Hello Isla,

Thanks for providing the links to how you generated your statistics. Frankly speaking, I don't think your pageview statistics is a realistic way to determine the impact of Wiki Loves Africa for a number of reasons. The images pageviews are not independent of the Wikipedia articles. The data rely solely on the pageviews of the Wikipedia articles themselves. 

For example, File:Egyptian food Koshary.jpg was added to a subsection of the "Egypt" article on the English Wikipedia. This is a high traffic article with 240,053 pageviews monthly and 7,744 per day. If the article "Egypt" is viewed 240,053 times in a month, it's going to appear as a page view for every single images added to the article even if none of the images interest the readers.

If a student is interested in getting an overview of Egyptian festivals and decides to visit the Egypt article on the English Wikipedia, without looking at the cuisine subsection of the article, it's going to count as a page view for  File:Egyptian food Koshary.jpg. If statistics are generated this way to give an impression of impact, then there is a problem.

The questions we should ask ourselves are:

1. Since 2014, how many of the images contributed as part of Wiki Loves Africa are currently in use on Wikipedia?

2. From the 6200 contributors, how many of them are retained and or how many are still contributing photos or contributing in other capacity to Wikimedia project?

3. Is the current model realistically productive?

4. Should WMF continue to invest donor funds on this contest?

5. What is the future of Wiki Loves Africa?

Well, I think the community could initiate a strategic discussion on the future of Wiki Loves Africa.

Regards,

Isaac







On Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 7:07 PM Isla Haddow Flood <isla@wikiloveswomen.org wrote:
Dear Isaac

I calculated those amounts based on the following links from the BaGLAMa2 tool …

https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama2/#gid=285&month=201903
https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama2/#gid=286&month=201903
https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama2/#gid=287&month=201903
https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama2/#gid=333&month=201903

And to be absolutely clear, this is only for the first 4 years, and doesn’t include the page views for this year … Magnus has posted the Wiki Loves Africa 2019, but of course, it is not available yet (it takes a few days to calculate). 

What I didn’t mention before is that the figure for "Total views in all times” for the last 4 years is 225,5million page views. So, I don’t think that is too bad a statistic overall. 

The information on each of the submitters or participants is more difficult to quantify, the information is calculated from this query base: https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/35493 (in this case, to represent the participants in the 2019 contest)

warmest
Isla

On 30 Apr 2019, at 17:55, Isaac Olatunde <reachout2isaac@gmail.com> wrote:

Hells Isla,

You have raised some valid and interesting points in this discussion and to be fair with you (and Florence), the amount of energy and time you invest to keeping the contest running is worth appreciating. 

That being said, Wiki Loves Africa is a photography contest and image collection is an integral part of every photography contests and this is a fact supported by your recent input. Thus, let's look at some of your statistics.

Images entered into Wiki Loves Africa are viewed over 15.7 million times on Wikipedia, every months?

How did you arrived at this conclusion? Did you just sum the pageviews of every Wikipedia articles where images entered into Wiki Loves Africa are used?

I think it  would be brilliant for us to know how you came about the above statistical information as this may help to provide insights to the real impact of Wiki Loves Africa.

Over 6200 people have contributed images

Where are these people? How many of them continue to contribute images or contribute in other capacity to Wikimedia projects? What efforts are being made to follow up with contributors after every edition of the contest

Looking forward to reading your response.

Regards,

Isaac.



On Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 3:33 PM Isla Haddow Flood <isla@wikiloveswomen.org wrote:
Hello All

I completely agree with Florence and Lodewijk. (And apologies Ingo, I also completely missed your email)

Just to remind everyone, the images collected are not the entire goal of Wiki Loves Africa.

Its goals are to:
        • be an easy and fun way for people to contribute their experiences and cultures to Wikipedia,
        • inspire people to share their pride of local knowledge and cultures on global platforms like Wikipedia,
        • add to the visual representations of Africa's peoples and cultures on Wikipedia,
        • provide alternative perspectives of universal subjects by including visuals from Africa in their articles,
        • bolster the visibility and membership of local volunteer groups,
        • provide opportunities for volunteer groups to build capacity and project management skills.

Over the course of the last five years there have been several achievements of which we are proud.

        • Images entered into Wiki Loves Africa are viewed over 15,7 million times on Wikipedia, every month.
        • Over 6,200 people have contributed images.
        • Just under 50,000 images have been entered.
        • 20 African countries have hosted participation events that were organised by local volunteer teams.
        • Over 200 participation and training events have been held.
        • The competition attracts high levels of new contributors (consistently over 80%) each year.

As you can see from the above stats, that the focus of the project is not just to provide images for use on Wikipedia, but - among other things - to create a regular, fun event to draw community together, and allow local volunteers the platform to speak about Wikipedia, the work they do, and why Africa needs representation from a local level on a global resource. 

The lack of usage of the images among the Wikimedia projects are due to a number of factors:
* the newbie status of up to 80% of the submitters who do not place the correct categories or usable descriptions (as Florence has explained)
* the inability or the lack of knowledge or lack of interest (or for whatever reason) of the African community at large to assist in placing the images in the relevant or related articles (despite many pleas from Florence over the years, and has she has explained)
* the lack of descriptions of very specific cultural practices that can only be provided by people who know those practices.

For the reasons above and many others, Florence and I have been working with the Structured Data on Commons team to develop a tool that will encourage people to add descriptions/data points and therefore increase the use of images that have been submitted to Wiki Loves X competitions. ISA is still a tool in development but please watch this space for announcements in the mid-year. 

So … to answer your questions and concerns, although it is, on the surface, a photographic competition … it aims to achieve (and has done) far more than just provide quality images onto Wikipedia. It has helped to build the Wikimedia Community across Africa (not entirely on its own, but in partnership with other events and the efforts of each community). That I think has been invaluable. 

It is very difficult to build up, up-skill and consistently support something as valuable and worthwhile as Wikimedia communities and volunteer groups across Africa. … and so very easy to criticise it and tear it down. 

The future of Wiki Loves Africa is in the hands of the African community. It is up to all of us to decide what we want to do with it. Perhaps let's talk about its future …?

Warmest
Isla

> On 30 Apr 2019, at 00:49, Jos Damen <josephcmdamen@gmail.com> wrote:

> Apologies. This might be better:

> Category "Wiki_Loves_Africa" has 50677 files.

> Total image usages         8522

> Distinct images used      3967      (7.83% of all images of category)

> best,

> Jos 


> Op di 30 apr. 2019 om 00:40 schreef Isaac Olatunde <reachout2isaac@gmail.com>:
> Hello Jos,

> This thread is about "Wiki Loves Africa" and "WikiAfrica" is not the same as "Wiki Loves Africa". I am not sure how your statistics on " WikiAfrica" might be useful. 

> Regards,

> Isaac


> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 11:30 PM Jos Damen <josephcmdamen@gmail.com wrote:
> Dear all,

> Some figures:

> Category "WikiAfrica" has 115283 files.  
> Total image usages    29734
> Distinct images used  7671    (6.65% of all images of category)

> You can now check it realtime at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiAfrica  (image uptake stats)

> best regards,

> Jos Damen (NL) 
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