Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia, is one of the most important websites now. However, the Arabic version of this great project is suffering: the number of available articles in Arabic is very low compared to the number of Arabic speakers in the World. Consider this: Polish Wikipedia contains more than 100,000 articles and there are only 46 million speakers of this language; there are more than 250 million speakers of Arabic worldwide, but the Arabic Wikipedia has more than 10,000 articles only. The other big problem is that even for the existing articles, many of them are incomplete and some of them merely have a few words on them. We, Arab internet users, are the only to blame for this.

In order to enrich the Arabic content on Wikipedia, the Egyptian GNU/Linux User Group (EGLUG), have announced Saturday, August 26, 2006, the first Arabic Wikipedia Day. They are inviting all Arab users to volunteer in the day-long event, and to contribute to this project. I had written and edited several articles in the past, and I encourage you all to participate in this event. I’m working on a new article to add it on Saturday, and you should do something too. Writing and editing pages on Wikipedia is very easy; as easy as blogging and writing in forums if not easier. Give it a try, you won’t regret it, and believe me that such contribution to human knowledge is very rewarding. thx nas