Oman education: 29 users write more than 162 articles in ITA’s Wikipedia competition

Muscat: In a recently held competition, Omanis contributed more than 162 articles to Wikipedia.
The Information and Technology Authority (ITA) concluded a competition called, “WikiOman2” on Monday, where users were asked to write three Arabic Wikipedia articles each. 29 users wrote more than 162 articles, and three winners were announced on Tuesday in an exclusive live stream.
“WikiOman1,” said a statement by ITA, “had produced 39 articles from 22 contestants.”
The statement added, “ITA announced three winners and gave participation awards to others.”
In its guidelines announcement, ITA said, “Articles will be judged on content—being whole, detailed, and neutral in tone. They will also be judged on writing style. For that, things, such as appropriate headings and short introductions are preferred, as well as proper sourcing and connecting the article to possible Wikipedia entries in other languages.”
The ITA ceremony statement said, “WikiOman was conceived to help enrich Arabic contributions to Wikipedia. This website was chosen because of how highly it is viewed, compared with other online encyclopaedias. It is an open, easy-access platform for many educational and age levels among internet users, as it contains more than 43 million volunteer-written articles in more than 295 languages and is visited by more than 430 million users on a monthly bases. Until last February, the website received more than 297 daily submissions.
The competition also contained multiple workshops to aid participants on clearing all guidelines. Enforcing these guidelines were judges, “Abdullah Hamad al Maani, one of the founders of a legal translation firm, Hilal al Badi, creative writer, screenwriter and deputy PR and communications at Sultan Qaboos University. Lastly was Musa al Balushi, systems supervisor at the Ministry of Education and Arabic digital information advocate.”
“Our competition guidelines meant that one must write in high Arabic on the topics of culture, arts, literature, technology, science, geography, manufacture, commerce, tourism, education, agriculture, transport, communications, or any other topics, excluding religion, tribal issues, and politics,” the statement added.