151 Country Report: Wikipedia

Morocco’s use of Wikipedia is fairly widespread as Arabic Wikipedia is the 17th largest Wikipedia language with just over 1 million articles. Usage is mostly concentrated in the Northern region of the country where the highest population densities exist. The Wikipedian page for Morocco reports that there are 23 Wikipedians that either live in Morocco or live in Morocco part time contributing to articles related to Morocco. Information about the country on Wikipedia includes a wide range of topics such as histories, physical geographies, politics, cultures, religion, international relations, and more. All are presumably managed and mostly edited by the 23 Wikipedians that manage the Morocco page.

When researching, I found some interesting research on efforts to create Wikipedia content in Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic. While many countries in the Arab world use their own dialects of Arabic, Darija is arguably the most distinct and deviates the most from standard Arabic. Spoken by 92% of Morcoccans, it is the dialect used in a strong majority of oral communication, cineman, and entertainment whereas standard Arabic is used in government, politics, and news broadcasts. As of 2019, research on online content creation in Darija noted that, “the main concept is to have a version of the largest online encyclopedia also in Darija. This project is at the incubator stage, which is an early stage where any Wikimedia project starts before becoming an official project,” (Magreb et al, 2019). While written Darija isn’t recognized by the state, publishing content in Darija would make Wikipedia content even more accessible and relevant to Moroccan people (Magreb et al 2019).