs (we think that a good quality short article is better than a stub long article).
  • If the test wiki is a Wiktionary: to put the grammatical nature (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, clause, idiom, or collocation) of the evocated linguistic structure within the article, and to write each meaning of the structure in the language of the wiki and cite a reference about it.
• Working for the final approval of the wiki: After finishing our work, we inform the Language Committee that the test is ready for review. It is assigned to two native speakers for revision. If approved, it will be published as <language_code>.<project_name>.org.

Wikidata and Wikisource

Wikidata:

• To convert Wikidata into a lexical database and knowledge database in Arabic dialects, we have first to translate the Mediawiki system messages using Translatewiki (as if we are beginning working on a test wiki).
• Then, we have to add labels in Arabic dialects to all Wikidata properties and entities:
  • To find labels for entities and properties, we will be based on the various public domain linguistic resources already existing for Arabic dialects. We will extract labels in Arabic dialects from these resources, link these semantic structures to Wikidata entities and properties and then put the obtained information in an XLSX file.
  • After that, we will implement the labels in Arabic dialects in Wikidata using several useful tools like Wikidata query service, QuickStatements, Descriptioner and OpenRefine.

Wikisource:

• Only public domain books (old ones) are digitalized and uploaded to Wikisource in PDF or DJVu format.
• Transcription of the full text of the books in Wikisource is manually done by users. This manual process can become easier if users can find needed transcriptions for several parts of the full texts in the OCR layers of the books.