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(a)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(a)gmail.com>om>:
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(a)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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