Hello Ingo,
It seems you were completely ignored by the organizers in December 2018.
Sadly, this is not a good approach to solving problems.
Let's be honest, the amount of donor's fund and community resources
deployed for this contest does not equate to the value it's actually adding
to bringing knowledge gap in Africa.
In this year edition alone, about USD 25,000 was spent on the contest but
only 8,983 photos were contributed. Many of them are either copyright
violations or unusable. I don't think this is an effective way of spending
donors fund and regrettably, the attitude of the organizers does not show
they understand the problem.
I honestly do not see any reason to continue to deploy donors fund on Wiki
Loves Africa, with no tangle results. This does not in anyway stop any
country from organizing a nationwide photography contest on contents that
are not adequately available for use on Wikimedia projects.
Regards,
Isaac
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 6:10 PM Ingo Koll <ikoll(a)gmx.de wrote:
Dear fellow Wikimedians, dear Florence,
as the Wiki loves Africa 2019 competition is coming to its close I would
like to bring back the question which I raised already in December 2018:
*1. Do others share my impression that images from the competition are
hardly ever used in wikipedia articles?*
*2. Do others have the impression that the present approach for Wiki Loves
Africa does not help much to close the knowledge gap about Africa? *
When I posted in December some participants here voiced interest but
wanted to wait for a feedback fom the organizers. Such a feedback I have
not seen. So allow me to repeat some lines from my first post:
*I was an early fan of the idea of "Wiki Loves Africa" but I have to
confess that my fan status has cooled over time. I cannot claim to have
done a comprehensive reseach but did some checks here and there.*
*So I have the impression that a) the competition has brought a number of
really beautiful photographs b) the competition has brought lots of images
which are not used anywhere in wikipedia articles (my short checks give me
the impression that could be the case for the vast majority of images
produced)*
* and** I ask myself if the reason may be that a lot of these mages is
frankly unusable.*
* I remember that prize selected image showing some beautiful ladies in
Massai attire knitting under a tree (the year of adornment) which was
selected in a winner category but is unusable for any purpose (unless you
want to document fake stereoptypes - the motive was fake...)*
* There is a lot of nice looking images which I do not know how to use
because of their not clear labelling, unhelpful categories and useless
explanations. It helps me as author nothing to see an image and a text like
"traditional tools of Ghana/Malawi/etc". This is unusable and useless.*
* I write this not from the point of view of a lover of beauty (my taste
is poor) but just simply from the view of a wikipedia author. I would love
to have some thousand images (not necessarily beautiful) which just show
African villages. We know the criticism about the white spots on the
African maps of knowledge. Villages back home in Germany may have less than
1000 inhabitants but 3 articles about the village, about its church and
about the sports club. Images are available and people look for them.*
*I do not want to denigrate Wiki loves Africa but i would love to hear
from others how they see the value of the results as they have been so
far. Why do we do it - what do we get from it? **How can images about
"play" be useful for closing the white spaces on the African map of
knowledge?*
Cheers, Ingo - "Kipala"
Jenga Wikipedia ya Kiswahili user group
_______________________________________________
African-Wikimedians mailing list
African-Wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 6:10 PM Ingo Koll <ikoll(a)gmx.de wrote:
Dear fellow Wikimedians, dear Florence,
as the Wiki loves Africa 2019 competition is coming to its close I would
like to bring back the question which I raised already in December 2018:
*1. Do others share my impression that images from the competition are
hardly ever used in wikipedia articles?*
*2. Do others have the impression that the present approach for Wiki Loves
Africa does not help much to close the knowledge gap about Africa? *
When I posted in December some participants here voiced interest but
wanted to wait for a feedback fom the organizers. Such a feedback I have
not seen. So allow me to repeat some lines from my first post:
*I was an early fan of the idea of "Wiki Loves Africa" but I have to
confess that my fan status has cooled over time. I cannot claim to have
done a comprehensive reseach but did some checks here and there.*
*So I have the impression that a) the competition has brought a number of
really beautiful photographs b) the competition has brought lots of images
which are not used anywhere in wikipedia articles (my short checks give me
the impression that could be the case for the vast majority of images
produced)*
* and** I ask myself if the reason may be that a lot of these mages is
frankly unusable.*
* I remember that prize selected image showing some beautiful ladies in
Massai attire knitting under a tree (the year of adornment) which was
selected in a winner category but is unusable for any purpose (unless you
want to document fake stereoptypes - the motive was fake...)*
* There is a lot of nice looking images which I do not know how to use
because of their not clear labelling, unhelpful categories and useless
explanations. It helps me as author nothing to see an image and a text like
"traditional tools of Ghana/Malawi/etc". This is unusable and useless.*
* I write this not from the point of view of a lover of beauty (my taste
is poor) but just simply from the view of a wikipedia author. I would love
to have some thousand images (not necessarily beautiful) which just show
African villages. We know the criticism about the white spots on the
African maps of knowledge. Villages back home in Germany may have less than
1000 inhabitants but 3 articles about the village, about its church and
about the sports club. Images are available and people look for them.*
*I do not want to denigrate Wiki loves Africa but i would love to hear
from others how they see the value of the results as they have been so
far. Why do we do it - what do we get from it? **How can images about
"play" be useful for closing the white spaces on the African map of
knowledge?*
Cheers, Ingo - "Kipala"
Jenga Wikipedia ya Kiswahili user group
_______________________________________________
African-Wikimedians mailing list
African-Wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians