Wikimedia and You…

Session 3:

How you can contribute to Wikimedia Projects

Presented by: Ashioma Medi ¹

Meet your trainers

2

A Wikipedian…

Ashioma

CC by SA 4.0, by Fayçal Rezkallah

Introduction

3

Opening Questions

4

Who can contribute?

What abilities and skills are necessary to contribute to Wikimedia?

.

Is it for you?

Have you ever thought:

"It would have been great to be able to contribute, but

it's not for me."?

There are dozens of ways to contribute to Wikimedia

Besides writing encyclopedic articles…

CC by SA 3.0, Roland Fischer, Zürich

File:2012_Sechseläuten_-_Gesellschaft_zu_Fraumünster_-_

Limmatquai_2012-04-16_15-43-10.JPG

The Amalgamation House

CC-BY-SA 4.0, DappaSolomon001

Wikimedia is more than Wikipedia

Different wikis, different tasks, different atmospheres!

Wikipedia's sister projects

And others!

Here are some ways anyone can contribute

• Some ways of contribution to Wikimedia require specialized knowledge or skills
• The following examples focus on ways not requiring any specialized skills

Contributing to Wikimedia Commons

The free library of photos, audio and video.

Wikimedia commons [link]

• A massive collection of photos, videos, sound, documents, and 3D-models

available for any use, either public domain or under a free license.

• Content should be "educational", useful for others. (hint: your family photos

generally aren't)

• Items need to be described well, in terms of authorship, content, source, date, and license.
• Items are organized in categories and using structured data.
• There are tools and community support forums available.
• As always: listen to and respect the feedback you receive, as you learn the platform and the most complex issue: copyright restrictions.

Uploading your own photos

• Commons' home page has an upload button.
• Know what you're photographing. Descriptions matter. Dates matter.
• Give the file a meaningful name (not "photo17.jpg" and not "DSC0031.PNG" please, but names like "Rex Lawson Centre from Nembe Waterside at night.jpg").
• Add at least one category (for example "Monuments and memorials in Greater Accra" or "Urban squares in Ghana"), to help people find your photo.

​

• Pick an appropriate license (the default CC-by-sa 4.0 license is a great choice)
• Upload the highest resolution you have. Don't compress or convert the files before uploading.
• On-wiki tutorial (+other languages); video tutorial of uploading a photo.
• Photograph your hometown!

Uploading your own videos

• Commons has millions of photos, but relatively few (less than 200 thousand) videos
• A lot of things you have access to are yet to be documented in video

on Commons!

• Food, crafts, clothing, sports, dance, landscapes, animals, etc.
• Sadly, the video formats used by phones and cameras (MOV, MP4) are not supported by Commons, due to patent restrictions. Videos on Commons must be WEBM.
• Before you can upload your video, you'll need to convert it to WEBM and an open codec such as VP8, VP9, or AV1.
• There is a free Wikimedia tool to convert your video online, as well as other free tools.

Participating in organized work

• Commons frequently has contribution campaigns of various sorts:
• Competitions such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Africa, etc.
• Contribution campaigns such as Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos or the monthly Photo Challenge
• It's important to pay attention to each campaign's rules and criteria: the time period when uploads will count toward the campaign, the scope, any further steps (e.g. updating some wiki page about your contribution).
• Video tutorial about contributing to Wiki Loves Monuments

Contributing to Wikisource

The free library that anyone can improve.

Wikisource [link]

• A digital library of whole texts, either

public domain or under a free license.

• Texts are scanned, scans are converted to text by automatic optical character recognition (OCR), and humans proofread the recognized text.

Contributing to Wikisource

• Proofreading is simple, and just requires some attention. Read this beginner's guide and/or watch this video tutorial and jump right in!

​

• As always: listen to and respect the feedback you receive, as you learn the platform.

​

Recording pronunciations

Contributing audio pronunciations to Commons, linking them to lexemes in Wikidata.

The value

Of recorded pronunciations

• Pronunciation is tricky (for learners, non-native speakers, translators, ...)
• Systematic, recorded pronunciations can be used in learning apps, games, text-to-speech software, and more.

Good tutorials!

There are

• The Wikimedia movement has created a good workflow for doing this easily:
• Generate a word list using Wikidata Query Service (example)
• Feed the query URL to LinguaLibre and record :)
• Video tutorial here

Providing labels and descriptions on Wikidata

Teaching Wikidata to speak your language.

Wikidata’s multilingualism

• Wikidata is multilingual!
• How multilingual is Wikidata?
• As multilingual as we make it!
• Tell Wikidata which languages you speak using the "Babel" box, and start filling in the gaps.

Making the most impact

• There are millions of missing labels and descriptions on Wikidata.
• To make the most impact, use tools or queries to find the most-significant items needing labels:
• Significant items missing labels in Twi (or this query)
• Significant items missing descs in Igbo

Some things do take specialized skills

Brief mentions of ways of contributing if you have the necessary skills, with pointers to next steps.

These do require

Specialized skills

• Helping out at the Graphic Lab

​

• Relevant skills: graphic design, photo editing, photo restoration, map-making, illustration
• Become a Tech Ambassador
• Relevant skills: writing, translation, social networking

These do require

Specialized skills

• Discover and build Wikimedia technology
• Relevant skills: translation, programming in PHP or JavaScript (tutorials here)
• Programming bots, scripts, gadgets
• Relevant skills: intermediate experience with at least one programming language

Wikipedia itself is an ecosystem

With micro-climates, task forces, maintenance needs, gaps, and errors.

What is there to do on Wikipedia

Besides writing encyclopedia articles?

• There are many forms of improving articles

beyond adding or correcting encyclopedic text

• The following slides introduce and give

next-steps for a number of such ways that don't require specialized skills

Read and give feedback

On articles

• Pick a topic you're interested in, find an article you haven't read or don't know much about, read it, and if there's any way it could be improved, leave feedback on the talk page. (e.g. is it unclear? Too long? Missing information? contradictory?)
• This helps other editors notice that there's something to do there.

Look for and add a reference

• There are many unsourced statements in Wikipedia. You can find a reliable source and add it to support that statement.

​

• The Citation Hunt tool is a good way to find such statements. Skip until you find one you want to handle. Note the menu allows you to switch to Wikipedia in another language!

Copy-edit article text

• Wikipedia has many articles with typos, grammatical mistakes, un-encyclopedic tone, etc.
• If your command of English is quite good, help by correcting existing text. See this guide, this guide, and consider reading all the how-to resources and doing these exercises prepared by The Guild of Copy Editors.

Translate an article

• If you are highly competent in more than one language, you can enormously help Wikipedia by translating articles using the convenient Content Translation tool. Start it via the "contributions" option in your user icon on the Wikipedia in your target language to get recommendations, or click the gray target language in a source article's language list to translate that particular article.

Add photos / media

To an article

• Pictures and multimedia content improve the encyclopedia and assist readers in better understanding the article topics.
• Follow the steps outlined in Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (tips on finding photos, a practical tutorial on inserting media) to start adding existing photos and media to articles missing photos.

Help reach out

To subject-matter experts

• Wikipedia has many areas of poor coverage that could use input from experts
• Our personal networks are valuable: many of us can reach experts on particular subjects (not just academics!) and connect them with active editors or point them at talk pages that could use their input.

And these are just a few examples!

There are many other

ways, too!

The road ahead: Focusing on improving Wikipedia articles

Core policies

Focus on Wikipedia

• The following modules focus on Wikipedia core policies, and are aimed at people who want to edit or expand existing Wikipedia articles.
• Creating new articles is not covered, because it requires understanding an additional, nuanced policy (Notability)

less interested in articles?

What if I’m

• If you don't think you'll want to edit English Wikipedia articles, and can instead pursue contributing in one of the ways mentioned in this module, through the links in previous slides.

How do I start?

• Remember this module is making the point that there are many ways to contribute to Wikimedia, but only gives some selected examples, and does not teach any of them: it only points at some next steps.
• You will need to read instructions on your own and follow them, being open to feedback, as you pursue any of these ways.

Don’t find a good fit?

What if I still

• If you want to contribute and none of these ways appeal to you, try describing what you'd like to help with in a conversation with experienced editors and see what they suggest.

Questions welcome!

Titlg 1

Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

THANK YOU

Keep in touch!

medi@wikimedia.org.ng

ashiomamedi@gmail.com

All screenshots from Wikipedia projects, CC by-sa