Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2014/Organizers' FAQ
 Wiki Loves Africa
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Which countries are concerned by the contest ?
The contest is open to anyone who wish to contribute pictures, whether they live in Africa or not.
However, the sitenotice displaying the call for participation will only appear in African countries.
I want to help and organise a local event (such as a photo hunt), how do I do it ?
The call for participation and the contest will run in all African countries. Local volunteers are more than welcome to relay the competition, talk to the media, organise photo hunts or upload sessions.
If you want to help, please put your name on Wiki Loves Africa and get in touch !
You don't need to be a member of your local Wikimedia chapter or User Group to organise a Wiki Loves Africa event in your country, but if there is a chapter or a user group in your area, please try to approach them and get their support! On the other hand, if you are a member of your local Wikimedia chapter, please make sure to involve the community in the project as much as possible.
Where will special activities take place ?
In 2014, we hope to see special events in South Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi and Algeria. Hopefully in more places !
What types of actions can I organise ?
1. Presentation of Wikimedia Commons and of the contest in front of a general public
See below for where you might find presentation material and goodies
2. Organize a photo hunt
That could be a field trip to a market, to an agricultural field, to a fisherman village, to a food industry plant, to a food festival etc.
Bonus: write an article about the place visited or the food produced
3. Organize a cooking party
Why not at home ? Or if you are befriended with a restaurant owner ?
Get together with some friends. Plan cooking a certain dish. Get the ingredients at the market, prepare the dish, serve the dish. All along, take pictures of the dish preparation, utensils, ingredients etc.
Bonus: write an article about the dish. Or add the recipe to an african-related cooking book
4. Hold an upload session
Organize a meeting and space where people can do mass upload of images. It must be done in a well connected space (university ?). Typically held after a photo hunt but may be done simply to help people with large collections. Take the opportunity to do a proper detailed categorization of images uploaded.
Bonus: create a gallery with the uploaded images
Tips: see below the section about upload tool.
Tips and tricks on how to make good pictures ?
Tips and tricks to make good pictures for Wikimedia Commons
- Tutorial in English about how to take pictures: How to take pictures for Wikimedia Commons
- Images guidelines
- Atelier photographique, in French
Where can I find presentations of Wikimedia Commons ?
Various powerpoint-style presentations may be found about Wikimedia Commons : Category:Wikimedia Commons slides
Uploading the pictures ?
Pictures are the main type of multimedia to be uploaded during the months of October and November of the Wiki Loves Africa Photo Contest.
To upload just a couple of images, using the Campaign upload wizard is recommended. For batch uploads, tools such as the Commonist is the best choice. Commonist is an upload tool for simplifying uploads of many hundreds of images onto Wikimedia Commons.
The Campaign Upload Wizard:
Visit the Campaign Upload Wizard and follow the onscreen instructions to upload your images.
If the uploads are not intended to be a part of the Wiki Loves Africa, you can visit the Wikimedia Commons Upload Wizard
The images are put in the respective category. However, you are also allowed to add more categories, if the image in context matches them.
The Commonist:
Commonist is a free Java program to upload large numbers of files to Wikimedia Commons and other Mediawiki installations.
For the easiest installation and use steps, see documentation about the Commonist here.
What about images description and categorisation ?
It is important (essential) that you push participants to the contest to put complete and accurate description of the images they upload. And ideally that they add some categories to the images they upload. It is important for many reasons
- we need to identify which images are part of the competition. For this, we set up a special template: template:Wiki Loves Africa 2014.
- Please make sure to always add this template to uploaded images.
- Images are not meant to just stand on Commons lost amongst millions of others. They are meant to be reused, on Wikimedia projects or elsewhere. Which means people need to FIND them. And most of the time, they find them thanks to categories.
A list of tags you may use can be found here
Which licence to use ?
The preferred licence will be cc by sa 3.0 : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Some links to help communicate on free licences
- The famous graphic tutorial about uploading pictures on Commons
- Licensing for beginners (English)
- Licensing for beginners (Arabic)
What if uploaders need to give permission ?
Only the copyright holder of a work can license it under a free content licence.
No one else can declare a free license for a work without permission from the copyright holder, except in cases where the copyright holder has been dead long enough for the work to be in the public domain or it is in the public domain by some other means.
Media tagged by a user for not having permission to license it under a free content license from the copyright holder will be deleted a few days from the day it is tagged (or sometimes immediately…).
Confirmation of licensing permission is handled with OTRS system, which can keep records of email correspondence sent to it and verified by a volunteer. Unless the source declares a free license (if there is a source link) somewhere for an image, permission must be logged in the OTRS system or the image will be deleted for having no permission.
OTRS confirmation of permission or authorship is usually required in several situations:
- When a work looks too professional to have been created by an amateur photographer. New users who have uploaded high quality images will usually be targeted more under this rationale than established users.
- When a work by a professional is uploaded by someone with a user name or other mannerisms that suggests in good-faith that they may be the person who created it.
- When a user declares on the image description page or in a deletion discussion that they have permission to post an image, yet there is no evidence.
- When a user declares a free license for a work that they did not make.
- When a user posts an author name that is not their user name, and there is a doubt as to whether the two are the same person.
In those cases, the uploader of the image needs to send a “permission” : an email to the OTRS system stating that they hold the copyright of the image.
More information about the permission: Commons:Permission
Email templates for permission:
What about using CentralNotice banners?
- We will be using CentralNotice banners to call visitors to participate in the contest. The banners will be based on geography (all African countries) and the language of the user, and will be visible in all Wikimedia projects throughout October and November (with certain exceptions). You can help us with translations !
What is a Focus country and which type of support can it get ?
Please see on meta for more information on that matter.
I want to help but I need funding, can you help ?
We have a bit of funding to organise events in 8 countries (South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tunisia, Côte d'Ivoire and Malawi. Contact the local organising teams if you are in those countries.
In all countries, we suggest expenses should be covered with the help of sponsors. In many countries it is possible to find sponsors to pay for the things or services you would otherwise have to pay for yourselves (prizes, goodies, promotional materials, etc.).
If the amount of money you require is higher (e.g. more than €300), or if you find it more convenient, you can also request money through the Wikimedia Foundation grants process.
Where can participants get some help ?
They can get some help here: Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2014/Competitors' help desk (please help answer their questions !)
Or they can send email here
Can you give me examples of how I can help right now ?
Here is some examples of the things you may do:
- Let your community know about the contest. Your local community can include local Wikip/medians and aligned Open Movement members (enthusiasts from Creative Commons, Open Street Map, Open Data, OER, etc.). Relevant links to provide include WLA on Meta, WLA on Commons, wikilovesafrica.org, WLA on Twitter and WLA on Facebook.
- Finalise your team and let us know about it.
- Provide press contact: When you know who your press person is, put their name and contacts down on this page.
- Help select the jury: suggest up to three judges from your country who might be interested in taking part in the international contest (perhaps a locally celebrated photographer, chef, filmmaker or journalist)
- Take a look at the timeline here to have an idea of what happens where.
- Look at the food categories for your country on Commons, this can give you an idea of what is already covered, and the kinds of content that needs to be covered. Here are some links:
- Look for local partners: think of food-based organisations, cooking schools, food networks and festivals, and cultural groups who might be key partners in spreading the word or hosting events.
- Decide on whether you wish to host a national round of judging and prizes - if you do, you will need to organise the judges and the prizes (we can give you guidance on how).
- Think about the events, meet ups and training sessions that you can do with your community during the contest. Make sure everyone knows about it (and they are included in the press release).
- Get together a list of media contacts in your country that you think will be interested in talking about the competition.
- Participe to press releases: Help on crafting a press release template, adapt this for your country, and send it out to your media contacts. Other marketing and communication tools will be written and template created, we will share everything with you for you to adapt and translate.
- Help us to identify the languages that are needed for the site notice (see a first list of language Wikipedias below)
- Help us to translate the Site Notice into those languages (as well as other relevant texts)
- Volunteer to help on OTRS to answer questions or comments made by participants (get in touch with us if you want to be a volunteer on OTRS)
- other suggestions ?
Where can I find promotional material ? (banners, stickers, tee-shirts etc.)
Marketing material for Wiki Loves Africa contest is available at Category:Wiki Loves Africa 2014 marketing material. For more information, access to .ai or .svg files or for a high resolution poster file, please contact us: here or check out there on Dropbox.