Dostor-Wiki – A very modest attempt to “wikify” the Egyptian revolution
1 July, 2011 at 09:53 | Posted in Arab spring, Collaborative work, Israeli-Arab conflict, Politics, Web 2.0, Wiki systems | 3 CommentsTags: Arab people, Arab spring, Arabic language, Constitution of Egypt, Egypt, Egyptian, Egyptian Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia
The Arabic-language Wikipedia has a mailing list, in which some very interesting information is occasionally exchanged. The mailing list is public, and yet Modern Standard Arabic, despite being the language of some 20 countries, an official UN language, and used by more than 250 million people (at least to some extent), is still considered a “secret language”, unintelligible by people who enjoy rain in August…
By the way, this is an opportunity to warn all of you who carry their umbrellas well into July, that Wikipedia has two Arabic versions – the bigger more established one is ar-wp, which is in Modern Standard Arabic (a.k.a Fuśħa “the purer language”), the other one, arz-wp is written in Egyptian Arabic (a.k.a. Maśri, which is in fact the dialect of Cairo, Alexandria and the surroundings). Egyptian Arabic is the language you would probably hear in dialogs of Arab films and plays, but its use as a written language is still controversial, so many Egyptian Wikipedians prefer to write on ar-wp rather than on arz-wp.
Egyptian Wikipedians to establish Wiki project for collaboratively writing new Egyptian constitution
In a recent thread on the Arabic-Wikipedia mailing list, one of the Wikipedians suggested opening a Wiki project for drafting the new Egyptian constitution. This project is not supposed to be related to Wikimedia, but he tried to recruit people to the mission through the Wikimedia mailing lists (after all, this is where you would find a large group of Wiki-system enthusiasts).
Hello people,
This message has been sent to two mailing lists, that of the working group of the Arab celebrations for Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary and that of the Arabic Wikipedia.
I came to know a person who encouraged me to undertake the idea of a Wiki for the Egyptian constitution, so that the Egyptians use the Web for writing a constitution collaboratively. We could bring forth a draft (or drafts) to the Egyptian constitution, as the Egyptians think it should be. I liked this idea a lot and became very enthusiastic about it. I was also encouraged by the fact that the brothers in Tunisia had already started such a Wiki for the Tunisian constitution, about three months ago, and it was very successful.
What do you think? Who should take part?
As this Wikipedian said, the idea is not new. In fact, he himself mentioned the Tunisian Wiki project – destour.org – last March, which made me curious enough to look at it and report about it in the general mailing list of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The reactions to the idea were very welcoming, and a temporary website was soon set by another veteran Egyptian Wikipedians. A special domain name was later registered – dostorwiki.org – leading to the same temporary website. Dostor or Destour, by the way, is the Arabic word for “constitution”. There is not much to read on this website at this point, even if you can read Arabic (and by the way, it is Modern Standard Arabic, this is a political revolution, not a linguistic one…) And yet, as someone pointed out in a response to my report to the general mailing list, and another person, in a respond to the recent discussion on the Arabic mailing list, Google groups for the purpose of collaboratively drafting the new Egyptian constitution have already been established. These are the two mentioned in the aforementioned mailing-list messages:
http://www.google.com/moderator/?hl=ar#15/e=581e0&t=581e0.40&f=581e0.1501bd
https://groups.google.com/group/dostorna
Some of the debates on these groups seem quite naïve. For example, an article currently brought to a virtual vote says “Limiting working hours to prevent abuse of workers. Setting a clear system for extra hours, and improving working conditions and salaries. Providing official bodies that would look into complaints within the shortest time”. There is also an invitation to a “real life” meeting about the status of women under the new regime and how it can be improved.
The “good guys” are always a step behind
So, do we witness a real Web 2.00-induced revolution in Egypt? I doubt it. Most of the Egyptians do not have access to this new medium, and it is well reflected in the relatively small number of participants, and the fact that almost all of them come from the same background more or less. And yet, even if the Internet became the new medium of communication of Egypt, and even if we adopt the assumption that Wiki systems and Google groups allow debates which are more democratic than those held in other media, at the end of the day, it is not the medium that makes the revolution. Iran uses the Internet as a main medium of communication, and yet the abundance of Iranian blogs, forums and FaceBook accounts did not make the recent protests there successful. The Iranian regime quickly learned how to control this new medium. Also, what we currently hear and read on Egyptian websites is a lot of antisemitic and anti-Israeli commentaries and conspiracy theories.
The Islamist movement of the Muslim Brothers has been using Media-Wiki systems to spread their propaganda for several years now. Here is one example called in Arabic “The Wikipedia of the Muslim Brothers” or “Ikhwan-Wiki” in English. Jihadist web-forums in Arabic teaching people how to carry out terrorist attacks are also hardly new. The “bad guys” are always one step ahead.
There is an Egyptian FaceBook group called “I am the first volunteer to the Egyptian Army in case of a declaration of war against Israel“. 141,950 people “liked” this group. Surely not all of them fully understand the idea behind this group, but still, comparing this number to the number of participants in those Wiki and Google projects is depressing. There is an Egyptian website which translates reports and articles from the Hebrew press into Arabic and adds harsh anti-Israeli propaganda to them, occasionally also hideous anti-Semitic essays. The talkbacks are always supportive. No criticism is heard below these writings.
So the future does not look too promising. The new medium is there, its use is often inspiring, but those who make positive use of it are still quite scarce. On the other hand, we should seize and encourage every sign of hope, shouldn’t we?
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