Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2021/Results and best practices

Communications materials for printing and for online usage were developed by Creative Flood, and branded social media posts were created by Isla and Ceslause in several batches according to the campaign needed at the time, including : launch, extension and then #themeinsight campaigns,etc.

You can access the printable materials here c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2021/Media#Documents. The interesting parts of the communication is each material issued and shared in English had a French counterpart and in some cases, Arabic, for example, posters, flyers, #themeinsight campaign, etc. This section has some of the communication materials that were used online

The following communications channels were created and updated with theme-specific branding and information:

• Meta organisers and project portal
• Commons upload and competition portal
• Website: www.wikilovesafrica.net

The following communications elements are available here and were created:

• Wiki Loves Africa 2021 international poster
• Wiki Loves Africa 2021 local information poster template (requiring information to be added)
• Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Local Events Template as PDF(requiring information to be added)
• English launch press release
• French launch press release
• English and French template of the launch press release (requiring information to be added by local teams)
• Arabic puzzle piece for poster
• English poster
• Arabic poster
• French poster
• Incomplete list of mentions of Wiki Loves Africa in the local media
• Launch-specific Newsletter to ... Wiki In Africa English Newsletter subscribers
• Launch press release sent to ... media contacts across Africa
• English winners press release (to come)
• English winners newsletter (to come)

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  Wiki Loves Africa 2021's 1st prize winner announced on social media
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  Wiki Loves Africa 2021's 2nd prize winner announced on social media
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  Wiki Loves Africa 2021's 3rd prize winner announced on social media
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  Wiki Loves Africa 2021's traditional culture prize winner announced on social media
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  Wiki Loves Africa 2021's video prize winner announced on social media
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  Wiki Loves Africa 2021's cover for Facebook winners announcement on social media
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  A theme-insight in English
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  A theme-insight in French
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  A countdown flyer in English
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  A countdown flyer in French
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  A WLA2021 rule flyer in English
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  A WLA2021 rule flyer in French

Social media campaigns proved to be very successful. Materials for Social media were developed by Isla using the Canva platform. All materials can be found at this Google link.

Campaign series’:

• Launch: PR
• Webinars
• International Winners series (early August)

Facebook

• Link: https://www.facebook.com/wikilovesafrica/
• Posts

• 114 posts
• 1 boosted

• Page Likes increase:

• Jan: 33,767
• June: 34,273

• Analysis of results

• Predominantly Male (57.6%), but 42.4% were women, which is higher that last year's.
• Predominantly from Algeria, although this changes significantly with the targeted audience through advertising (advert target groups make a difference)
• The overwhelming majority are using mobile - this should influence ensuring that the Commons and website pages are clear on mobile
• Adverts are definitely the way to build likes and engagement
• The targeted campaigns with the addition of 1 specific advertising push increased the number of page likes on Facebook from 33,767 on 1st January 2021 to 34,394 (30/04/2021).
• Unfortunately, for yet poorly explained reasons, the Wiki Loves Africa Facebook account has been restricted from using promotions. The appeal, probably only examined by a bot, did not result in any unlocking. It looks like we will have to go forward without paid advertisement on Facebook

Twitter

• Link: https://twitter.com/wikilovesafrica
• Followers: 1,656 Followers (June 2021)
• Wiki Loves Africa twitter page has increased its followers by 163 since January through 147 tweets

'Instagram’

• Link: https://www.instagram.com/wikilovesafrica
• 59 posts (58 posts during Wiki Loves Africa 2021)
• 1111 followers (increased from 851 in July 2020)
• 265 following

More needs to be done to increase engagement on Instagram - at the moment it is another space for similar materials that are fed to FB and Twitter. A specific Instagram campaign will be looked at in the 2nd half of 2021 to encourage more engagement, and hook new potential audiences for Wiki Loves Africa 2022.

Wiki Loves Africa is organized in collaboration with most African based UserGroups. The way it operates is

• Wiki in Africa provides the global leadership, search funding for the global project and support local teams in their funding requests, manage the global infrastructure (website, social media, upload funnel), design and create communication material and templates, facilitate images review and improvement during and after the contest, provide a global communication coverage, lead the jury process, celebrate winners and distribute international prizes, provide training and support to local organizers and participants, and run satellite activities to increase the impact of the initiative as a whole
• Local organizers organize local or national activities. They may : request their own funding to WMF. Set up and run a program of activities (training sessions, photo walks, upload sessions, run image description activities, promote the contest through social media or press conferences, create communication and outreach material, organize a national jury process and winning ceremonies with prizes, participate to satellite sessions etc.

 

In 2021, activities were essentially coordinated through a global mailing list (very little used), a telegram channel (very active), a couple of other channels for small focus activities, and a multilingual portal on meta. After several years of using different venues, the telegram group seems to have resulted in the most engagement.

In 2021, the countries with local groups organizing activities were in :

• Algeria
• Benin
• Botswana
• Cameroun
• Egypt
• Ghana
• Guinée Conakry
• Kenya
• Mali
• Nigeria
• Rwanda
• Sénégal
• Sudan
• Tanzania
• Tunisia
• Uganda
• Zambia

Most groups are recurrent participants, though the level of involvement will vary depending on the size of each group as well as the experience and availability of its members. Groups are invited to only participate at the level of their own capabilities, to avoid putting undue pressure on the organizers that would exhaust them. Most groups receive funding from WMF, though there are issues for some countries which can not receive funding due to the status of the country relationship with the United States.

Amongst the challenges met, we might note

• language : most of the conversation is being done in English. There are real efforts though to run meetings, training sessions, etc. in French. We met difficulties to get translation in arabic though, resulting in poor engagement from the MENA community.

At the end of the contest, two surveys were run by the organizers. One was a global survey available to all participants. The other was only send to lead local organizers. The WLA 2021 surveys were run September-October 2021 using a WMF Qualtrix account. 2021 survey information is published here : m:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2021/Survey.

Whilst it seems important to us to run surveys to measure 1) the impact on the local teams 2) collect their feedback and 3) poll them about the next year theme, we must admit that in spite of repeated reminder, the participant rates stay low. The general survey answers are anonymous and results public. The organizer survey is kept private. In 2021, we got 7 answers to the organizers survey and 36 from the general survey. It is a bit complicated to draw really significant results from the survey giving the limited participation rate. Still, generally, the participants are supportive of WLA, happy with the global organisation team work, wish that it continues, support same timeframe. Feedback on what worked well and what needs to be improved is collected and incorporated in that Results and Best Practices document. For example, feedback showed that online meetings were appreciated, and that teams wanted more of them. Accordingly, we will set up more regular Office Hours in 2022. Training sessions also got support, so we will continue in the direction of building up skills of participants and organizers alike.

The survey results did not allow to identify which topic would be most supported for 2022. As a consequence, we run more polls on Facebook, polls on telegram and polls during conferences to try to evaluate which theme got the most support.

More feedback information was collected during the WikiIndaba conference as well as the WikiArabia conference where Wiki Loves Africa was presented. It was reported that the MENA participants considered that the lack of availability of the wiki pages in Arabic language was a demotivating factor, in particular on the meta portal. The difficulty of getting pages translated is a recurring issue year after year. We will try to get more support in 2022.

National teams could decide to host their own jury process, or not. Their process would not impact on, and were completely independent of, the decisions taken by the International Jury. National teams wishing to host a jury process were given guidelines the previous year, which they relied on for this year. This page of guidelines was then developed in the National Judging Charter to ensure uniform clarity, understanding and collective agreement as to the best and most ethical practices.

The International Jury process started in May. There were 12 members of the jury from across Africa and Europe. The mix featured professional photographers and experience Commonists. The selection process is explained here and was conducted on Montage. The the jury process communication has been documented in this Google doc. This was the expected timeline and procedure to follow:

1. First Review Round - yes / no round: a group of Commonists and Wikimedians who will do the initial weeding out (the First Review). They were a group of 22 volunteers, and were a different group to the International Jury.
2. First Jury Round - first yes / no round for jury.
3. Second Jury Round - rated round - 5 stars
4. Third Jury Round - yes/no to select top 30 images
5. Jury deliberation (Zoom) - Final discussion and selection among the jury members who could make it.
6. Final ranked round to select top 10 images, with motivations for top images.

First reviewers

• Images reviewed: 8,319

The initial round - first review round- was made up from volunteers who responded to a call that went out through various groups (Telegram, Facebook and then on the Commons village pump). 35 people over two rounds were part of the reviewing team. This meant that each image was reviewed by at least 3 people. Each reviewer looked at 1633 images. The criteria for their yes/no choice was based on the following:

• Images must be relevant to the theme
• Images should be at a useable size ('no' for images lower than 3mb)
• The obvious quality of the image - is it obviously blurred, pixellated, etc.
• The should be no watermarks or logos or timestamps
• Basically, all selfies, small images or blurred and unclear works should be marked as “no”.

First Jury round

• Images reviewed: 2,877

As mentioned, this is a yes / no round. Please do not vote for any image just because it is in-scope no matter how badly composed or structured. Please do consider the following elements:

• Encyclopedic value – does the photo present the subject with clarity?
• Subject Matter – is the subject appropriate to the theme Health+Wellness?
• Story Telling – how well does the photo evoke the viewer’s imagination or attention?
• Impact – what do you feel when you first view the photo. Does it evoke an emotion?
• Creativity – has the photo captured the photographer's idea, message or thought in an original and imaginative way? Without distracting from the knowledge provided by the image.
• Please also consider technique, composition, presentation, color balance, lighting and focal point/s
• Of course, the photos should be in focus (unless intended not to be) and should be more than 3 mb

Jurors were to vote "yes" for any image that you like (the framing, emotion, visual composition, etc.) and feel should be rewarded and vote “no" if a) they think the image was bad, blurred, not clear, poorly constructed photo, or b) if they felt the photo is not relevant to the theme.

Second Jury Round

• Images reviewed: 207

This was a rating round intended to bring down the photographic pool to a manageable shortlist. For this round, the jury were asked to rate each image according to 5 stars, with 5 stars meaning exceptional and 1 star meaning the image should no longer be considered. The Jury were asked to consider the criteria listed for Jury Round 1.

Third Jury Round

• Images reviewed: 61

The Jury were asked to assess the images on this criteria:

• Technical quality: please keep the 'Featured Pictures' criteria of Wikimedia Commons [1]. This is especially relevant for resolution (a minimum resolution of 3 Megapixel is generally used), and digital manipulations (must not deceive the viewer). Community jury members, please could you check these factors and communicate any concerns on Telegram or during the discussion phase.
• Originality: it is probably clear what is meant: going beyond the usual and obvious, giving the photo some artistic quality.
• Usefulness: refers to usefulness in Wikipedia articles: the image must be clear, helpful in showing the monument or its details etc. It is not enough to be a 'pretty image' but it must also have descriptive value.

Fourth Jury Round

• Images reviewed:19

The Jury were asked to consider:

• Rank top 10 images.
• Consider the top winners to award 3 photographers.
• This is the last round - these images will reflect Health and Wellness in Africa - the best of African photography on an open platform. Beyond the encyclopaedic value, please consider your three or four top images in this light.

Final Jury Round

• Images reviewed:10

Jurors were asked to rank their final 10 images with a motivation for their top 3/4.

The International Jury report can be found here

Four photography, one video, and special collection prize winners were announced. The winning images and featured images were chosen by a panel of twelve international professional and Commonist photographers from Botswana, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, United Kingdom, Canada and Uganda to Netherlands and France.

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  1st Prize Winner: Crazy Love (Senegal) by Ewien van Bergeijk-Kwant User:Btwien
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  2nd Prize Winner : Malaria microscopy training in Nigeria by Nirmal Ravi User:Nirmalravi2
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  3rd Prize Winner: Pupil by Gabriel Joe Amuzu User:Amuzujoe
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  Traditional Culture Prize: Oldest Healing Dance by Kgara Kevin Rack User:Kgara Kevin Rack
• Video Winner: Santé et Bien-être réalisé par Bouba Kam's User:Kamboo19
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  Special Collection prize: by User:Max MBAKOP, User:Happiraphael and User:Costawood, coordinated by User:Serieminou

Prizes

At the international level, there are 3 main prizes for Wiki Loves Africa, and as with last year, there were two additional prize categories for photos and media. The international prizes are:

• 1st prize: US$1000
• 2nd prize: US$800
• 3rd prize: US$500

Additional categories are:

• Culturally specific or traditional representations of Health and Wellness : US$500
• Prize for best quality video (audio and visual quality and storytelling will be taken into account): $500

All money prizes have been successfully delivered.

Each winner will also receive a pack of goodies - postal service dependent

To be completed after all national winners are announced. As a reminder, selection of national winners is dissociated from the selection of international winners'

Individual events and country pages are visible here : c:Category:Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Events

Several countries have done national selection with prizes : c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2021/National winners

Nos Jardins initiative

Nos Jardins is a training programme for photographer, is a proud element we introduced. It allows civil society actors in Cameroon and Switzerland to develop and transfer their knowledge of digital and collaborative skills to their peers through an exchange program. We deployed four training modules in 2021 with their scenarios and learning activities on the themes:

• Introduction to Free Culture
• Wikimedia commons and Wikipedia
• Free Licenses
• Masterclass in photography

We developed quite a lot of material, got great pictures. It wasn't surprising seeing that some of the images uploaded by the beneficiaries of the Nos Jardins initiative made Top 10 among the entries received from Cameroon, and one of their team was selected for the Special Collection International Prize.

Nos Jardins report

The project was launched in October 2020. Project presentation in the Education Newsletter, planning for the training and preparation of teaching material, announcement of the training in Switzerland & Cameroon, and launching of the training were all achieved between October 2020 and January 2021.

On 16th January 2021, a webinar on History of Open movement was held. An in-person workshop on Open Culture and Wikimedia Commons was held in Cameroon on 23rd January 2021.

On 9th February 2021, a second webinar, Copyright and legal concerns for your shared images under free licenses was held. A second in-person workshop,Copyright, Free licenses and contributing on Wikimedia Commons was held in Cameroon.

On 20th March 2021, a third workshop,Masterclass in photography was held in Cameroon. The Nos Jardins beneficiaries had a photoshoot at Laquintinie hospital in Douala, Cameroon on 27th April 2021, towards Wiki Loves Africa 2021. On 28th May 2021, Minette Lontsie from the Nos Jardins initiative was interviewed during the episode 2 of WikiAfrica Hour about the Nos Jardins project. An in-person Photography masterclass: the art of photography and sharing workshop was held in Switzerland on 29th May 2021.

On 1st June 2021, a third webinar, Reuse and integration of photos on Wikipedia took place. A 4th in-person workshop, Reuse and integration of photos on Wikipedia was held in Cameroon on 12th June 2021. On 15th June 2021, a practical workshop:sharing photos on Wikipedia was held in Switzerland.

In June 2021, an ISA tool campaign to improve descriptions of photos uploaded from Cameroon Nos Jardins Wiki Loves Africa 2021 photoshoots, was held. In August 2021, the winning photos of the Wiki Loves Africa 2021 international contest were announced, and three photographers from Nos Jardins won the Special Collection prize.

During the episode 5 of WikiAfrica Hour on 3rd September 2021,titled Wiki Loves Africa 2021:Meet the winners, Minette Lontsie and one of the photographers who won the Special Collection prize, Max MBAKOP, were interviewed to share their experience producing the winning photos for the Special Collection prize.

On 2nd and 3rd September 2021, a workshop for teachers and students of École Mosaïc à Genève, Switzerland was held by the Ynternet.org team to present Free culture and Wikipedia projects.

A Nos Jardins Photo Exhibition theme Health and Wellness was held on 14th October 2021, at Laquintinie Hospital, in Douala, Cameroon. Up until 29th October, the Nos Jardins photo contest in Switzerland was on.

On 12th November 2021, three winners from the top 25 photos from Nos Jardins Switzerland were selected by the public during the exhibition at CICG during "The Tide is Rising" edition of TEDxGeneva. On that same 12th November the three photographers from Nos Jardins Cameroon, who won the Special Collection prize of the Wiki Loves Africa 2021 were handed their prize.

An Exhibition of Nos Jardins contest in Switzerland at the Labo Vivant Berber (Grandvaux, 1091 Bourg-en-Lavaux), is scheduled to hold anytime from January 2022.

m:Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2021 (WPWP) is a project run by another group. WPWP is an annual campaign where Wikipedia editors across the world, Wikipedia language projects and communities add photos to Wikipedia articles lacking photos. This is to promote the use of digital media files collected from various Wikimedia photography contests, photowalks organized by the Wikimedia community, on Wikipedia article pages. Photos help to grasp the reader's attention better than a wall of text, illustrate content, and make the article more instructive and engaging for readers. Thousands of images have been donated and contributed to Wikimedia Commons via various advocacy programs, photowalks, and contests including international photography contests such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore, etc. Yet relatively few of these photos have been used on Wikipedia articles. Today, the Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of photo images but only a tiny portion of these have been used on Wikipedia article pages. This is a huge gap that this project aims at bridging.

Every year, the WLA team participate to WPWP and provides

• lists of images to insert into articles
• prizes for the most active

In 2021, the rules were the following

Winning prizes for the user with the most Wikipedia articles improved with images from Wiki Loves Africa. All WLA years are eligible... but the first prize will consider edits made to any language except English and French.

More info and tracking here : m:Wiki Loves Africa 2021/WPWP

• 1st prize - US $100 gift card
• 1st to 3rd prizes – WLA souvenirs

To be eligible:

1. you must add #WLA as a hashtag to your edit (as well as #WPWP)
2. you must have registered your account before January 2021
3. you must have made at least 300 mainspace edits to any language Wikipedia before 1st June 2021.

According to the hashtag tool, we had (between July 1, 2021 and Aug. 31, 2021)

• 2,299 revisions
• 1,308 pages modified
• by 39 users
• on 118 projects

A full report of the campaign may be accessed here

 

 

This initiative is run by the WLA team and intends to improve the description of WLA images with structured data, using the Commons:ISA Tool.

ISA is a fun, multilingual, mobile-first 'microcontributions' tool, that makes it easy for (groups of inexperienced) people to add structured data to images on Wikimedia Commons.

With ISA, you can choose a pre-defined set of images on Commons and then ask contributors to 'tag' these with multilingual structured metadata. Points are counted for each contribution, and therefore it is possible to organize 'tagging' or microcontributions competitions or challenges with ISA.

ISA was originally built to provide better multilingual and structured descriptions of Wiki Loves Africa images. But it is also developed to be useful to all of the Wiki Loves Xcompetitions, and eventually ended up being meant for all media files on Wikimedia Commons.

The ISA tool was also designed to be a host of small competitions. To raise awareness around the tool, a drive is organized every year with the goal of enhancing the quality of structured data available on images uploaded to Commons during the past years of Wiki Loves Africa photographic contests.

The Campaign was run end of 2022. Link to the campaign: || https://isa.toolforge.org/campaigns/179

Final winner list

1. User:Rwebogora: 7,146 contributions
2. User:Kwameghana: 6,366 contributions
3. User:Farida Takenzo, 3614 contributions
4. user:Happiraphael, 4159 contribution