Wiki Loves Africa 2024/National jury and selection process

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This page details a charter for best practices with regards to National Juries and National competitions for Wiki Loves Africa. They are a set of ideals and guidelines.

Context

Wiki Loves Africa runs in EVERY African country (and beyond !). In some countries, there is a Wikipedian team willing to hosts event and activities. Some of those teams have decided to host local competitions so there are national winners. Note that organizing a selection of national winning images is NOT A REQUIREMENT. But it is a good activity for the local team if they feel strong enough as a team to do so. Hosting a local award process has many benefits, these range from:

providing another, high-profile element that encourages the team to collaborate (and have fun!),
working with professional photographers on the jury that helps to validate the contest at a local level among the photographic community,
providing winners to create visibility and excitement among the media.

Countries hosting local competition processes

If you, as an organiser, have chosen to do a local awards process, please add your country below with a link to the page that lists both the winners and the jury.

Add your country here

This is the page where we listed all national winners in 2023: National winners
This is an example of a country page: WLA in Botswana
All national winning pages may be found here: Category:Wiki Loves Africa Winners

Suggested guidelines around procedure

On 16th April 2020 a meeting was held among WLA organisers at the local level to discuss options and ideas around local competitions. There is an audio file of the meeting and covers a lot of what is discussed on this page. Here is a text guide that also might help.

Choosing the jury

The jury should be made up of professional photographers and Wikimedia Commonists. Please consider skill set, experience and diversity when gathering your Jury. Approach media and photographic groups, schools and associations for nominations. Please make an effort to find representatives of minority groups.

The size of the team depends on the number of photographs that have been submitted. It really is up to you, but a guideline would be 3-5 members for under 750 images. 5-8 members for 2500 images and below.

There are also practical considerations:

Jury members must be able to write and read in the same language – you will be discussing images online, it is best to be able to understand one another!
They must be able to commit the time to judge up to 200-500 photos in three rounds over a period of 3-6 weeks (be clear about your timeframes)
It would be helpful if the juror would be willing to share their real name for documentation (if a Wikimedian).
Jury work is a voluntary effort, there is no financial compensation or reward.

Conflicts of interest and ethics

It is best practice to ensure that the jury members are independent of the competition. This means that they have not submitted photographs for the competition and they are not part of the main organising team. The jury members can be drawn from the local professional community (photographic associations, photography teachers, or photojournalists). Jurors can also be drawn from the local (and international) Wikimedia Commons community. This allows a healthy mix of people who know about Wikimedia world, and those who are professionals.

Guidelines on criteria for selection

Here are a few things for the jury to consider when selecting photographs to go through the process.

Encyclopedic value – does the photo present the subject with clarity?
Subject Matter – is the subject appropriate to the theme? (In this case, Transport / On the Move?
Storytelling – how well does the photo evoke the viewer’s imagination?
Impact – what 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?

They should also consider technique, composition, presentation, colour balance, lighting and focal point/s. And, of course, the photo, or an aspect of the photo, should be in focus (unless intended not to be). All photos should be more than 3 mb in size.

Selection process

Depending on the size of the 'pool' of entries, you should plan on the following process (if your pool is smaller (350 or less), you could probably reduce rounds 2 and 3 to the final round:

1st round – yes/no cleaning round. This round is where the quality contenders are separated from the mediocre or poor quality entries. Criteria is a quality assessment, and check for and Copyvios, watermarks, etc.
2nd Round – a rating round. This round has the jurors rating the images by between 1-5 stars.
Final or 3rd round. The jurors rank their top 30 selection. in order of ranking.

The international team currently uses the Montage Jury tool, but there are other tools and processes available should the local teams not wish to use it.

You have your top 10 winning images, now what?

IMPORTANT: Check that the images are not copyright violations. You can use this tool Tineye to see if these images have been used anywhere else and by whom. Please contact the photographer if there are any doubts. We CANNOT have winners that are copyright violations. It is against the licencing laws we abide by.
Do not have the two images in the top 3 from the same photographer. If necessary, place the 3rd image 4th and then the 4th image 3rd so other photographers have a chance at the limelight.
Contact your winners. Let them know. Give them time to get back to you. Do not defer the winning pot to the next ranked winner. Their image has won. It is theirs.
Ask you winners why they chose to shoot that image. Ask them what winning means to them. Document those quotes. These quotes will provide more interest to your press release, country page or grant request report.
Once you have contacted the winners, let the press and community know. Make some noise about it!

Write up the winners on your Commons page.
Share the link with the international organising team and on the Telegram channel!
Share your link and the photographs on Social Media – link the photographers and @WikiLovesAfrica in your posts
Write and send out a press release. Make sure you include information about who made up the Jury. You can use this international press release from the 2019 winners as a guideline.

Jury tools

There are a few tools that have been created to assist in Jury selection process. While each national contest is free to choose their jury tool of choice, the international team develops, maintains, and supports Montage if you decide to choose this jury tool.

The Montage Tool

Montage: https://tools.wmflabs.org/montage/#/
Request access for your country jury here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Montage#Wiki_Loves_Africa
How to: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Commons:Montage

Sign your country up for using Montage in the talk page.
Check if your campaign is ready
Go to the coordinator panel in Montage and sign in using your Wikimedia account
Edit campaign
Setup Round

Other tools to consider

Wiki Loves Africa 2024/Tools hosts many tools that could be useful to you
Commons' Jury tools are a list of tools used in Jury selection processes
See also the page Learning patterns/Selecting winners of a large photo contest
Most uploads tool, with the example of WLA 2023 in Rwanda: [1]

When done... document and share

Jurors names
Jury process
Prizes delivered, winners and winning images
Share the winners with us!!
Ask the winner's questions – such as "why did you choose to take that picture?" or "How was the experience of entering Wiki Loves Africa?"

This is the page where we listed all national winners in 2023: 2023 National Winners
This is an example of a country page: WLA in Botswana
All national winning pages may be found here: c:Category:Wiki Loves Africa Winners