This is very interesting, i think to liase with the media would be the best
thing since i do not know we can get really nice pictures of such public
figures. We could even tell the media houses that it is a sort of CSR when
the give us the photos to put on wikipedia.
On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 5:51 AM, stephen wanjau <wanjaustev(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Hello Folks!
As we edit English Wikipedia, you will note that the tag Requested
photos<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_requested_photogr…
quite rampant in most articles that are about people or features in
Kenya. As I navigated around categories of requested photographs in Africa,
I established that Kenya has the highest number of requested photos as
compared to the rest of the African countries. (I stand to be corrected
though).
Even if the case is not so, we still have around 500+ requested photos for
use in Wikipedia from Kenya. But again most of these photos are of people
[1]. For a case in point; Conjestina the famous female boxing champion.
Personally, I would not envisage a scenario where I would be attending a
boxing match so that I can really get a nice shot of her. But as a
Wikipedia contributor I would really like to see here photo up on Wikipedia
but how? One thing I believe is that, we can fulfill a great percentage of
these requests and this is why?
Recently, after the demise of the late Prof. George Saitoti, I held my
horses for a reliable source to broadcast about this on the very hour of
his passing. For this case it was the Daily Nation and Capital FM news that
did it first from my search. I went to his Wikipedia article and updated it
with the appropriate info plus some slight changes on the tense. I tweeted…
”Hey! Someone already update the Saitoti Wikipedia article #KOT”
#KOT is a hash tag for Kenyans On Twitter that is used to address issues
concerning Kenya on this social network. The tweet got several retweets and
over that some positive PR that Wikipedia is up-to date.
Later on, I was contacted by a journalist from the Nation Media Group as a
result of my actions on Wikipedia. He told me that he had an account on
Wikipedia but he infrequently edits because he doesn’t know how albeit he
fetched my number from my FB profile via my Wikipedia userpage. He got my
username from the history of the late Professor George Saitoti article. He
interviewed me on the phone for about 45 minutes and I wish to clarify that
I spoke in my opinion as a Wikipedia editor and not for the chapter or for
the Wikimedia movement. He asked me how and why I did that and in general
why I edit Wikipedia.
Having said that, these journalists are a very essential base of photo
contributors to us since most of these photos about the people in question
have already been taken but in the protection of Journalists of these media
houses. Probably what we need to do is to talk to them about CC licenses
and the impact that their work would have on Wikipedia. From my interview,
he was very jubilant about my deeds. I invited the journalist to come in
after giving him an overview of cc licenses and that I need photos to make
articles about Kenya and its people on Wikipedia speak more than 1000 words:)
Another thing we can use social media (twitter) to inform people about
Wikipedia activities here in Kenya. Read this article [2] about a CNN
correspondent who navigated Kenya via twitter and she even organized a
meet-up via twitter by using the tag #KOT!
I would like to hear your point of view about this.
regards,
Stephen.
1. 1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_requested_photographs_in_Ke…
2. 2.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/15/world/africa/kenya-twitter-experiment/ind…
re
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_requested_photographs_in_Ke…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_requested_photographs_of_pe…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_requested_photographs_in_Af…
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=http%3A%2F%2Ftoolserver.org%2F~para%2Fcgi-bi…
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