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WikiIndaba conference 2014/Day 1

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Day one conference notes (Friday)

 
Welcome to Wiki Indaba 2014.

Wiki Indaba day one 20 June 2014

Relevant links

http://wikiindaba.net
https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaZA

After an introduction to Wiki Indaba, the day focussed on the state of the movement. The last presentations focuses on African languages and on the Wikimedia Foundation strategy in Africa. All those plenary presentations have been video recorded and uploaded on YouTube. You can access the videos of the presentations below where you can find the link or you can find them all on the Wikimedia South Africa channel.

State of the movement

Cameroon: Challenges and Successes

Presented by: Aminou Ndala Tita

  • 3-month residency in Doual'Art enabling Wikipedia editing
  • Promoted by doual'art, funded by Orange Foundation, supported by lettera27 Foundation and the Africa Centre
  • TBD

Project description: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAfrica_Cameroon Report of the project in French https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAfrica_Cameroon/Rapport_final_2012-2013

Q&A

  • Question about obstacles: A: obtaining government permission for events
  • Question about editor retention: A: we don't know of any user continuing to edit beyond the events themselves
  • Challenge of meeting: no physical meet ups, meet virtually but with difficulty because of languages (French and English)

Cote d'Ivoire: Challenges and Successes

Presented by: Samuel Guebo & Bacely YoroBi - Côte d'Ivoire

Activity is generally in French - 5 active communities and process to have a local chapter

  • Organisation and activities

•Open Street Map •Mozilla Côte d’Ivoire •Creative Commons Côte d’Ivoire •Kumusha community Côte d’Ivoire •Wikimedia Côte d’Ivoire

    • Meetings/Training sessions

Montly we have meeting for training our members (every last Saturday of the month)

  • Challenges
    • Ivorians are not familiar with all Wikipedia projects
    • Language barrier
    • Few active editors
    • Attract more active contributors
    • Wikimedia tools awareness
  • Successes
    • Presence of a Wikimedian in Community now
    • With the OSM chapter, 15 new community members
  • Contacts

•WIKIMEDIA •Wikimedia Côte d’Ivoire Chapter 

 - https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikimediaCi/
 - http://blue-colibri.com/wikiciv (Training platform for members)

•Kumusha Côte d’Ivoire et Open Street Map Côte d’Ivoire 

   -http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/
     WikiProject_Ivory_Coast
    -http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki/fr

•Mozilla Côte d’Ivoire -mozilla-cotedivoire.org -wiki.mozilla.org

Q&A

  • Have you seen movement/growth because of your activities? Yes, especially in Open Street map.
  • How do you get people to the training sessions? Arrange training sessions.
  • How does your Open street map work? We arrange mapping parties, preceeded by a lunch or so.
  • Where do people edit from? People generally contribute more during group meetings. But also edit from where ever they are.
  • Do you have precise topics where people edit on? At the begining, we did not give specific topics, but we gave guidelines. Now we are more structured and have specific topics

Nigeria: Challenges and Successes

Presented by: Oloruntoba Oyeyele (didn't get a visa?) & Kayode Yussuf - Nigeria

Successes of Wikipedia

  • Easy to use - repository of information - perceived as a valuable source of information
  • Mobile networks are offering it through SMS - text message sent with question and receive a message back with results

Challenges

  • Wikipedia reputation of being unreliable
  • Content localization
  • No viable local community
  • collaboration with corporate organizations who can sponsor the communities activities

Future Opportunities

  • Nigeria is becoming a beehive of news
  • More people getting online
  • More people are willing to create articles
  • Young team of volunteers ready to work
  • Distribution of offline version of Wikipedia to schools
  • Activation of GLAM - a lot of museums, cultural sites in the country
  • Collaborations with other communities in West Africa and Africa

Q&A

  1. Discussion on WP reliability
  2. Are you organizing in person events, meet-ups?
    1. Not yet but hope to do so after this conference. There was no active movement.
  3. They are connected to active editors and edit themselves

Ghana: Challenges and Successes

Presented by: Felix Nartey, Raphael Berchie &Enock Seth Nyamador - Ghana

Challenges :) [edit conflict!] :-) :-)

  • volunteers missing (expecting to be paid)
  • connectivity (unreliable and expensive)
  • Women modesty
  • Efforts not recognised because of no official affiliation status.
  • Funding is also a problem. We dont know who to talk to to get funds.
  • Chapter centralised in Accra. Physical meetings are yearned for.
  • People do not have sense of belonging with Wikipedia.

// Gosh, they feel a sense of belonging with Google but not with Wikipedia [:( :( indeed] // No not just an example :-)

  • Would like admins in Wikipedia with more African sensibility
  • The idea of volunteering is tricky as Ghanians want to be paid for the work they do
  • Vandalism is a serious issue in Ghana - especially of the page on Ghana. Really trying to get the page protected to prevent this as it is getting tiring to keep fixing
  • Another major issue is electrical power

// I guess they need to feel they belong as well...

Q&A:

  1. you mentioned official affiliation with WMF would help you (eg, as chapter or user group). Can you elaborate on this?
  2. Vandalism issue - suggestion is to block IP addresses of perpetrators
  3. Need of official recognition/title from Wikimedia Foundation for communities without an established chapter
    1. Eliminate bottleneck created by the Wikimedia Foundation through some sort of accreditation
    2. This also impacts the sense of belonging they are trying to create in the commmunity
  • Recognition as user group through volunteer group, the Affiliations Commmittee
  • Group should include a handful of registered users, have some form of infrastructure, demonstrate decision-making processes

Tunisia (User Group): Challenges and Successe

Presented by: Habib Mhenni and Abir Trabelsi

Successes
Challenges
  • how to edit
  • languages (French, English, Arabic)
  • pictures (?)
  • convincing officials
  • speaking English during international meetings
  • LGTB rights (no Wikimania) - Monastir bid for Wikimania 2015

Q&A

  1. first user group in Tunisia. What advice would you give others who are looking to be recognised as user group ?
    1. group has been existing several years. They needed to "officialize" it to prepare Wikimania bid.
  2. how many active people in the group ?
    1. about 10 very active. 30 were involved into Wikimania bid
    2. number is increasing during workshops

Egypt: Challenges and Successes

  • [Video of the presentation on YouTube]
Challenges
  • Volunteering culture is missing
  • Internet access
  • Rare knowledge of copyright
  • Funding
Successes
  • Education program
  • WLM 2013 (594 pictures)
Q&A

Ethiopia: Challenges and Successes

Presented by: Abel Asrat

Challenges
  • Infrastructure
  • Internet (Expensive)
  • Anti-Terrorism Law (several bloggers he was working with are currently detained)
  • Internet MisUsage
Successes
Project Luwi
  • aims to activate 5 universities

Tanzania: Challenges and Successes

Presented by Paul Kihwelo

  • No chapter
  • Growing interest in usage by mostly students in high school and universities
  • Window of opportunity for Wikimedia to start and grow
  • Existing organizations which can support this growth: Creative Commos Tanzania
  • Support from some of the younger ministers Wiki / Creative Commons initiatives
  • Challenges
    • Awareness - people don't know about WP, Wikimedia, Wikimania
    • Getting active

Kenya: Challenges and Successes

Presented by Alex M Wafula

Challenges
  • Sustaining Edits
  • Citation souces not obvious
Success
  • Wikipedia for schools

Positive sensitization about Wikipedia

  • Several sustained meetups
  • WLM

Botswana: Challenges and Successes

Presented by Orabile Mudongo and Candy Tricia Khohliwe

Challenges
  • confidential project
Success
  • 91 000 pageviews in a month on Setswana Wikipedia!

Malawi: Challenges and Successes

Presented by Michael Phoya

  • local languages stigmatised, preference for English
  • oral cultures
  • falling standards of education

Namibia: Challenges and Successes

South Africa: Challenges and Successes

African Language Wikipedia Statistics

WMF Global South Strategy relating to Africa

Photos

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