The BA Hosts Wikimania 2008 for the First Time in the Arab World
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Alexandria—
the BA won the bid to host the 4th annual Wikimedia Conference, following a tough competition with Atlanta and Cape Town. Alexandria is the first Arab and African city hosting this annual conference. The BA, an institution encouraging free access to knowledge, will host the conference and provide all the required facilities to render the conference a great success.
Wikipedia is a free content multilingual encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. The vast majority of articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. The operation of Wikipedia depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open source wiki software platform. Wikipedia's English edition was launched on 15 January 2001. Currently, Wikipedia contains more than 4 million articles in different languages, one million of which are in English. Volunteers around the world edit, and add new articles daily.