'Love of knowledge': Volunteers toil to populate Arabic Wikipedia

Arabic Wikipedia

Driven by pride in their language and heritage, a growing network of volunteers is helping expand Arabic language content on Wikipedia, raising the number of articles above 1 million. Launched in 2003, Arabic Wikipedia has seen growth accelerate in recent years, with the number of articles more than doubling since 2015 thanks to enthusiastic volunteers across the Arab world. ‘We are volunteers for the love of the Arabic language, for the love of our culture, for the love of our countries for the love of knowledge in general,’ said Emna Mizouni, a contributor from Tunisia who also runs an association working on heritage. In 2020, more than 15,000 people made about 1.6 million edits to the online encyclopaedia's Arabic content, creating more than 77,000 new entries. Registered users grew by 44% to 136,000.