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 15,7million 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) _______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians _______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
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