Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipack Africa Content/WikiFundi:WikiChallenge African Schools 2017/FAQs

What is WikiChallenge?

WikiChallenge African Schools is a multinational contest that creates a fun, engaging way for students to learn about how knowledge is built by contributing to Wikipedia. The contest challenges schools to compete with each other by writing Wikipedia articles about something of importance in their area. It is exciting, fun and also gives student the chance to find out more and express their pride of the place that they come from.
The contest takes place in eight countries across Africa from the 15th January until the 30th March 2017. The prizes will be awarded according to each country, and where possible per school. The timeline for the contest is:

The following are provisional deadlines:

14th November 2016: Registration of schools opens

16th January 2017: WikiChallenge African Schools launched

30th March 2017: WikiChallenge African Schools closes

end May 2017: WikiChallenge African Schools winners announced

How do I join the WikiChallenge African Schools?

It's really simple and easy, and fun! If you are a student, you can:

Check online that your country is participating : The WikiChallenge page
If the contest is running in your country, tell a teacher at your school about this fun competition. Convince them to get involved!

If you are a headmaster or teacher at a school, you can:

Check online that your country is participating : The WikiChallenge page
If the contest is running in your country, choose a member of staff to be a School Lead or volunteer to be a school lead yourself.
Once the School Lead is chosen, register for a user account on en.wikipedia or fr.wikipedia (Help in English)
Register your school's participation on this page
Get started!

How do I get involved?

If you are a student or a teacher see the question above.
If you are already a Wikipedian, there are many things you can do to help!

If you live in one of the countries that are participating, you can volunteer to do training sessions at the participating schools. If you want to get involved locally, please check out your country's’ schools page to offer your services. You can find the list of schools already registered here;
alternatively, you may also contact a nearby school, invite them to join the fun and propose your assistance to participate to the contest;
Whether you live in one of the countries that are participating or not, you can provide online help with many aspects of the project - from mentorship, to checking categories on the entries, being on the jury, etc. Please let us know how you would like to get involved and be bold.

As a student, why should I get involved?

Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia or a place to find the information you need to do your school projects ;-). It is also an incredible place to learn about how knowledge is created and shared. It is a great place to show the world what you know, and become confident in sharing what you know with the world! When you write on Wikipedia you are not just writing an assignment about what you know, you are sharing that knowledge with many thousands, even millions of people who are interested in the subject that you are writing about. We also know there isn’t nearly enough coverage of articles on Wikipedia that are about things that you would be interested in - your local musicians, local writers or even politicians. You have the power to change that! You will also learn how to work on an online platform, with different people on the same article, and will learn vital skills about how to build, write and illustrate an encyclopedia article that will help you when you leave school.

Why should my school and its student take part?

WikiChallenge African Schools encourages students from the same school to collaborate to create an encyclopedia article. The contest is designed to provide students with hands-on experience in collating information and working collaboratively to contribute knowledge to one of the world’s most powerful information platforms. Teaching students to write on Wikipedia turns learning from a passive activity into an active expression of knowledge. It transforms a classroom’s boundaries with students sharing resources and research, taking and uploading images, drawing illustrations or mapping their physical world, and writing, building and translating articles. The contest will specifically:

Train students in how to write an article on Wikipedia;
Encourage students to work together to build articles;
Teaching student vital online skills including registration, linking, uploading, rules of engagement, writing styles, etc.;
Give students key online skills that includes, but is not limited to, navigating an editing environment that mimics Wikipedia’s online version, researching a specific subject, and being able to correctly cite sources;
Contribute articles about Africa by Africans to Wikipedia, thus broadening the coverage of Africa and combating systemic bias; and
Provide media skills with regards to constructing articles, using categories, and taking photographs or creating other media to fully illustrate the article they submit to the contest.

See also Help:Schools and WikiFundi:Resources

What is a School Lead?

A School Lead is a teacher or a headmaster at a school, who has registered as the School Lead for the WikiChallenge African Schools and has registered an account on online Wikipedia. Being School Lead means that they are involved, with the other teachers, in organising which classes do the contest. They will also enter each article from that school onto Wikipedia. [see the next question]

We've registered! What do we do next?

This is where the real fun begins!!

Discuss WikiChallenge with other members of staff, especially those involved in computer or ICT studies.
Discuss with them the kinds of articles that could be created.
Choose the classes that you want to be involved.
Do an initial workshops with the class talking about what articles you could write.
Compile a list of articles that you and the students want to work on.
Note: It would be a good idea to check that these articles are not already on Wikipedia. To do this, go to http://en.wikipedia.org and put the article name in the search box. If the name has been taken, make sure it refers to the same topic you want to cover. For example, there could have two place names with the same name; or two completely different topics with the same name, for example, there is the city of Accra and a genus of moths called Accra.
Look at WikiFundi:Wikimedia in Africa to see if there is a Wikimedia volunteer group in your country that could assist you with training.
Use the WikiFundi:Resources and handouts that we have compiled for you and your students.
Suggested activities:
1. Go on a field trip to map the immediate area around your school. To do this, we suggest working with openstreetmap.org
2. Take photos of the subjects they are writing about.
3. Go to the local museum and library to get credible sources for your articles.

What kind of subjects should be covered?

The contest asks for articles to be entered that are about a school, city, town, village, suburb, a local landmark, a notable person or a local historic or geographic feature. The articles should have encyclopedic value and should not already be on Wikipedia (or if there is already an article, it should be a stub which can be largely expanded). The articles can be submitted in either English or French to the relevant language Wikipedia.

What is an encyclopedia article?

Generally, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information about the subject of the article. On Wikipedia there are several elements that are considered important. These are notability, neutrality, and verifiable. The article should cover a subject that is notable. In Wikipedia, notability is used to explain what makes things important enough to be the subject of a Wikipedia article. The topic of an article should be notable, or "worthy of notice". Notability is different from "fame", "importance", or "popularity", although these may affect it. See Wikipedia:Core content policies and Wikipedia:Manual of Style.
The article should also be written in an encyclopedic style; which means it should be written without bias. On Wikipedia this is called a neutral point of view.
It is also important that all facts can be verified by including external sources as citations.

Additional information is available on Help:Schools, in particular to help you check whether an article about your school or your village would be considered an encyclopedia article on Wikipedia. We highly recommend reading those pages, in particular if you intend to write about your schools or a local landmark. Not all schools entries are accepted into Wikipedia for example. It might be easier and more interesting to write an article about your village (a wonderful opportunity to organise a photo-hunt with the students, interviews with elders and to reflect on what makes your village different).

If you are not sure your topic is notable by Wikipedia rules, please check out with us at first during registration. We will be happy to help !

How long should the article be?

An incomplete article is called a stub. Most stubs are under 250 words or less than 10 sentences. Boa Amponsem Senior High School is a typical example of what wikipedias call a stub.
To qualify as a good article (and for a shot at the prizes), an article should be at least between 1000 and 2000 words. But it is not really the number of words that is important - it is the content, how it is arranged and how the information flows from one concept to another. The article on Sinenjongo High School is a fairly good article on a school !

Some articles may turn out to be really excellent and quite long. Check out Stuyvesant High School for a featured-article example ! But this quality usually requires a lot of work from many different participants. Whilst we do not expect such a quality, this article can inspire you.

If the subject really, really needs a lot of explanation then it can be over 3000 words. However, for a subject that is that complex, you can link several shorter articles together, using a general page to tie all articles together. An example of a general page would be a country page, for example, Cameroon.

How do I transfer completed articles from WikiFundi to Wikipedia

Open Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org).
Log in using your username details.
Go to the page listing Participating Schools and identify where your school is listed. Under your school name, create a red link with the title of the article you wish to submit. You do this by placing double square brackets on either side of the article's title; such as [[OurVillageName]].
Open the WikiFundi article you wish to transfer to the main Wikipedia space.
Click on the Edit source button.
Copy all the text within the edit box.
Go back to Participating Schools and click on the red link (now showing as OurVillageName).
A new article page will open. Copy the text into the editing area.
Click on preview.
Do a final copy edit if needed
Click save.

You are done!

How do we add photos to articles on WikiFundi?

You can upload photos, audio, videos and other media to WikiFundi to see what your article will look like on Wikipedia. However, these files will not be able to be transferred with the text, as all images and media files are held on Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org). Here are a few guidelines to watch out for when working with photos, images, or media files.

Top tip:

You should store all your images, illustrations, maps, audio and video in a separate file on the Raspberry Pi.
Make sure the filename of the image, illustration, map, audio or video has the following detail: what it is representing_place taken_name of person who took the photo.file extension, for example: Baobab_ManaPools_JoeBlog.jpeg
Take note of the file formats:
1. for photos and illustrations, the use of SVG, PNG, JPEG, GIF, and TIFF are encouraged.
2. for audio accepted sound formats are: Ogg (using FLAC, Speex, Opus or Vorbis codecs), WebM (using Vorbis), FLAC, WAVE or MIDI (with extension .mid)
3. video only certain formats are recognised, these are: Ogg files using the Theora video codec (with a .ogv extension), or WebM files [1]

How do we transfer the images that illustrate the article to Wikipedia?

All photographs, drawing and media files for Wikipedia are stored on Wikimedia Commons. To be seen in the article you should:

Go to http://commons.wikimedia.org
Log in using your username details.
In the left navigation column, click on Upload this will take you to the Upload Wizard
Tip: If you have a good connection, you can upload up to 20 images at a time. If your connection is slow, then upload them 5 at a time.
Follow all the instructions in the upload wizard.
On the “Release Rights page” click on “Provide copyright information for each file individually on the next page.”
Transfer the information from the filename, i.e what it is representing_place taken_name of person to the description space. Make sure to put the name of the original photographer clearly in the description.
In the category section, be sure to add WikiChallenge 2017 [name of your country], for example WikiChallenge 2017 Cameroon
In the category section, detail what is most obvious about the photo. If it is a Boabab tree, mentioned Baobab tree; if it is a picture of your village, then write the name of the village in the category.
When you have finished the upload, you will see box that will give you the code within square brackets. Copy this code.
Go to the article file on Wikipedia, click on Edit.
Paste the code into the part of the article where it is most relevant.
Press save! Repeat if needed.

You are done!

Please take note of the file formats:

for photos and illustrations, the use of SVG, PNG, JPEG, GIF, and TIFF are encouraged.
for audio accepted sound formats are: Ogg (using FLAC, Speex, Opus or Vorbis codecs), WebM (using Vorbis), FLAC, WAVE or MIDI (with extension .mid)
video only certain formats are recognised, these are: Ogg files using the Theora video codec (with a .ogv extension), or WebM files [2]

What happens to the articles and images after they are uploaded?

Once the article is finished on WikiFundi, it must be moved, along with its images, to its final position on online Wikipedia. Once it is copied and pasted to online Wikipedia, it will be available for everyone to see it.
Remember, once it is on Wikipedia, it will not stay exactly as it was on WikiFundi. Other writers or editors will be able to work on the article, to expand or change elements on the page.

We have no access to internet, how do we work on our articles?

You may work on it on a simple document page, or use WikiFundi. The whole point of WikiFundi is that it is an offline version of Wikipedia - so, as long as you are in range of the Raspberry PI, you can still edit your article. Just as anyone who is connected to that Raspberry PI can.

What software will be used to create the articles?

The WikiChallenge African Schools is a contest designed to introduce students across Africa to using WikiFundi to create articles. WikiFundi is created using the same editing software to create the articles that is used in Wikipedia. It is designed to mimic the Wikipedia editing experience. But, for your purposes, you can use it offline. MediaWiki is a free software open source wiki package written in PHP, originally for use on Wikipedia. It is now also used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including this website, the home of MediaWiki. You can read more about Media Wiki here: https://www.mediawiki.org

What do we get if we win the WikiChallenge?

Details will be announced before the launch of the contest !

What is the difference between WikiChallenge and StoryChallenge?

WikiChallenge is a contest where students write encyclopaedia articles that will stay on Wikipedia and add to the world’s factual knowledge of your area.

StoryChallenge is also a contest, but instead of writing a fact-based encyclopaedia article that goes onto Wikipedia, you write a story that relates to your area. It doesn’t have to be factual, but it can be. It can be about something that happened, or something that could have happened. The topic could be based in the geographic area in which you live.
Your StoryChallenge entry can be written using WikiFundi, or could be written using another application, perhaps the one in your Orange Foundation Digital Schools tablet, if you have one. We will love to share the best stories !

What is the StoryChallenge?

The StoryChallenge will be open to all schools members of the Orange Network Digital Schools. It will consist in writing a story about the school, a place that the students know, etc.). Details on the StoryChallenge will be provided by your contact at the Orange Digital Schools Network.

What prizes can we win for the StoryChallenge?

Details on the StoryChallenge will be provided by your contact at the Orange Digital Schools Network.

Who is behind WikiChallenge African Schools?

The WikiChallenge African Schools was designed to support the WikiAfrica movement and Wikimedia volunteers across Africa.
It has been developed by Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood in collaboration with Wikimedia CH, and supported by the Orange Foundation and its Digital Schools programme in Africa.

The Orange Foundation will facilitate the participation in the WikiChallenge of over 500 resource-poor schools that have no books or the Internet. The schools that are part of the Orange Foundation's Digital Schools programme are equipped with digital education kits that allow 130,000 students access to academic and educational content, such as off-line Wikipedia. Now, through WikiFundi, they have the possibility of submitting an article! The Digital Schools project introduces a potential 130,000 boys and girls, teachers and school staff to the joys of contributing and sharing local knowledge with the World.

The WikiChallenge African Schools and its documentation is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
See also WikiFundi:Credits