[Wikimedia-l] Kumusha Takes Wiki

Wed Oct 2 15:11:35 UTC 2013

Hi Peter

Photo-upload, certainly as much as possible to Commons indeed. That was 
part of the discussion indeed because the OF was interested in funding a 
mobile application that would be super high simple to upload photos (in 
particular with regards to licensing) but would also provide simple 
tools within the application (such as cropping, light balance and so 
on). But now that we have the Commons Mobile Application, I think it not 
a priority.
With regards to licensing, I thought it funny that some people would 
consider the current application as "complex" with regards to licenses 
choice. When I first downloaded it and tested it, I was quite horrified 
by the limited choices...
Of course, there will be some work to do around licensing issues (such 
as a simple to read doc to explain IP rights and conditions in various 
African countries).

With regards to text content, we already planned to have places to host 
some of the content because I'm pretty sure some of it will not fit in 
wikipedia with regards to its rules. Isla and I will probably have 
differing views on this because she is used to working in an artistic 
environment whilst I am primarily a rather pragmatic engineer. Let me 
share some of the info we put on the proposal:

The geographical article about Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is very short 
and generic: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Géographie_de_la_Côte_d%27Ivoire
The English version is hardly better: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ivory_Coast
A list of Ivory Coast communities has actually been created (see 
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_communes_de_Côte_d%27Ivoire) but 
most articles are hardly more than placeholders (see 
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacanda for the French version and 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacanda for the English version).

In the past 11 years I have been on Wikipedia, I have discovered that 
one of the thing newbies love to contribute are articles related to 
their near life-environment. In short, their village, their city, their 
neighborhood. It is right now getting much tougher to suggest newbies to 
fill up some data about their city when they live in France or the US 
because a lot is already there.

But look out a few articles related to villages or cities in Ivory 
Coast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboisso-Comoé
(navigate through the cities listed at the bottom). That's MISERABLE.
Look at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Populated_places_in_Lagunes to 
see how are described "populated" places... jeeeee.

I actually do not fear too much "original research" because if Wikipedia 
does not like it, we can put stuff elsewhere (including on non wikimedia 
sites). We can create a wikibook to host stories from a famous griot for 
example, or the coverage of an event on Wikinews. We can probably work 
on Wikivoyage. Everything is red there... 
https://fr.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Cote_d%27ivoire (and trust me if I tell 
you that this page is laughable... under the paragraph "travel by 
boat/plane" it is written "There is a magnificent view, that's 
extraordinary"

Yeah right :)

I actually do not fear NPOV too much because we can explain what it is 
about. It would be no different from any other outreach project, 
whatever the country !

What I could fear is the lack of sources. Indeed, there is a chance that 
if inhabitants improve the article about their village, they will have a 
hard time to prove by sources that there are about 500 inhabitants there 
and that the primary resource is this and that crop. We can rely on 
strong sources in France. Maybe not so in Ivory Coast.

At this point, it will be up to the community to decide if they prefer 
to keep totally empty articles such as now, or if they can tolerate a 
number of inhabitants with no source.

Best

Flo

On 10/2/13 4:23 PM, Peter Southwood wrote:
> Hi Florence,
> How much of the information is likely to be usable in Wikipedia? Will
> there be any requirement for reliable references, NPOV and NOR?
> Will photo-uploads go to commons?
> Regards,
> Peter Southwood
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Florence Devouard" <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> To: <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2013 2:03 PM
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Kumusha Takes Wiki
>
>
>> Dear friends
>>
>> It is my pleasure to announce the launch of a new project, "Kumusha
>> Takes Wiki".
>>
>> Kumusha Takes Wiki is a project that aims at activating communities
>> across Africa to create and contribute freely-licensed information,
>> texts, images and media about their communities (villages, townships,
>> suburbs, inner cities, etc). It will use community journalism to
>> gather community-relevant information on heritage, culture, notable
>> persons, geographical features, among other things. It will give each
>> community an online presence that is 'owned' by the community, provide
>> information that can be pulled into Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects or
>> OpenStreetMap databases, and it hopes to add immeasurably to the
>> understanding of Africa to every human being on the planet (from the
>> people in the village to the person in New York, Mumbai or Milan).
>> This project gives a public voice to communities across Africa,
>> empowering them to share their own histories and, through training, to
>> acquire valuable and transferable skills.
>>
>> The project was designed by Isla (South Africa) and I (France), with
>> the support of Iolenda (Italy) (yeahhhh, three wikiwomens !)
>>
>> Without going much into details (see links below), let's say that this
>> project will involve Wikipedians in Residence in two African countries
>> (Ivory Coast and Uganda), training in South Africa, local events in
>> the two above listed countries and a big photographic contest
>> involving the entire African continent.
>> More information here:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki (available in
>> French and English)
>> For those unaware, the official languages of Uganda are English and
>> Swahili, whilst the official language of Ivory Coast is French. Our
>> project being bilingual is not a bug, it's a feature :)
>>
>> I should probably outline that our goal is not so much about getting
>> african content in Wikipedia but more about outreach and awareness in
>> the field.
>> As such, the Wikipedians in Residence will not so much focus on
>> getting in touch and establishing partnerships with institutions in
>> big cities so that content may be freed and added to our projects (see
>> the current wikipedia description of a WiR:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence).
>> Our "Residence" will be the "Kumusha" (a Shona term meaning "the place
>> where you come from"). Our WiR will rather try to activate the local
>> communities to help them discover our projects and share their
>> heritage with us. As such, the events are more likely to take place in
>> little villages, suburbs, shantytowns, camps, agricultural
>> communities, than in big cities. Participants are more likely to be
>> teenagers with cellphones than middle age men in suits. Data collected
>> is perhaps more likely to be geographical and social related data
>> about a little city than high level politics.
>>
>> The project is financially supported by the Orange Foundation (France)
>> for Ivory Coast and Uganda... starting 1st of October !
>> A good part of the original submission made last spring is available
>> here for those interested :
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Activate_Africa_(Orange_Foundation)
>>
>> I am very glad to have the opportunity to work on that project :) It
>> is a long way from my presentation back in Wikimania 2005 (Wikimedia
>> projects in the developing world:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Presentation-FD1)
>> As for Isla, she is involved in the WikiAfrica project
>> (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAfrica_Cameroon) through the
>> Africa Centre, and some of you met her at Wikimania Hong Kong where
>> she lead a panel about Activating Africa
>> (https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Activating_Africa).
>>
>> Our twitter handle is @KumushaWiki
>>
>> You are naturally welcome to comment, criticize, relay, participate,
>> support and copy :)
>>
>> Anthere
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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