African-Wikimedians July 2019

african-wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org

18 participants
8 discussions

WikiIndaba announcement
by Bobby Shabangu 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

Dear all, We would like to inform you that after long deliberations between the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and the WikiIndaba Steering Committee (WISCom) we have reached an agreement that the suitable dates to host the WikiIndaba conference 2019 in Abuja, Nigeria will be from 8 - 10 November. We know that this news will disappoint many of you, who were gearing up for the meeting. Unfortunately, operational difficulties created some delays. We have discussed this with the staff of the WMF, and all agree that a postponement will give us some extra time to ensure that a quality event is planned for all. WikiIndaba conference is a key pillar in the Wikimedia movement strategic direction, and an important platform for the African Wikimedia community. WISCom and the WMF continue to support Wikimedia Nigeria as the host and venue for the conference. We greatly appreciate your support and understanding, and we hope to see you at WikiIndaba! Kind regards, Bobby Shabangu

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Research + Chapters, User Groups, Affiliates at Wikimania
by Leila Zia 09 Aug '19

09 Aug '19

[apologies for cross-posting.] Hi all, If you are a representative of a chapter, user group, or affiliate [0] attending Wikimania 2019 and interested to talk with the Research team at Wikimedia Foundation, we would really like to meet you. In this case, please read on. Otherwise, please feel free to ignore this message. (We do have a focus on addressing Wikimedia's knowledge gaps, especially as it is related to missing content on Wikimedia projects and small languages.) ------- One of the empowering aspects of attending Wikimania for me in the past years has been to be able to connect to many of you in person: to build lasting relationships, to understand the challenges that you face in your Wikimedia related efforts, and brainstorm with you about how/if research can help you answer some of your open questions. These conversations have been a source of inspiration for at least a few projects that the Research team at Wikimedia Foundation has picked up over the past years [1]. As our team is planning for our presence in Wikimania 2019 [2], I only hope that we can have even more of this kind of interaction together while we're in Stockholm. To this end and in order to make the best use of our collective time together, I'd like to propose an experimental meet-up during this year's Wikimania where the interested representatives of chapters, user groups, affiliates and the members of the Research team to meet. In order to organize this session, we need your input and I have put together a few questions at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe1YZmgxkJJA2lO6jl_nmOL9pwhbNu5GKV… that I'd appreciate if you answer if you find the idea of meeting up interesting. If you do not want to go to the link above and still want to provide your input, please send your responses to the questions at the end of this email to me privately. Whether the meet-up idea ends up being a useful one for you or not will be determined by your responses. Independent of that, I look forward to touch-basing with many of you soon. :) Best, Leila [0] From earlier conversations with chapters, user groups, and affiliates I've got the impression that it's useful to have a dedicated session focused on these groups and their needs/perspectives. This being said, this is not a hard rule. :) If you are not a representative of these groups and you'd like to attend, you're welcome to. Please fill out the survey. [1] https://research.wikimedia.org/projects.html [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T229267 ---- Survey questions if you don't want to fill out the survey by going to the link provided in this email: Description: [The following is a tentative description of the event and it may change based on your responses to this survey. The agenda for the meet up will be finalized on 2019-08-07.] Let's use the opportunity of being in Wikimania to get together and discuss the following and beyond: * [10-min] An update about what the Research team at Wikimedia Foundation has done since we met last year in Wikimania. We will provide updates on "Addressing Knowledge Gaps" and research contributions to "Knowledge Integrity". * [5-min] What stopped us from doing more? What challenges did we face? * [15-min] Let's talk longer term: what does it take to have a global network of researchers around Wikimedia projects? Why is having such a network important? Can we work together on this? * [30-min or more] What are some of the most pressing needs/questions that chapters, affiliates, and user groups face? (with an eye for converting them to research questions.) * ... ------- To learn more about the Research team at Wikimedia Foundation and what we do, please visit https://research.wikimedia.org/ . ------- Question 1. Are you interested to attend a meet-up with Wikimedia Foundation's Research team? Question 2. If your answer to the above question is Yes or Maybe, please let us know which affiliate, user group or chapter do you represent or are a member of? Question 3. What is a good outcome of the meet-up for you if you choose to attend it? Question 4. If you have specific times and days that you cannot attend the meet-up, please indicate them below. Question 5. Anything else you'd like to share with us and we should take into account when planning for this event? -- Leila Zia Principal Research Scientist, Head of Research Wikimedia Foundation

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Happy Africa Day: keyboards for all the languages of Africa
by Amir E. Aharoni 26 Jul '19

26 Jul '19

Hello, and happy Africa day! [ crossposted to African Wikimedians list, general Wikimedia list, and mediawiki-i18n ] To celebrate this, I am announcing the completion of a little pet project that I started a year ago: it is now easy to type in all the languages of Africa in which there is a Wikipedia or an active Incubator. This is available in all Wikimedia projects and in translatewiki.net. This release is intended for desktop and laptop computers. For mobile phones and tablets, I strongly recommend trying apps such as Gboard, SwiftKey, or African Keyboard. For full details and project description see this blog post: https://aharoni.wordpress.com/2019/05/25/happy-africa-day-keyboards-for-all… Or jump straight into the (easy!!!) technical documentation here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector/Inp… These keyboards were tested by myself, and some of them were also tested by a few other people who speak these languages, and as far as I know they are easy to enable and disable and the work correctly. However, it's possible that some things are missing: I could have missed some letters, I could have made mistakes in documentation, I could have missed some languages. Please contact me if you find any problems. Thanks! -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

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Changes to Rapid Grants - Effective August 1, 2019
by Woubzena Jifar 25 Jul '19

25 Jul '19

Hello all, Hope this email finds you well. We are sending this message to select community mailing lists and all previous recipients of Wikimedia Foundation Rapid Grants. As you know the Rapid Grants Program <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid> [1] has played an important role in helping our communities to grow. The number of grants we have given out grew by 30% between FY16 -17 to this fiscal year, and they grew by 55% when measured by the total amount disbursed. (See the spending analysis <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_spending_analysis> [2] for reference.*) While communities have valued these flexible funding opportunities, on our part, it hasn’t been easy to measure and track their impact. We therefore will be implementing a number of changes in Fiscal Year 19/20, starting *August 1 2019*, to sharpen the focus and impact of rapid grants, whilst at the same time maintaining the quick and flexible funding options for community: 1) In the months specified below, we will prioritize support to *contests and campaigns* which have been an exciting source of growth in editorship, innovative participation and content generation by communities. These months will be solely dedicated to different contests and campaigns throughout the year: - *August*: only receiving proposals for *Wiki Loves Monuments* - *September*: only receiving proposals for *Awareness Grants* (campaign) - *December*: only receiving proposals for *Wiki Loves Africa * - *January*: only receiving proposals for *Art + Feminism* (campaign) - *March*: only receiving proposals for *Wiki Loves Earth* 2) Outside the months specified above, proposals are welcomed in all other categories: edit-a-thons, contests, photowalks, general promotion campaigns, and video campaigns. For added flexibility, we will also consider proposals outside of these categories, such as software development. However, we will no longer be providing rapid grants for travel support, equipment purchase or meetups. 3) We will evaluate each batch of grants once a month and accept the best proposals in alignment with the Wikimedia Foundation’s medium-term goals. We will share the evaluation for the Rapid Grants Program that led us to sharpen the focus for the program once the evaluation is completed by September 30, 2019. In addition to these changes, we’ve also considered comments around Wikimedia Foundation Rapid Grants eligibility criteria and have clarified these criteria. Please take the time to re-familiarize yourselves with the Wikimedia Foundation Rapid Grants Guidelines and Criteria <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/Learn> [4] page. The Wikimedia Foundation’s Medium-term <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019> [3] plan goals are set out here for information. If you have any questions, please email us at <rapidgrants(a)wikimedia.org>. Best regards, Woubzena *Please note that we have not yet put out the final FY 2018-19 numbers and we’re basing this calculation based on up to date internal numbers of 184 grants and $270,194. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_spending_analysis [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019 [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/Learn Woubzena Jifar (pronouns - she/her/hers) Program Officer, Rapid Grants User: WJifar (WMF) Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Wikimedia movement Salon Strategy workshops ( Johannesburg and Cape Town)
by Bobby Shabangu 24 Jul '19

24 Jul '19

Dear Wikimedian, Many people use Wikipedia as their first point of reference for their school research projects and general update on daily subject topics. The Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia would like to find out from you through a workshops which will be held in Johannesburg and Cape Town, how can they improve Wikipedia's user interaction and how can they support content contribution so that it represent the diverse people who reads it, it's a movement strategy which they aim to reach by year 2030 where Wikimedia content represents everyone who consumes and contributes to it. These will not be edit workshops but Salon Strategy where participants will discuss and take a short survey afterwards. So, we would like to invite you to take part in this Salon Strategy Survey. Over the next months Wikipedians around the world will be getting together to be part of this survey, so any ideas you have are very important to us. Come through!!! Even if you want to listen to how the conversation is going. For *Johannesburg* here are the details: Event date: 2 August 2019 ( Friday) Venue: Wits Writing Centre, Warternweiler Library Time: 3-5pm Facilitators: Bobby Shabangu Topics: *Diversity* and *Capacity Building*. For *Cape Town* here are the details: Event date: 3 August 2019 ( Saturday) Venue: Time: 10 -1pm Facilitators: Adri Baard Topics: *Diversity* and *Capacity Building*. Refreshments will be available. You can read more about the movement strategy here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20 Kind regards, Bobby Shabangu Director WikimediaZA 072 067 9593 bobby.shabangu(a)wikimedia.org.za

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Re: [African Wikimedians] African-Wikimedians Digest, Vol 11, Issue 35
by kayode yussuf 18 Jul '19

18 Jul '19

Thank you Bobby for the announcement. @Sherry, the venue details are been worked out and will be announced once confirmed. Kayode Yussuf On Thursday, July 18, 2019, 07:07:28 AM GMT+1, <african-wikimedians-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote: Send African-Wikimedians mailing list submissions to african-wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to african-wikimedians-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at african-wikimedians-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of African-Wikimedians digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: WikiIndaba announcement (Emna Mizouni) 2. Re: WikiIndaba announcement (Adjoa Linda Fletcher) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2019 00:08:04 +0100 From: Emna Mizouni <emna.mizouni(a)gmail.com> To: Mailing list for African Wikimedians <african-wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [African Wikimedians] WikiIndaba announcement Message-ID: <CAPAk4SBGG9piSRau59tjTrhBfHW3Zd1JMO-3PhOow5ig_k3PwQ(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Excellent news and amazing level of collaboration between the WISCom, WMF and the Wikimedians of Nigeria. Wish you the best of luck! Cheers, Emna On Wed, 17 Jul 2019, 21:54 Rajeeb Dutta, <marajozkee(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Congratulations and thanks for updating all of us for the same. > All my best wishes for the WikiIndiba conference. > > Best Regards, > Rajeeb Dutta. > (U: Marajozkee) > Sent from my iPhone > > On 18-Jul-2019, at 1:37 AM, Sherry Antoine <sherryantoine(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > Thanks Bobby, > Where in Abuja will they hold it? > Thanks, > Sherry > > *Sherry-Ann L. Antoine, MPA* > > Program Development and Outreach Specialist > > Program Director, Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AfroCrowd), > AfroCROWD.org <http://afrocrowd.org/>, #AfroCROWD > > Board of Directors, The Internet Society New York Chapter (ISOC-NY), > ISOC-NY.org <http://isoc-ny.org/> > > Phone / Whatsapp: 1(718) 772-4802 > > > > *Sent in a hurry. Please excuse any typos, thanks. > > > > On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 2:00 AM Bobby Shabangu <bobbyshabangu(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> We would like to inform you that after long deliberations between the >> Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and the WikiIndaba Steering Committee (WISCom) >> we have reached an agreement that the suitable dates to host the WikiIndaba >> conference 2019 in Abuja, Nigeria will be from 8 - 10 November. >> >> We know that this news will disappoint many of you, who were gearing up >> for the meeting. Unfortunately, operational difficulties created some >> delays. We have discussed this with the staff of the WMF, and all agree >> that a postponement will give us some extra time to ensure that a quality >> event is planned for all. WikiIndaba conference is a key pillar in the >> Wikimedia movement strategic direction, and an important platform for the >> African Wikimedia community. >> >> WISCom and the WMF continue to support Wikimedia Nigeria as the host and >> venue for the conference. >> >> We greatly appreciate your support and understanding, and we hope to see >> you at WikiIndaba! >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Bobby Shabangu >> >> _______________________________________________ >> African-Wikimedians mailing list >> African-Wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians >> > _______________________________________________ > African-Wikimedians mailing list > African-Wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians > > _______________________________________________ > African-Wikimedians mailing list > African-Wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians >

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Request for Rapid Grants Comments: Global Open Initiative/Parliament of Ghana challenge/Sixth Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana
by Mohammed Sadat Abdulai 15 Jul '19

15 Jul '19

Hi friends, I'm inviting comments on Meta for a contest proposal to add/improve Wikidata and Wikipedia content about Ghanaian legislators. Link to the grants page is at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/Global_Open_Initiative… It is a follow-up to: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/Masssly/Parliament_of_… Thank you. -Mohammed [[User:Masssly]]

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Wiki Loves Africa 2019 winners announced!!!
by Isla Haddow Flood 13 Jul '19

13 Jul '19

Dear Wikimedians Wiki In Africa is pleased to announce the winners for Wiki Loves Africa 2019. The theme this year was PLAY! and the winners are ... 1st place prize goes to the photo, Playing in the Nuba Mountains by Marco Gualazzini <https://www.facebook.com/marcogualazziniphotography/?eid=ARCWkEiohZz7M2dgX5…> taken in South Sudan. 2nd Prize goes to Peekaboo by Summer Kamal <https://www.facebook.com/summer.kamal?eid=ARBl82A9IkJFlY-VM_v5plk2hiWfJWfV6…>taken in Egypt. 3rd prize goes to My Skills (Teenagers in the street) by Mohamed Hozyen Ahmed (also from Egypt). The prize for Women in Sport goes to Girls Wrestling by Yvonne Youmbi from Cameroon. The prize for capturing a traditional form of play goes to Horses at Fantasia by Sofiane Mohammed Amri in Algeria. You can view the winning images on Commons here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019/Winners <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019/Winners> You can view the full range of images submitted here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Africa_2… <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Africa_2…> Congratulations to all the prize winner! The organisers would like to thank Erina Muhame for managing the jury process and the jurors for their amazing work!! Thanks also to all of you – the Wikimedians (usergroups and volunteers) across Africa – who hosted events that both explained and encouraged contribution. Warmest regards Isla and Florence (Usernames: Islahaddow and Anthere)

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African-Wikimedians July 2019