Dear All,
Talking about images that could be used in Wikipedia articles (or any other
education purpose), this is just to draw your attention to this situation:
the French ex-Institut géographique national (IGN, National Geographic
Institute), today Institut national de l'information géographique et
forestière, has 950'000 aerial pictures of former French colonies (most of
them in West and Central Africa) that are currently threatened by the
so-called "vinegar syndrome" (yes, there is a Wikipedia article
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate_film#Decay_and_the_%22vinegar_syndrome%22>
about this). IGN is looking for a partnership in order to co-fund and/or
fasttrack the digitization of these pictures and save them from decay.
Maybe this will give ideas to the Foundation or to one of you.
*Jeune Afrique *has published an article
<https://www.jeuneafrique.com/677525/culture/patrimoine-danciennes-photographies-aeriennes-de-lafrique-menacees-de-destruction/>
on this situation today (in French).
Thanks a lot,
Best regards,
Bertrand (Don Camillo on Wikimedia projects)
Le dim. 2 déc. 2018 à 20:24, Isaac Olatunde <reachout2isaac(a)gmail.com> a
écrit :
Hello Everyone,
I'll like to point out that images does not magically become unusable
simply because they are not used on Wikipedia articles. Wikimedia Commons
is a repository for hosting images that are realistically useful for
educational purposes and this does not include images that are in use on
Wikimedia projects only. The term "education" is to be understood according
to its broad meaning of providing knowledge, instructional or informative.
Generally, I agree with some of the issues raised by Ingo but I'll like to
read the response of organizers of WLA before an extensive comment on the
contest.
Regards,
Isaac
On Dec 1, 2018 7:58 PM, "Ingo Koll" <ikoll(a)gmx.de> wrote:
Dear Florence
I join in the congratulations for getting to a new round of funding for
Wiki loves Africa photographic competition.
I was an early fan of the idea but I have to confess that my fan status
has markedly 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 some winner category but is unusable for any purpose (unless
you want to document fake stereoptypes...)
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.
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.
We have put in hours and hours of work doing stubs about Tanzanian wards
and are nearly complete. Most Tanzanian wards are optically pretty boring
villages which often look similar and rarely have remarkable and
distinguishing architecture, sometimes landscape features in the
background. A photographic challenge in my view is to catch (a less
boring?) scene with some signboard that has has the name of the local
school, ward office or church on it to make identifiable. I do not get
them unless I travel myself overland and take pictures. But our users would
love to see them!! And I assume that it may be similar in other countries.
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
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