Abu-Hilal: This will help us develop our projects in building an Arabic knowledge society
TAIPEI- Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAGorg) joined more than 1,100 participants from 98 countries in the third annual conference for users of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikimania, in Taipei, Taiwan August 3-5, 2007.
The Wikimedia Foundation's stated goal is to develop and maintain open content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge.
In addition to the multilingual general encyclopedia Wikipedia, the Foundation manages a multi-language dictionary and thesaurus named Wiktionary, an encyclopedia of quotations named Wikiquote, a repository of source texts in any language named Wikisource, and a collection of e-book texts for students (such as textbooks and annotated public domain books) named Wikibooks. Wikijunior is a subproject of Wikibooks that specializes in books for children.
"It was an excellent experience to be part of this international movement and communicate with the biggest companies in the field of IT," TAGorg's Web Department Manager Ihab Abu-Hilal said.
"This will help us develop our projects in building an Arabic knowledge society," he added.
Meanwhile, Search Engines Officer Ramez Quneibi expressed his satisfaction of the new technologies presented in the conference.
"We suggested the idea of accrediting TAGorg as one of the Wikipedia chapters in the region in order to support and activate the Wikipedia role in Arabic," he said.
"Our aim from this idea is to be one of the moderators in the Arabic region which will grant us special privileges and advantages," Quneibi added.
In her opening remarks Florence Devouard, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, shed light on last year's accomplishments, among which are; the creation of the Wikimedia Taiwan chapter, and the creation of Wikiversity.