(MENAFN- Jordan Times) The Jordan Open Source Association is working on a project with the Wikimedia Foundation to increase Arabic content about Jordan on the web, Issa Mahasneh, the association's president, said on Monday.
The project entails encouraging university students, experts and academicians to post items in Arabic about the country's history and geography on Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopaedia, Mahasneh told The Jordan Times, noting that other topics will be covered in later stages.
"Content in Arabic on the web, especially about Jordan, is lacking. We are in talks with the Wikimedia Foundation on how to implement the project, which will mainly rely on volunteers," he said.
"The project will be pioneering in Jordan and the region as it specifically seeks to provide a wide variety of information about the Kingdom," Mahasneh added.
A nonprofit organisation that operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects, the foundation's mission is to "empower a global volunteer community to collect and develop the world's knowledge and to make it available to everyone for free, for any purpose".
"We work together with a network of chapters in many different countries to achieve this goal," Wikimedia says on its website.
Currently, only 2 per cent of all web content is in Arabic, although Arabic speakers account for 5 per cent of global Internet users, according to Google.
In the Middle East, there are an estimated 78.62 million Internet users, a number that grew by 2.293 per cent between 2000 and 2011, according to www.internetworldstats.com.
About 65 per cent of Arab Internet users look for Arabic content.
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.