جرى إطلاق النسخة العربية من ويكيبيديا لأول مرة في 9 يوليو 2003. ومنذ ذلك الحين، سجّل 1,855,566 مستخدمًا، لكن 7327 مستخدمًا فقط يعتبرون نشطين (مع تعديل واحد خلال الثلاثين يومًا الماضية)؛ عدد المشرفين 24.
اعتبارًا من اليوم، 15 مايو 2020، تضم ويكيبيديا العربية حوالي 1,043,055 مقالًا و6,559,585 صفحة؛ وهي تحتل المرتبة 11 من حيث العمق، والرتبة 15 من حيث عدد المقالات، حيث تجاوزت المليون مقال في 17 نوفمبر 2019، لتكون أول لغة سامية تصل إلى هذا الهدف.
السياسات السلوكية في المجتمع
عندما أطلقت ويكيبيديا العربية، كان المجتمع في ذلك الوقت يعتمد بشكل كامل على السياسات المعتمدة لويكيبيديا الإنجليزية. وفي السنوات القليلة التالية، أدرك المجتمع أنه لا يمكن استخدام السياسات الإنجليزية كما هي في ويكيبيديا العربية، لذلك تم إطلاق مبادرة لترجمة السياسات إلى اللغة العربية وتغيير بعض البنود حسب الحاجة، ولكن جرت ترجمة العديد من السياسات. ولم تظهر أي اهتمامات جدية بكتابة سياسات جديدة أو تعديل السياسات المترجمة. ومع ذلك، كانت العملية واضحة أنه إذا كانت هناك حاجة إلى سياسة، فقد جرت العادة على إجراء مناقشة في الميدان. بحلول ذلك الوقت، أصبحت جميع السياسات المترجمة رسمية مع تغييرات طفيفة؛ وأحيانًا ظهرت خلافات حول سياسات معينة، ثم تحولت إلى نقاش مجتمعي حولها غالبًا في صفحة نقاش السياسة.
من بين 50 سياسة، تحتوي ويكيبيديا العربية على 12 سياسات متعلقة بالسلوك، معظمها يتكون من مبادئ أساسية فقط. على سبيل المثال، سياسة "عدم الهجوم الشخصي" في ويكيبيديا العربية تتكون من 107 كلمة مقارنة بسياسة ويكيبيديا الإنجليزية التي تتكون من 1733 كلمة. هناك حاجة ملحة لتطوير سياسات السلوك هذه مع تزايد حجم المجتمع. تتضمن هذه السياسات ما يلي: الكياسة (مقدمة فقط)، والتحرش (مقدمة فقط)، والتخريب (مقدمة وتعريفات)، والإجماع (جيد)، وتحرير المتحاربين (جيد)، وحل النزاعات (جيد)، ودمى الجورب (جيد)، وعدم التمييز (مقدمة)، لا للهجمات الشخصية (مقدمة)، ملكية المحتوى (مقدمة)، الكشف عن المساهمة المدفوعة (مسودة)، سياسة اسم المستخدم (جيدة).
وأخيرا، لا تزال سياسات ويكيبيديا العربية بحاجة إلى مزيد من التحسين، حيث أن هناك العديد من الجوانب التي لم تتم تغطيتها بعد؛ من المحتمل أن يكون بعض المستخدمين على دراية بالنقص ويهدفون إلى تطوير وتحسين السياسات بما يتماشى مع السياسات العالمية وسياسات مؤسسة ويكيبيديا وسياسات ويكيبيديا الإنجليزية أيضًا.
في الاستطلاعات التي أجريت لجمع تعليقات المجتمع حول مدونة قواعد السلوك العالمية، اعتقد معظم المستخدمين الذين أجابوا على السؤال المتعلق بالسياسات أن السياسات الحالية ليست كافية وليست جيدة بما يكفي للتحكم في المستخدمين أو المحتوى (غير كافية 53%، كافية إلى حد ما 42% ، كافية 3.8٪). يعتقد المستجيبون أن السياسات الحالية ضعيفة وغير واضحة (خاصة تلك المتعلقة بالسلوك)، وتحتاج إلى شرح وتوضيح، لأن الكثير منها مجرد نظريات؛ ليس من السهل تطبيق السياسات (وكثير منها لا يجري تطبيقه فعليا)، ولكن يتم تطبيقها مع بعض الاجتهاد بطرق مختلفة؛ أي أن كل مجموعة تطبق سياساتها بطرقها وتفسيراتها. تم توضيح الأفكار بأن السياسات تعزل المشاكل ولكنها لا تحلها. ولكل ذلك لا بد من مناقشة السياسات وتطويرها وتحديثها وتعميمها بطريقة منهجية واضحة، ولا بد من تطوير السياسات والثغرات المفقودة، وإيجاد استراتيجية واضحة لجميع الفئات.
عملية تيسير النقاشات
كما هو الحال مع أي مجتمع آخر، شكل المساهمون في الويكي العربي قنوات اتصال مختلفة للتعاون من خلالها، معظمها غير رسمية. يتضمن ذلك قنوات التواصل الاجتماعي، مثل فيسبوك وواتساب وما إلى ذلك. والقناة الرسمية الوحيدة هي ويكيبيديا نفسها (أي صفحات الميدان والنقاش). لقد اكتشفت أن قناة IRC نادرًا ما تُستخدم وأن معظم المشاركين لا يعرفون بوجودها. ومع ذلك، قبل البدء بخطة التيسير الفعلية، قمت بإعداد صفحتي التعريفية (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Discussions/Arabic_Community)، وهي الصفحة المقصودة التي سيستخدمها أعضاء المجتمع المشاركون لتقديم ملاحظاتهم. ولتسهيل الأمر على الأعضاء المشاركين، تم تشكيل 6 أسئلة كإرشادات؛ عادةً، أردنا من المشاركين تقديم ملاحظاتهم حول السياسات الحالية المستخدمة في مجتمعهم، والتحديات التي يعتقدون أن مجتمعهم يواجهها، وآرائهم حول مشروع UCoC.
عملية تيسير النقاشات
1. الجمهور المستهدف:
كانت خطتي هي محاولة الوصول إلى أكبر عدد من فئات المستخدمين حتى أحقق تمثيلا شاملا للمجتمع بأكمله. على سبيل المثال: وفقا للمستويات الصحيحة: المسؤولون والمحررون والمشاركون الجدد ؛ حسب الجنس: أنثى ، ذكر ؛ حسب طبيعة النشاط: المشاركون في المشاريع والمبادرات على أرض الواقع مقابل المشاركين عبر الإنترنت في ويكيبيديا فقط. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، بما أن المشاركين في ويكيبيديا العربية يأتون من أكثر من 22 دولة (أي دول عربية وخارجها)، كنت آمل أن أحصل على تعليقات من الناس في جميع البلدان، خاصة حيث تنشط مشاريع ويكي. أخيرا، بما أن المجتمع وافق على إنشاء فريق مراقبة (اللجنة العربية)، يكون أعضاؤه قادة مجموعات المستخدمين العرب، فقد رأيت أن رأي هذا الفريق مهم حقا، أولا لأنهم قد يعكسون رأي مجموعاتهم، ولأنني أفترض أن هذا الفريق قد يتحمل مسؤولية إنفاذ ومراقبة تنفيذ مدونة قواعد السلوك إذا تمت الموافقة عليها.
2. التواصل:
فكرت في عدم استخدام القنوات الرسمية قدر الإمكان، في البداية لأنني أردت أن تكون رسالتي أكثر ودية بدلا من أن تكون رسمية. ومن هنا بدأت بإضافة رسائل في قنوات التواصل الاجتماعي التي تجمع الويكيبيديين العرب وفقا لما يلي:
Local Facebook chat group (Wikimedians of the Levant), in which I am active, includes participants from 4 countries. The discussion almost lasted for 40 minutes, in which 3 newbies and one senior community leader participated. I managed to explain the objective and gathered some quick feedback.
Facebook page (Arabic Wikipedia Group): Gathers thousands of followers, many are Wikipedians.
Whatsapp Admins Group: Includes 20 of the Arabic Wikipedia Admins.
In addition, I contacted many people personally either by email or by dropping a message on their Facebook chat pages. This included The Wikimedians Arab Committee and female participants, where the messages I wrote for those included a special message explaining why their opinion specifically is important.
For the public, I split the audience into two groups: Editors and newbies. For the editors who were active in the past month (of the sending day), I sent a group message (mass message) targeting 203 users. And for the newbies, I sent a simplified survey to 30 users.
3. Timeline:
March 20: first message in the Local group
March 20: post in the Arabic Wikipedians page on Facebook.
March 22: Post in the Arabic Wikipedians page that I intend to conduct one-to-one discussions
March 22: Message in the Group Admins Whatsapp group.
March 25: Reminder to the Facebook page (sent by a friend)
March 26: Email to the Arab Committee
March 31: Reminder to Whatsapp group
April 1st: Email and personal messages to selective Arab female contributors
April 5th: Group message to editors in Wikipedia itself.
April 19th: Group message to Autoconfirmed users (with a survey) in Wikipedia itself.
March 20th – April 20th: Contacted different users personally using either email (through their Wikipedia pages, their accounts in Facebook or WhatsApp).
Response Rate:
I can tell that I am not happy with the response rate of my community. The total number of responses I obtained from the overall communications I did is 64. However, I am happy that this sample is representative of the entire community.
Community Feedback
General Summary:
Responses were a mix of thoughts; a few respondents didn’t add a sentence about the CoC but found it a chance to write some sentences about their experience as editors, focusing on policies, such as blocking policy, editing strategies, and such. However, most of the responses supported the CoC as long as it remains realistic, but mostly with concern. Typically, 54 respondents (84%) supported CoC, but 20 of them expressed some concerns related to enforcement as well. 7 respondents (11%) remained neutral and 3 responses (4.6%) didn’t relate to CoC at all. The 'Community feedback' and 'Support vs support with concerns and questions' charts depict the distribution of the responses.
Community feedback
Challenges:
Most participants explained thoughts about the challenges the community faces; however, feedback varied about the challenges that face participation in offline projects within a user group and the online participation within Wikipedia only. For example, some common thoughts relate the lack of knowledge and experience; this includes newbies who start editing and creating articles before they read the policies or commit to the principles such as the unaccepted literal translation; which cause many of their edits to be deleted. As many users don’t know how to work in Wikipedia is being done (except using the editing tools), they assume bad faith (especially by newcomers who don't take it seriously, and think of Wikipedia as a forum or a blog or participants of certain backgrounds); multiculturalism and lack of mutual respect when discussing a specific topic, are all factors and situations that cause misunderstanding and unnecessary long discussions, which usually lack neutrality, especially when the discussions relate to notability historical, ethical or religious issues.
Support vs support with concerns and questions
Our community is open, changeable, and unsteady; newcomers always join with no experience, they lack awareness about policies, which cause them to act negatively towards the community, on the other hand, experienced participants have to deal with such behaviour with open-minds. Not only that, but most contributors lack the knowledge and experience needed to handle the problems they face; users lack the experience of teamwork and how they can overcome any personal differences especially when they engage in offline projects or initiatives and how to deal with each other. It’s not obvious if the Arab User groups have internal code of conducts, or if they refer to specific rules and standards, but some users claimed that every Wikipedia group and community in the Arab region suffers from internal divergence, may hinder all work and distract us from the goal of free knowledge into interests and parties that are hardly linked to Wikipedia. However, it’s not possible to detail such problems because of their sensitivities; but some participants blame their user groups for pursuing policies of double standards, and personal relations and Favoritism play a critical role in managing members and projects of the groups, which affected the participation of many users and pushed them to withdraw.
However, there is an agreement that the current policies related to behaviour are either not sufficient, not applied the right way or and bypassed. Many advised that most Wikipedians/Wikimedians must be trained to gain the skills of participating in conversations, discussing and listening effectively; users have to be flexible and understandable but at the same time, experienced participants have to help newbies explain and communicate their thoughts and opinions. Everyone has to avoid personal issues and problems as much as possible because such conflicts reflect negatively on the activities and create a non-comfortable atmosphere. Hence, I see that it’s really important to educate participants that personal conflicts, objections and criticism of their work/participation must not be taken as a personal refusal.
There are thoughts that projects lack controls and simplified clear policies that control users behaviour; in addition, there is a need for clear guidance that control and monitor the behaviour of participants which causes major impediment; although some types of behaviour don’t really require policies or guidance as they are innate fundamentals; users’ behaviours are often caused by multicultural and mentalities in Wikipedia, which leads to different reactions, especially that a specific behaviour can be seen as unaccepted, while others consider it normal.
Of the important challenges the community face according to the respondents are:
some users contribute for personal interest and personal achievement in the first place which prevails over the public interest making use of “Wikipedia” as a global brand; , which usually harms wikipedia more than it benefits it;
cooperation with governmental authorities and restrictions imposed on the community (including the religious, partisan, sectarian, national) make many participants uncomfortable and afraid of participating, especially in meetings and gathering, or even editing certain content (I avoid writing about anything related to the Arab world on Wikipedia); not only that, but some users may feel fear of sharing certain opinions or ideas due to the absence of rule; this also includes lack of governmental support, where universities, institutes, and civil society organizations who may contribute in free-knowledge movement are subject to restrictions;
paid contributions, contents that doesn't comply with the standards and policies;
only a few active members participate in the important discussions and give feedback, which weaken and rush some decisions.
There is need to adhere to transparency, honesty, and to the goals of volunteering and make rules of behaviour clear, known and accessible; these rules must inform users what's allowed what's not, what might be dangerous and put them at risk; for example, we don’t have any material that clarifies how to deal with someone who takes advantage of all projects for personal goals
Bureaucracy, lack of neutrality and imposing decisions and certain points of view, not accepting others’ notes, warnings and guidance and taking things personally.
Some groups tend to be very closed which makes them hard to interact with. Some groups form allies online.
Lack of new and permanent volunteers, participation for one purpose (e.g. education programs), individual decision-making by founders of the old members of user groups; applied policies are not effective; admins are not flexible and nothing can prevent them from using their authorities and power to harassing and bullying users with less power or newcomers; hence we need clear methods of monitoring users with authorities to make sure high permissions (Sysops, etc.) are not misused; lack of partners who may help accomplish the projects safely, weak funding, lack of the organizational and financial support, leaders of some groups don’t really have the required background about free knowledge or Wikimedia projects and communities, lack of power-base that control and direct people and processes; not strategic plans or management of projects; All this cause many participants to withdraw.
Other challenges related to editing, such as speedy deletion and blocking, use of references, editing tools are difficult, lack of linguistic standards.
It’s been noticed that people call up for support (voting for or against a person or a policy) using different channels (e.g. Facebook) and this is dangerous, and cannot be prevented because it lacks evidence since it happens outside of Wikipedia. Imagine if a policy that implies racist acts gains supportive votes this way, especially many people respond for call ups based on their relations without caring for the administration acts!
Positive Feedback:
As mentioned earlier, 54 respondents (84%) supported UCoC; many think a UCoC is a good idea and some think it’s a must and is useful to all parties, locally and globally, as it reduces differences, encourages voluntary participation and saves time and effort wasted in discussions that are usually affected by ego and showoff and bias sometimes; in addition, it will encourage users to freely, safely and comfortably work with others, know the limits and constants that must not be exceeded. The community agrees that there is a need for general normative law, terms and recommendations that would protect Wikipedians from any threats for their activities that applies to Wikimedia projects, individuals and user groups because when users feel safe and protected by law, they would work and interact comfortably and safely. They also assure the necessity to fill the current gaps of policies in many aspects of the projects, as local policies have to be as powerful as the universal ones; this means UCoC has to help strengthen and empower the local policies. Many users have read the "Friendly Space Policies" when they participated in Wiki-related workshops and conferences, so they support the need for something that is more comprehensive; while others support adapting a UCoC as a global policy for; some went beyond that, seeing the need to create a legal department dedicated to solving problems that may face member and users, especially volunteers; yet, they think that the big challenge is applying CoC universally as it may not succeed due to the many different cultures and communities. However, in all cases, it has to be accompanied by an implementation technique to guarantee success.
Participants clarified that they envision UCoC in two ways: 1. A general code of conduct that applies to all groups, which should be limited to broad lines (such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -formulation and application), and 2. Local code of conduct that takes care of the details, such as defining terms related to behaviour and such, which may differ from one community to another.
Finally, participants focused on that UCoC must be enforced as soon as it's finished in order to not be kept as a draft for long; maybe a pilot version can be initiated as a trial first.
Concerns
Most of the respondents are not sure how CoC could be universal; even some of the neutral respondents were also concerned about it being universal. They explained that due to the different characteristics of the communities, it’s almost impossible (or at least difficult) to apply the same rules on all groups the same way; even in the same community that consists of different user groups (such as the Arab community), unless it is limited to what can be called global ethics. Some users explained that they are in favour of a general CoC for all communities, then every community can add and amend it in proportion to its culture, needs and local laws (i.e. versions), provided that it is stricter than the general code, not less stringent - just as global and local policies; however, in all cases, there have to be generic guidelines in the universal part, such as Respect, anti-harassment, behavioural controls, and assurance of some policies like the “No Personal Attacks” policy.
UCoC must be derived from local communities, making sure it’s not "global north"-centric, taking into account the particularities of "global south" issues, which are different from one community to another and mentioned that it must not be written based on the traditions or rules of its writers; UCoC must consider the differences, cultural and religious aspects and advised not to mention political issues. At the same time, some expressed their concerns about the great efforts needed to make UCoC comprehensive, classified, simplified, and clear enough to ensure that it'll not be ignored or exploited by specific people, so they advised not to rush and use the needed time to consult with the communities and gather feedback through transparent discussion before and after putting the draft copy; communities must be a critical stakeholder of the project. It would be better if you share UCoC with communities to evaluate before being published for early feedback. Not only to be derived from the communities, but also participants thought UCoC must not ignore or interfere with the local policies, but it has to fill the gaps if exist (nothing until now explains how the intended UCoC will interact with existing policies); for example, UCoC has to maintain the basics and ethical and professional principles that are common among the different communities, while leaving room for each local community to set its own special controls. The three main themes participants focused on are:
Characteristics and Content:
Almost every participant identified at least one characteristic the intended UCoC must feature; they assured that UCoC must be written in a way that makes users understand how important it is, and in turn, this will make their work faster by avoiding conflicts and decreasing waste of time and efforts. The following concludes the most important items participants explained:
UCoC has to be impartial, all-inclusive, comprehensive, extremely transparent, zero nepotism, and free of any form of racism, clearly and accurately detailed in understandable ways for all audience; this means it shouldn’t be long so as not to be a burden for who will write, review, and apply it. Make sure it doesn't underestimate the users based on their races, religions or beliefs. It must not include any political issues. UCoC must not impose guardianship of any form, and must not limit or prevent the right of free speech; in other words, personal freedom must be guaranteed either from the foundation itself (if it asserts its authority on communities) or from the local community. All views and opinions must be respected as well as respecting the personal limits of users. It should include items about the importance of human dignity, non-discrimination, refusal of infringement of rights, commitment to neutrality and justice in resolving all conflicts and problems.
UCoC must be strict and firm towards participants who don't show respect to groups and individuals and security and harassment-breaching actions. Strict laws and principles must be defined and adhered to; penalties for violating these laws must be identified and imposed. At the same time, it has to be flexible concerning the internal issues within the communities, such as choosing the members of the projects/events (offline), and grants policies for the online work.
UCoC must be fair and ensure equality and justice. It has to pay attention to gender equality, pluralism, diversity (males, females, LGBT, all orientations and not to exclude any religious orientation, different political orientations from east to west). Don't underestimate users regardless of their races, religions and beliefs; respect all religious (and non-religious) beliefs, and sexual orientation of all, especially while working on off-line projects and in wiki-related conferences and events and encouragement of marginalized groups. It must consider that WikiProjects are voluntary.
UCoC must respect the existing local policies and their objectives. It must not be imposed based on the ideas of specific communities; yet, it has to cover the serious gaps in the policies of smaller communities and projects; these policies may be difficult, and interpreting them may vary from one user/group to another.
UCoC has to include items that aim at enhancing the relations with external authorities (e.g. governments; as some participants indicated that there are governmental restrictions that prevent them from coordinating activities, or at least they have to seek approvals). At the same time, it should not be repulsive to contributors (males and females), nor should it repel new and creative ideas.
UCoC should clearly define all principles and elements of behaviour (e.g. harassment, bad behaviour, profanity, etc.) considering that the definitions may differ from one community to another, and change the wrong concepts related to behavioural incidents, it must cover all possible behavioural situations, based on the historical experiences of all users, in order to find solutions and preventive actions. It must include basic rules about how users should deal with each other, define relations among communities and WMF. At the same time, it’s very important that UCoC addresses how to protect all users (new, old, online, offline) from indirect discrimination or any type of discrimination and harassment, especially when participating in offline events (conferences and workshops); for example, a lady with Hijab, or someone from a specific ethnicity. Reporting incidents in this context must be secured.
This UCoC must contain a detailed explanation and a precise definition of the user powers (privileges) of all Wikimedia projects, as well as materials that can be referred to in the event of a dispute between users. But, it's better if it doesn't include any definitions of what's considered "acceptable" vs. "non-acceptable", "positive" vs. "negative" for every community.
UCoC has to differentiate between the levels of users (e.g. newbies vs. experienced users vs. admins, etc.) It would be more appropriate if rules differ for each category of users in addition to general rules that apply to everyone. It would be great if UCoC could include notes about discussion mechanisms which may prevent and limit bad behaviour. On the other hand, it’s better not to dig into the details of specific things, let it be generic and allow local communities to interpret its items, or at least there must be default items that can be enforced in case local policies are not in place
Implementation and Activation:
Many participants were concerned about how UCoC will be implemented and how implementation will be guaranteed; hence thought it has to be accompanied with a well-thought-out, a vision for how it will be communicated to users and an effective activation methodology, so it doesn’t turn to be just a document of principles.
Implementation of UCoC cannot succeed without the participation of the Wikimedia communities, as the community is, and should be, the empowered entity of implementation; this implies that the role of WMF employees' should be limited and implementation must never be restricted to WMF, as this may cause imposing its vision and will on communities, which participants didn’t support; it also implies clarifying the roles of these who will be responsible for implementation. A thought was to form a team to monitor the implementation process, which is close to the various groups of communities.
UCoC must be evolving and upgradeable because it needs to be updated frequently to accommodate changes and contentious points. This means that it has to be reviewed and evaluated often to check how it's being implemented and what's left out and what can't be implemented. each item must be assessed to see if it's beneficial, needs expansion or more clarity.
Training and guidance should be available, to help all users understand the clauses and items of the UCoC, what each means and how it applies. Not only that, but it also should appear to new users as soon as they create accounts, and be accessible to old users. Maybe it should provide some tests that users should take in order to get privileges (e.g. editors, admins); these tests should cover how to deal with people of various patterns of thinking, behaviour and reactions
Stories:
Some respondents tried to mention stories of their experience, a few said things they wouldn’t want to share in public; however, it’s obvious that people need to be encouraged to share their stories by making them feel safe and comfortable.
1) However, many of the responses focused on the relation between UCoC and cultures; the general thought is that each community has its uniqueness (culture, traditions, local laws, etc.), what applies to western communities doesn't apply to others, for example, you cannot enforce the use of neutral language (gender-neutral language) to all languages. Accordingly, UCoC must not be "white western", but must address and tackle issues in the local context.
As an Arab community, where the majority is Muslims, we need to ensure and guarantee some rights, including respect of religions and avoid impartiality,avoid impartiality[unclear] whether to gender, race or anything, equal opportunities, the right to appear, develop and expand as an Arab community. Anything that may impact the basic postulates of the Islamic and Arab communities, should be avoided, such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, under the pretext of controlling behaviour. For example, Arab editors are not treated the same way a german editor is treated if they edit an article that relates to this conflict in English Wikipedia, some were blocked immediately and forever. Accordingly, UCoC must be neutral, must not prefer one culture over others. Cultural differences must be respected and taken into consideration; where what our culture doesn't accept (religiously and morally) must be avoided.
In addition, we believe UCoC must avoid using any political and “provocative” terms that certain communities wouldn’t accept or be comfortable with; people usually avoid political issues, even when editing the related content because there may be consequences that none want to face. Otherwise, CoC will face objections (as usual) on anything that relates to the three famous prohibitions (religion, politics, and sex).
2) In addition to cultural aspects, participants also explained their concerns about the linguistic characteristics which differ from one language to another and hence cannot be equally implemented; a participant explained that we have seen some in the Strategy recommendations upfront. for example, one recommendation suggested to impose the use of neutral language (gender-neutral language) in all Wikipedia copies, and this is illogical because it's impossible to be implemented in some languages such as Arabic, where feminine and masculine language components are not only the pronouns (as in English) but the entire components differ, and using a gender-neutral language will make it difficult to read; e.g. “Traveler’ in English is used for male/female, but in Arabic, we use “musafer” for male and “musafera” for female, “howa” for he and “heya” for she
3) One lady thinks that more efforts have to be done to recognize the women's voices, because in Wiki-projects, working with men differs from working with women. When a woman starts participation, she puts more efforts in order to be known, recognized and heard in discussions; sometimes, women feel that nobody cares for their opinions when discussing a political or a medical subject, which is not accepted at all. Editing alone doesn’t give women credit or recognition for what they do, but she must initiate projects and participate on the ground although women’s responsibilities are more than men’s as mothers, for example. This fact can be recognized in all communities (not even wiki-communities), and this is where the gender gap comes. The efforts women do to be effective and powerful Wikipedians has to be understood, recognized and appreciated. Women who can only work online must be appreciated and supported (this was something that annoyed me in one event I attended; I cannot give if I am not encouraged, supported or recognized). Encouragement would have raised my morale and encouraged me to participate in other projects, but I think it’s late now; editing alone is sufficient for me; I would want to work by myself to avoid problems.
4) Two participants (admins) only mentioned paid contributions. I find this something important to be mentioned. Usually, the content that paid-contributors produce doesn’t comply with the standards and policies (e.g. notability). Adding a low-quality and unaccepted paid biographies are dangerous and fraud; such contributors make use of gaps; so this has to stop. UCoC must include a term that indicates that in case a paid content is proven, it has to be deleted, the user has to be blocked for a while without complacency. In addition, bad faith and negative behaviour must be stated clearly in order to take the appropriate actions against it.
Statistical Representation of Data
Medium of engagement
The total number of Arab Wikipedians/Wikimedians who participated in the UCoC discussion is 64. The number seems modest compared to the number of invitees. For example, the invitation was published twice in one of the biggest Facebook pages that gather Wikipedians, yet, only 4 people responded based on that. The methods I used to contact people are clarified in the following chart with the number of participants based on each. However, the most accurate one is “Survey” as it targeted specific users (specifically, Autoconfirmed users) because they filled out the survey; many other participants received the message by more than one contacting method because they are members of more than one contacted group, so it was not really accurate to decide if a person responded after seeing the invitation in their talk page or in the Facebook page.
However, the diversity of the participants is fair enough to consider that they are representatives for the entire community. This diversity is presented in the following charts:
By activity: Distribution by activitiesAbout 67% of the participants are online contributors (e.g. editors and Autoconfirmed users), while 14 community leaders participated (about 22%), 3 project leaders (about 4.5%) and 4 project participants (about 6%)
By Gender: Distribution by genderMost of the participants were males (36, 56%) while females were 22 (34%), and I was not able to identify the gender of 6 participants (of those who responded to the survey).
By Privilege: Distribution by user privilegesAlmost half of the participants are editors (35, 55%) while autoconfirmed participants were 15 (23%); while admins and previous admins counted 9 forming 14% of the total. (Please notice that the “Arab Committee members were counted as one and were considered editors).
Conclusion
The process provided a space for many Arab Wikipedians to share their thoughts about their experience as wiki-volunteers. They explained the challenges they face while working online or on the projects and workshops, their groups initiate, also based on what they witness and see in the different spaces related to Wikipedia such as social media, village pump discussions, workshops and conferences. Many participants added notes about the current policies we have and almost agreed that policies are not sufficient, not applied the right way and need to be enhanced. This all indicates that participants really care for a positive change that would boost their voluntary experience and guarantee continuity.
For all the challenges participants tried to explain, most of them thought that the intended UCoC must include solutions that help them as individuals and as communities to overcome all kinds of challenges which will reflect positively on their voluntary work and on the content. Hence, most of them supported the idea of enforcing a global code of conduct that takes into consideration the characteristics and special needs of Arab communities, considers the uniqueness of cultural aspects that cannot and must not be left out and fills the gaps that currently exist in the local policies, which must not be ignored either, in addition to all other concerns the participants clarified. The failure to apply the code of conduct may cause some groups of participants, especially females, to withdraw and stop participating, especially in the on-ground initiatives and projects.
