WikiIndaba conference 2014/Day 1

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Day one conference notes (Friday)

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

Video of the presentation on YouTube first part, video of the presentation on YouTube second part

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

History
- 2008 - Ivorians started contributing to Wikipedia
- 2009 - 1st Barcamp in Côte d'Ivoire (workshops and conference about open knowledge and technology)
- 2012 - Creative Commons community started
- 2013 - OpenStreetMap chapter & working group toward a Wikimedia chapter started (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Côte_d%27Ivoire)
- 2014 -- Kumusha Community started (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki/en)

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

Video of the presentation on YouTube

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

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

Ghana: Challenges and Successes

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

Video of the presentation on YouTube

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:

you mentioned official affiliation with WMF would help you (eg, as chapter or user group). Can you elaborate on this?
Vandalism issue - suggestion is to block IP addresses of perpetrators
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

Video of the presentation on YouTube
Category on Wikimedia Commons
Relevant link: Wikimedia Tunisie on meta
Slides also available on http://fr.slideshare.net/abirtrabelsi507/abir-36156975

Successes

Featured Wikiproject on frwp : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portail:Tunisie
First WUG in Africa / MENA (Middle East and North Africa) - discussions started in October 2010
Organization of WLM 2013

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

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.
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

Kumusha bus and WikiAfrica: send 40 emails. 2 people showed up. It was a week long project and brought lot's of energy
- What was the project more exactly about ? http://www.wikiafrica.net/projects/kumusha-bus/