Wiki Loves Africa 2023/How to join

Wiki Loves Africa 2023 : Climate & Weather – Organisers' Hub

How to join

The call for pictures and the contest will run in ALL African countries and beyond.

The contest is open for all africans, diaspora, and actually anyone interested and willing to help ! Regardless of whether you are African or not, you are welcome to join!

The contest is being discussed and organized primarily on Telegram. Please join the contest Telegram

Here are some examples of the things you may do for a start: see here

  • Let other people know about the contest. Your local community can include local Wiki(p/m)edians and aligned Open Movement members (enthusiasts from Creative Commons, Open Street Map, Open Data, OER, etc.). Relevant links to provide include:
  • Fix pages on meta or Commons (improve the text, fix typos, translate...)
  • Help us to translate the Site Notice into those languages (as well as other relevant texts)
  • Help select the jury: suggest judges who might be interested in taking part in the international contest (perhaps a locally celebrated photographer, fashion designer, filmmaker or journalist). Volunteer yourself!
  • Participate in writing press releases: Help on crafting a press release template, adapt it, and send it out to your media contacts. Write blogs.
  • Help categorize and clean up uploaded photos on Commons during the contest
  • Help use images and videos in relevant Wikipedia articles. For example during Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2022
  • Help get images and videos labelled for their quality: Commons:Wiki Loves Africa/WLA images under evaluation
  • Coordinate or join an already existing group: Wiki Loves Africa 2023/Participating communities
  • Add a userbox on your user-page : Userbox : {{User WLA organizer}}
  • To receive news on your meta talk page : Please feel free to add your name in the Recipients list

Webinars and tutorials

Many webinars and tutorials have been recorded over the past years.
You may access the last two years webinars here: Wiki Loves Africa 2023/Webinars
Those are some training resources: Wiki Loves Africa 2023/Training

Which tasks for organizers?

Pre Contest (Dec-Jan)

The organisational tasks for the International Organising Team for Wiki Loves Africa is outlined below.

Organisational elements

  • Setting up, and updating all Commons pages (main page, local events, FAQ, partners, team etc.)
  • Set up of Meta portal pages to support organisers
  • Creation of theme page
  • Call for translation of Wiki pages in French, Portuguese, Arabic, African local languages
  • Set up of the banner system/site notice
    • Anthere and Romaine or Ciell
  • Upload wizard tunnel with category architecture
    • Romaine
  • Clean up and improvement of documentation pages
  • Call local teams to make their funding request (rapid grant)
  • Support to local teams when needed for rapid grants
  • Translate all pages!

Communications

  • website text and updating
  • Design briefing, facilitation and management
  • Creation of call leaflet and poster text
  • Creation of event templates
  • Video creation
  • Launch press release creation, translation and dissemination via the mailing list and other platforms
  • Press release template created and shared with WM teams
  • Dissemination of all materials across all digital platforms
  • Share all elements with all local volunteer teams
  • Launch press release dissemination and liaison with WM community blogs
  • Elements that need to be developed (and translated):
  • branded merchandise (t-shirt, caps, etc.)
  • Pre-contest: social media campaign strategy (coordination across all channels)

During the contest (March-April)

Organisational elements

  • Image monitoring: fixing category/description/Reuse
  • Image monitoring: copyvios, watermarks, etc.
  • Image monitoring: feeding a best images category to help communicators
  • Jury selection: Selecting, approaching and onboarding jurors
  • Jury selection: Introducing Jurors to organising team
  • Tracking data : Mass messages to former participants during the contest
  • Tracking data : Mailing list management
  • Telegram account management
  • Answering questions of ‘’confused’’ people : usually mostly on Facebook account and on the wiki
  • Tracking local events organized in the countries

Communications

  • Social media message creation, translation and scheduling
  • Social media posting (translating and answering)
  • Social media re-posting from teams onto main WLA channels
  • Monitor and announcements on WLA telegram channel
  • Monitor media mentions

Post contest (May-November)

Organisational elements

  • Images thorough clean-up
  • Communicating selection criteria and process
  • Jury process: Setting up and facilitating use of Montage or other jury selection platform
  • Incorporating local teams for the selection of final round of images into larger non-selected batches
  • Liaising local teams for selection of final round of images
  • Keeping jurors to timeline - 3-4 rounds
  • Winners contact details collected and checked
  • Shortlist uploaded to Best Images page
  • Winners:Communication with prize winners
  • Winners:Certificates design and printing
  • Winners:Prizes selection, creation/ordering and postage
  • Tracking data :images views, number of participants, new participants, image reuse, evolution over time etc.
  • creation of the final poster
  • Creation of surveys, dissemination, data collect and publishing survey report
  • Interviews of local organizers, report

Communication

  • Interviews with prize winners for the press release and blog posts
  • Winners social media announcements (translated)
  • Winners press release and dissemination
  • Winners posts on WM blogs and Wiki Spaces
  • Plan for and run an ISA MetaData weeks contest for WLA 2023 entries

Timeline

  • December
    • Announce theme
    • Theme press release launched
    • Social media strategy created
    • Pre-contest on-wiki elements created and updated
    • Rapid Grant Requests
  • January
    • Social media campaign starts
    • Pre-contest on-wiki elements created and updated and finalised
    • Comms elements prepared and shared with WM teams
  • February
    • Launch press release and call-to-action posts
    • 15th February - contest begins
    • Contest comms and social media active
    • Image and category monitoring
    • Social media message
    • Mid-point press release (if needed)
    • Jurors approached
  • March
    • Jury process set up
  • April
  • May-June
  • July-August 2023
    • International Winners selected and announced
    • International Winners Press release and blogs are written, translated and disseminated
  • September-October-November
    • Survey
    • Post mortem and report
    • ISA campaign