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
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@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@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 6:10 PM Ingo Koll <ikoll@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@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
Hello Isaac,
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.
That's interesting. Was it a year or 2 ago that ~35k$ was requested? Anyways, I remember there was a discussion to reduce the cost somewhere, suggested by the WMF grants team.
The grants were then split into 3 or 4 parts, to be funded individually. Didn't follow up with what they all amounted to.
25k$ is, frankly speaking, still high for an event like WLA. Wiki Loves Monuments caps under 10k$, the last I checked.
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.
Yep, but the big question is, will the WMF fund such nationwide photography contest? Heck, will the WMF fund individual grants of professionals who wanna help in such regards? Frankly speaking, will the WMF fund?
cheers, rexford
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 7:42 PM Isaac Olatunde reachout2isaac@gmail.com wrote:
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@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@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 6:10 PM Ingo Koll <ikoll@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@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
Le 29/04/2019 à 22:52, Nkansah Rexford a écrit :
Hello Isaac,
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.
That's interesting. Was it a year or 2 ago that ~35k$ was requested? Anyways, I remember there was a discussion to reduce the cost somewhere, suggested by the WMF grants team.
The grants were then split into 3 or 4 parts, to be funded individually. Didn't follow up with what they all amounted to.
25k$ is, frankly speaking, still high for an event like WLA. Wiki Loves Monuments caps under 10k$, the last I checked.
Hi Rex
I would strongly advise not to do any type of comparison between WLA and WLM to be honest. There are two reasons
1) for WLA, the rapid grant funding some country teams got was more or less the only funding they get an entire year. So I do hope they took the opportunity to use this funding to buy stuff that can be also useful around the year.
2) claiming that WLM cost only 10k dollars is frankly... completely aside the reality. Most developped european chapters participate to it. Their funding they dedicate to WLM is counted in their FDC budget, so you would not see it. They also dedicate staff to run WLM in the country. And not just a handful of hours.
Example: this is the portal page of WLM in France. Look at pages history. 95% of time on all those organizational pages, you will find Sarah Krichen WMF https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sarah_Krichen_WMFr
This is part of her staff time. That is her job... and in France, a staff at Wikimedia France cost over 50k per year to the mouvement. I am fairly sure that WLM cost more than 10k euros to the mouvement just in France, and that's only one country amongst many others.
This comparison is irrelevant.
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.
Yep, but the big question is, will the WMF fund such nationwide photography contest? Heck, will the WMF fund individual grants of professionals who wanna help in such regards? Frankly speaking, will the WMF fund?
Until WMF has finalized its 2030 strategy... nothing is certain :)
Florence
cheers, rexford
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 7:42 PM Isaac Olatunde <reachout2isaac@gmail.com mailto:reachout2isaac@gmail.com> wrote:
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@gmx.de <mailto:ikoll@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@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians On Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 6:10 PM Ingo Koll <ikoll@gmx.de <mailto:ikoll@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@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians _______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto: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
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 2:19 PM Florence Devouard fdevouard@gmail.com wrote:
Le 29/04/2019 à 22:52, Nkansah Rexford a écrit :
Hello Isaac,
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.
That's interesting. Was it a year or 2 ago that ~35k$ was requested? Anyways, I remember there was a discussion to reduce the cost somewhere, suggested by the WMF grants team.
The grants were then split into 3 or 4 parts, to be funded individually. Didn't follow up with what they all amounted to.
25k$ is, frankly speaking, still high for an event like WLA. Wiki Loves Monuments caps under 10k$, the last I checked.
Hi Rex
I would strongly advise not to do any type of comparison between WLA and WLM to be honest. There are two reasons
- for WLA, the rapid grant funding some country teams got was more or
less the only funding they get an entire year. So I do hope they took the opportunity to use this funding to buy stuff that can be also useful around the year.
- claiming that WLM cost only 10k dollars is frankly... completely aside
the reality. Most developped european chapters participate to it. Their funding they dedicate to WLM is counted in their FDC budget, so you would not see it. They also dedicate staff to run WLM in the country. And not just a handful of hours.
Example: this is the portal page of WLM in France. Look at pages history. 95% of time on all those organizational pages, you will find Sarah Krichen WMF https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sarah_Krichen_WMFr
This is part of her staff time. That is her job... and in France, a staff at Wikimedia France cost over 50k per year to the mouvement. I am fairly sure that WLM cost more than 10k euros to the mouvement just in France, and that's only one country amongst many others.
This comparison is irrelevant.
Yeah, just to confirm: WLM has a number of associated costs. Even running
the international team takes more than that - I'm not sure where the number $10k comes from. However, WLM and WLAf are different in many many ways, I wouldn't want to compare them in general.
And in general, using dollar returns on investment is a relatively unhelpful exercise: most of the returns are intangible (the images are only one component of the outcomes), and most of the investments are intangible (hours and hours of volunteer effort).
Best, Lodewijk (member of the WLM international team)
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.
Yep, but the big question is, will the WMF fund such nationwide photography contest? Heck, will the WMF fund individual grants of professionals who wanna help in such regards? Frankly speaking, will the WMF fund?
Until WMF has finalized its 2030 strategy... nothing is certain :)
Florence
cheers, rexford
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 7:42 PM Isaac Olatunde reachout2isaac@gmail.com wrote:
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@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@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 6:10 PM Ingo Koll <ikoll@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@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
African-Wikimedians mailing listAfrican-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
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)
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
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
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) _______________________________________________ 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
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
African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
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=285&month=201903 https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama2/#gid=286&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=287&month=201903 https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama2/#gid=333&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 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) _______________________________________________ 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
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
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 15,7million 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
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
Le 30/04/2019 à 21:37, Isaac Olatunde a écrit :
The questions we should ask ourselves are:
- Since 2014, how many of the images contributed as part of Wiki
Loves Africa are currently in use on Wikipedia?
- 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?
Is the current model realistically productive?
Should WMF continue to invest donor funds on this contest?
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
All fair questions. In many cases, I do not have a clear answer. In some cases, I do.
I'd like to point to : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2017/Results_an... Such documents have been made every single year. Also, the past 4 years, final reports have been made to WMF. Here is last year report : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Yorg/Wiki_Loves_Africa_2017/F... Those documents took a fair amount of time to write so I will be honored if some read them. The overarching page were all information may be found is here : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Africa. If you click on each year link, you will similarly find "best practices", "report", "grant" etc.
Please note that since there was no whole project grant for WLA this year, there will be no full report written about WLA 2019. No one has an obligation to write one. But we could collectively write a "Results and best practices in 2019" and this would clearly be a super interesting starting point to reflect on the questions above asked.
Anyone (litterally ANYONE, be bold) is welcome to start : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019/Results_an... Even if it is 2 lines or 10 lines... it will be good. PLEASE BE BOLD and create it.
When it comes to your questions.
Answering question 1 is actually quite easy. This is the tool to answer it : https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/glamorous/ Simply enter the images categories (such as Images from Wiki Loves Africa 2014) and you'll get the answer just in two clicks (RUN, then "Global File Usage")
To answer question 2, I do not have a direct answer, but it should be easy enough to collect this info. If you are well versed in queries, you can make one. All the necessary info is stored, so there is no technical limitation to answer this question. Only doing the query. If you are not well versed in writing queries (neither am I), I invite you to make a request there : https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Request_a_query Please do it.
Last, I must point out that I did some stats with Civil Servant (Princeton University) last winter. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CivilServant%27s_Wikimedia_studies/Wiki_Love... We were hoping to do a research study to measure the impact of mass messaging on participation, with two different mass messages or no messages to be sent to ALL prior participants to WLA (to invite them to further participate this year). I must outline that unfortunately this research was dropped, in particular because the research had to be approved by the board of ethics of Princeton, and in fact, we submitted our request too late to get the approval in time. We are hoping to run a similar experiment this summer with the ISA tool (but have to submit a request for authorization again :))).
In any cases, when we prepared this research, we made quite a bit of digging in the data. As part of this research, I collected a FULL table of all unique username of former WLA participants (4 years). This table was meant to be used to create the recipient list of wikimedians to receive the mass message. In that table, I also identified in which contest each participant got involved in.
You will see a summary of some of the results here : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019/Mass_messages#Helpful...) This data was curated by Civil Servant (not by myself). This might be of interest to you.
38588 total images
* 18199 in 2017 * 7457 in 2016 * 6959 in 2015 * 5973 in 2014
Participants - 4659 unique
* 2624 in 2017 * 852 in 2016 * 730 in 2015 * 880 in 2014
39085 Wiki Loves Africa submissions from 4 658 contributors had 7 457 article appearances as of Jan 2019 and received 278.859.973 views between 2015 through the end of 2018.
The query page may be found here : https://paws-public.wmflabs.org/paws-public/User:CS_natematias/Query%20WikiL...
Florence
Just FYI, I did a rough analysis of GLAM batch uploads and campaigns on commons recently and the numbers below for Wiki Loves Africa is slightly better than the average across the movement (~6.5-7% depending on what kind of batch you are looking at). Overall images on Commons, if not uploaded in targeted ways for use on content, have a significant underusage in batch projects. My theory is that this is because of how hard it is to use and search sets of files described with categories. Structured Data on Commons gives us a lot more tools for helping new users or less experienced users improve the discoverability of the images, and the SDC pilots: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/GLAM/Projects , give us a targeted way to look at different parts of encouraging discovery and reuse -- including a pilot designed to work with Wiki Loves Africa Images. In general, Commons has not been a good platform for encouraging reuse of content, even when it is high quality.
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 10:50 PM 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
*1. Do others share my impression that images from the competition are
hardly ever used in wikipedia articles?*
Yes. I also do share your impressions.
*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? *
Again, yes, I also do have the same impressions. Only difference might be that, to me, I see the current approach of Wiki Loves Africa, probably a symptom of a bigger, likely flawed approach (not *entirely* flawed) of competitions and projects of the like across africa.
*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.*
I was too. In fact, I was a part of the early days team that helped with the Wiki Loves Africa, and I cannot say I'm excited today about WLA, as I was in the beginning.
A team from the WMF are here in Ghana on a research, and I remember mentioning about Wiki Loves Africa with regards to the impact (in terms of actual usefulness of content generated via such competitions) in relation to its cost (cost across board i.e volunteer time in relation to community building, jury, reporting etc and also cost of funding)
Organizing such events involves a ton of work, funding, volunteers, and effort. Thus, at the end, I believe the impact (again, in terms of actual usefulness of content generated via such competitions) should be worth more than the work involved (depending on who or what metrics used, WLA may be terrifically successful, so...). I can't say that's the case in the recent competitions, imho.
Inko, I think there's a broader (way broader than WLA) conversation that needs to happen about events/competitions geared toward community building and engagement etc happening here in Africa and the *true, real, sustainable impactful* way forward. A healthy mix of community building and content generation is highly important.
It appears community building now has a bigger share, with relatively less emphasis on content contribution sustainability, quality, usefulness and integration into relevant, related articles on Wikipedia or other WMF project websites.
Sadly, I remember noticing number of tweets and or likes on FB were part of success metrics for a previous Wiki Loves Africa (i.e social media engagement) report.
Again, I see your (and mine too) impressions of the WLA at the moment warrants a discussion of a symptom of a broader misdirection of approach.
*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?*
I agree. I also wouldn't want to denigrate. I personally hope the drawing board could be revisited related to WLA. I had high hopes. I truly did. Can't say I do anymore.
I believe there can be better alternatives, or WLA could be restructured to bring to fore all the goodness of events of the kind - building community and contributing useful content, at a relatively lower cost, with precision targets of sustainable content generation.
ps: I've taken a great deal of time to go through end-of-event reports of WLA on their grant pages for the 3 recently completed ones.
cheers, rexford
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 5:10 PM Ingo Koll ikoll@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@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
Dear Ingo
First, let me state that I would never ignore you, and never ignore such an email sent by a reasonable person. I never saw that email... I had to go to archive to find it. For my defense, I was travelling that entire week, first in Stockholm, then Geneva. Obviously the email slipped through. I really apology.
This said... I think it is more valuable to raise those issues now than to raise them last December and now is an excellent time to tackle those points. So, in truth, I thank you for launching the discussion.
----> Lots of nice images which are unusable and useless. This is unfortunately correct. And this year it got worse. Why ? Because previous years, Jacqueline and I spent a huge amount of time going to the images one by one, fixing categories, fixing description, adding countries when countries were missing. And adding some of those images to articles. But year after year, it felt that we were nearly the only ones doing this careful curating job. And it started being very frustrating. So this year, I decided to do a little experiment. I decided NOT to fix any of those to see what would happen. And I asked Jacqueline to do the same. We voluntarily decided not to add categories, not to fix countries, not to reuse images in Wikipedia articles. So that we would measure the extent to which other would actually pick up the job. Of course, I mentionned it here and there and invited various people to jump in.
I know you love figures. So here are figures
In 2017...
* Images from Wiki Loves Africa 2017 without categories https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Africa_2017_without_categories(1 F) * Images from Wiki Loves Africa 2017 in an unknown country https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Africa_2017_in_an_unknown_country(51 F) Images to check ? 0
In 2019
* Images from Wiki Loves Africa 2019 without categories https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019_without_categories(6438 F) Images from Wiki Loves Africa 2019 with unknown country https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019_with_unknown_country(1009 F) Images from Wiki Loves Africa 2019 to check https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_Wiki_Loves_Africa_2019_to_check(1 C, 7822 F)
Does it need more comment ? This is the extent of what Jacqueline and I did not do. Bottom line... if we do not do it... nobody does. This is acted. Note that the only thing I did in terms of categorization was to check every single media collected during the drive and tag videos. So there is a video category. This is the only category that has been created this year.
----> Lots of nice images which are unusable and useless. Jacqueline did a very good work in some of the previous years to integrate images in articles, at least in french. I had this very weird notion that we could use Asaf Glamify Tool to actually build on this and easily identify which images used in one language could actually be integrated in another language. After all, if an image is used on article X in French, it is quite possible it can be used on article X in Spanish. I spend quite a bit of time on this, testing what could be done. I created this page : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2017/Call_to_ac... And then I realized that I was not a machine, and that I would not be able to update all those lists in all those languages all by myself. So what did I do ? I went to various places to ask for help simply to do some tweaks to Asaf tool and create a bot to automate that. I went to Asaf. I went to various channels and 2-3 people indicated interest and then later said they did not have time. I even tried to negociate some dev time at the WMF (no success). I went to fabricator. I asked on village pumps.
Outcome ? Nothing. In a community of hundred thousands. 6 months later, nothing. So, I did it the wiki way. Since no one seems to care, it is probably not a good idea and not one to pursue.
I am not blaming the african communities about this. They are already quite stretched. Help on the above elements could come from anyone, anywhere. But the result is that I have little reason to think that the above will be fixed, except one (1). And you are right that the current approach of WLA is not helping to close the gap in content.
Now, this being said.... there were two goals to Wiki Loves Africa. The first was collecting content. The second was to foster community emergence and building through a global drive they could join without having to create every single piece. Some communities are now very well developped in Africa (thinking of Nigeria, Ghana etc. ) and they have more than enough human power and funding to create from scratch their own programs. They now have big usergroups and soon chapters I guess, as well as staff. And lots of partners. However, WLA has still been a help for emerging communities. The easiest way for those tiny communities to actually join it without huge expense of their time and energy is by joining global programs such as Wiki Loves Africa, 1Lib1Ref, Art and Feminism etc. For those, it probably make sense to keep a WLA of some sort. Probably a different sort of WLA though. Or maybe it is best to stop.
We actually considered stopping it entirely last year. But various people were still supporting, so we did it again. Also thinking that the issue would be revisited during WikiIndaba 2019. But alas WikiIndaba... :((((
At least, if that can reassure you, I will not organize myself a new Wiki Loves Africa next year. If the other organizers follow the same direction, the contest will die by itself and the case will be closed.
The real question at this point is whether Africa wants to have programmatic activity at the continental level. And if it does... which one. I believe there was a committee in charge of such continental organization. That will be for them to move forward.
Again, sorry I missed your email Ingo.
Florence
(1) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:ISA_Tool
*
Le 29/04/2019 à 20:11, Ingo Koll a écrit :
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@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
african-wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org