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| 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 | July 9, 2003 |
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 September 2011, it has over 150,000 articles, 400,000 registered users and over 11,000 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.
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The Arabic Wikipedia has been blocked in Syria with no official reasons given by the Syrian government.[2] The block began on April 30, 2008 while all other language versions of Wikipedia remain unblocked and freely accessible. This block continued until February 13, 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.
In September 2011, Arabic Wikipedia scored 223 in termes of depth (a rough indicator of the encyclopedia's quality). Which is better than the German version (90), the French version (149) or the Japanese version (55), but far behind the English Wikipedia (630).[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]
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