OCCs, short for online creation communities, are internet-based virtual communities whose members interact and collaborate via the internet in order to create online contents (Fuster Morell 2010: 7). They create these contents on different topics and using various languages and formats. International communities create online content in widely spoken languages such as English, Mandarin, Spanish and French. However, content in minority languages is mostly produced by communities whose members belong to a local community such as the Moroccan online community.

Until recently, most of the content that was produced and published online was mainly through traditional chat rooms, forums and blogs, to name few examples. However, OCCs initiated a new era where the created content is freely accessible, editable and owned by anyone(^[1]). The ultimate aim is sharing common information resources resulting from collaboratively «building and integrating dispersed information and knowledge» (Fuster Morell 2010: 7).

Wikipedia is a multilingual collaborative free-content online encyclopedia based on the model of openly editable content, i.e. wiki. Both Wikipedia source code and content are in fact open and free and can be edited by everyone. It was created in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger to «provide free knowledge for all»(^[2]). This encyclopedia is among the most visited websites worldwide, currently ranked sixth(^[3]). Wikipedia is available in more than 300 languages (304 as of July 2019) that gather in total more than 40 million articles. In each language, the corresponding Wikipedia is independent and has its own community, responsible for making rules and enforcing policies related to that language edition. Wikipedia is just one of 12 projects managed by the Wikimedia Foundation. The complete list of these projects can be found at the official web page of the foundation(^[4]).

The Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia Foundation projects. One of the main aims behind the existence of this movement is to coordinate and organize how the community is working. It allows also activities to happen offline, and to support contributors worldwide through several ways (e.g. capacity building, sharing experience, etc.). Through the Wikimedia movement, users belonging to the same community can create and gather into different organizations such as chapters and local or thematic user groups.

Given its extent, size and influence, Wikipedia can logically be considered as a reference to analyze when studying Online Creation Communities. Hence its choice to be an example for an OCC in the present paper.

Situated at a crossroad between Africa, Europe and the Islamic world, Morocco has historically been a region where different cultures met and mixed with each other. An interesting outcome of this rich history was the emergence of the so-called Moroccan Darija, a combination of Arabic and Tamazight influenced by several foreign languages such as French and Spanish (Chafik 1999: 8). Formally, there are two official languages in Morocco: Arabic and Tamazight(^[5]). In practice however, it is not clear which Arabic or Tamazight versions are the official ones. The constitution does not mention if the official language is classical Arabic or Darija, but the common practice is that written documents are in classical Arabic (and/or French). Classical Arabic and more recently standard Tamazight are languages that are taught since the first year of school, while daily life oral communication happens mostly in Darija and/or Tamazight. There is no official version of written Darija, and it is not part of any program in the official education curriculum. Written poems, magazines and even books exist in Darija (Elinson 2013, Miller 2017). However, the lack of official standardization makes the adoption and broadening of any of the chosen ways difficult and conflictual. Moreover, the social status of writing in Darija is perceived as far lower and devaluing compared to a similar text in the languages of instruction in the Moroccan school: Classical Arabic or French (Zouhir 2014). Writing in Darija can be interpreted either as a lack of mastering of the «formal» languages, or as an act of rebellion against them. Either way, this choice is interpreted negatively by several actors(^[6]).

With the introduction of the internet in Morocco and its boom in the 21st century, several voices started to challenge the official view regarding languages hierarchy in Morocco. The spreading of the internet and its related freedom within the younger generation allowed them to choose to communicate in the language of their choice, without any restriction or need for standardization. An example of this wave of challenging voices are Farouk El Merrakchi(^[7]) Mourad Alami(^[8]), or Hamid El Mahdaoui (Sedrati 2017). Using Moroccan Darija in communication is not perceived in the same way depending on its form and way of use. If oral Darija is widely accepted and is even present in official channels, its written version is constantly criticized for several reasons(^[9]) (Hoogland 2018). First, a problem when writing in Darija is its non-standardization, allowing each and every one to write the way they want (Hall 2015). Related to this argument comes the alphabet problem. Since the first keyboards introduced to Morocco were in Latin Alphabet, a version of Darija is written in that Alphabet (for practical reasons), while neo-Darijists tend to prefer the Arabic alphabet. Second, writing in Darija is perceived by some as a distortion of the Arabic language itself. The eternal debate of the differences between languages and dialects emerges at that point (Haugen 1966). It is worth to mention that several attempts for a standardized Darija alphabet exist, interested readers are referred to (Aguadé 2006), (Hoogland 2014) and (Moustaoui 2012).

The official representation of the Wikimedia Foundation in Morocco comes through the Wikimedia MA User Group(^[10]). The Moroccan user group was created in October 2015 to contribute in the advancement of the free knowledge movement in Morocco. Among the activities of the user group, one can mention the following: a) improving Wikipedia content related to Morocco, and b) empowering the local community in order to encourage local content in local languages.

In this context, these activities are not only related to content, but also to languages. The Wikimedia vision(^[11]) stresses on the importance of «providing all human beings with the sum of human knowledge». To complete this vision, it is therefore important to reach everyone by making content available in all languages. The Moroccan user group serves in that sense the interests of the Moroccan community, by making sure that the content is available not only in the official languages, but in all forms of expression that are present in Morocco, including Darija, and all Amazigh dialects.

In opposition to a formal institution, the user group is community driven. This setup allows the interests of the community to be respected and reflected in the group work. It is one of the strengths of the Wikimedia model. It is natural that conflicting views exist in the community but having a Wikipedia in Darija does not contradict having another one in classical Arabic. In fact, those interested in writing in Darija would either write in it or not write at all. The two projects are independent and are hosted on different platforms and pages. Moreover, the idea of providing knowledge to all is against any kind of discrimination towards a mode of expression and should empower people speaking given languages to write and read knowledge in their languages as well.

A good example of a project in Moroccan Darija by an OCC is the Moroccan Arabic version of Wikipedia(^[12]). 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. In fact, an example of an official Wikipedia in an Arabic dialect is the Egyptian Arabic version of Wikipedia which has reached more than 20000 articles(^[13]).

Similar to the Egyptian version, the aim of a Wikipedia in Darija is to make knowledge available online for people in Darija. This gives the Moroccan online community a relative independence from Eastern (in Classical Arabic) and Western (French, Spanish and English) shaped online contents, which often reflect poor knowledge about areas such as the local Moroccan culture or history. Thus, with more awareness of the local Moroccan specificities, in Darija it will be possible to produce and make available knowledge that is more extensive, more accurate and more accessible.

Writing a version of the largest online encyclopedia in Moroccan Darija is not an easy task and has various and multiple challenges and issues. Among these, we find the following:

2.3.1. Standardization

Wikipedia is a written encyclopedia and most of its content is in written form, with a noticeable presence of images, audio and video files. On the other hand, Darija is an oral heritage that was never officially standardized in a written form. The difference of local variations in Darija itself, as well as the choice of different vocalizations leads to a pseudo-anarchical situation within the incubator. Some users insist on using their own regional dialect based on the principle of «write Darija the way what you speak it», which creates conflicts between the different (and few) active users. Even if speaking the exact same dialect, two different users can use different alphabets, or different letters to vocalize their words. For example, the same verb, say, can be written in different ways as presented in Table 1. The writing depends on the factors mentioned above. Creative users can even go further and write the same sounds in Tifinagh alphabet, claiming that it is an alphabet suitable for Darija as well.

Table 1 - Example of different writing for the verb «say».