Wikivoyage talk:Africa Expedition

Proposed Afrotour project by Free Knowledge Africa Group

Swept in from the pub

Greetings

Free Knowledge Africa is a group that seek to promote free knowledge and wikimedia projects by Africans, in travel, geography, and cultural heritage.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Free_Knowledge_Africa

We intend to launch a project/contest that will encourage active participation and contributions to the English wikivoyage from Africans and towards African travel content for towns, cities and countries.

We seek your partnerships and support towards achieving this.

We look forward to a favorable response from you.

Thank you. Timmylegend (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

@Timmylegend: That sounds like a great initiative. What support can we offer to help you make it a success? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:18, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

@ThunderingTyphoons!: We would appreciate it if case studies from past projects can be shared as well as learning modules and putting up a banner. Timmylegend (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

This is exciting! Our coverage of Africa needs a lot of improvement. Just quickly on banners, for now: Information about banners is at Wikivoyage:Banner Expedition and Wikivoyage:Banners. If a page has no custom banner (banner with a photo) on it, any banner with the right dimensions is welcome and can be added without a discussion. If someone wants to suggest a different banner for an article that already has one, a proposal should be made on the article's talk page with thumbnails of the existing and proposed new banners, so that we can discuss and reach a consensus on which one to use. Ikan Kekek (talk)

I assumed "putting up a banner" meant making a cross-wiki advert, like we did for the Editathon a couple of years ago, but I could be wrong. Not sure how easy it is to get one of those, but it's certainly possible.

As far as I know, we don't have any learning modules as such, but there are extensive help pages already and if the group needed a specific portal gathering the relevant how-tos in a single place, I'm sure we could manage that. I wouldn't have thought you would need a comprehensive knowledge of policies and style norms, because there are plenty of Wikivoyagers on recent-change patrol who can 'tidy up' in the wake of your groups' (hopefully copious) additions, but information on how/whether to start a new article, where to put certain information, what the basic layout of an article should look like, etc. would presumably be very useful.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:01, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) For reference: the "inter-wiki banners" are called central notices and can be requested here; I haven't looked into the process in any detail.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:14, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Your contributions are definitely welcome! As others have said, Africa is a part of the world where there's certainly room for improvement. Also, if contributors don't feel like reading through policies and style guides, they can have a look at (good) existing articles instead to see what information goes where and how it should be formatted. For example the articles nominated at Wikivoyage:Destination of the month candidates are good examples. Ypsilon (talk) 18:10, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

And I hope we can improve our coverage of African history, in particular sub-Saharan African history. I have been an advocate of promoting historical sites in Africa, because many people have a misconception that sub-Saharan Africa is good only for safaris, and most non-Africans are unaware that there are pre-colonial cities in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, I do not have the expertise to do it myself. With this project, hopefully someone can start an article along the lines of Historical sites in Africa. The dog2 (talk) 18:41, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

This is a great idea. Timmylegend, we've had some good projects in the past. It's really helpful to remind us when it starts, so we can be on the look out to help newcomers. Are you expecting (mostly) existing Wikipedia editors to participate? If so, then Wikivoyage:Welcome, Wikipedians might be a good starting point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:29, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

• As for making page banners (I see other types of banners were mentioned), I could contribute in that area. I did a couple for Namibia in the past and could continue, though in the DRC I found it difficult to find pagebanner images. But there would be many places and countries and I'm sure I could find some where there is a suitable picture that no-one has used for a pagebanner yet. After all Wikimedia Commons is always growing! --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:32, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
• I support having an edit-a-thon. It drums up a lot of editing interest over a short period of time. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:50, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:Africa Expedition

I've started a draft of an Africa Expedition page, which could be a starting point for participants in this project. I think it is best to keep it brief, and high-level so that it does not overwhelm new contributors. I used Wikivoyage:India Expedition as a starting point, but that page goes into a lot of detail. It would be a great resource for experienced contributors, but way too much information for newbies. (We should also avoid spending too much time working up a "wish list" of everything we'd like to see as that takes time away from actually improving articles.) The page is already long. What could we take out to make this a better starting point for new contributors?

Timmylegend: do you think this would be useful? How can it be better? Ground Zero (talk) 22:13, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

(Before I finished the draft in my workspace, this expedition attracted another member, which indicates that Wikivoyagers are eager to support this project. Ground Zero (talk) 21:58, 4 January 2021 (UTC))

Thanks for taking the initiative to create that page! I made a few edits. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:43, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Quick question: What would make me a project supporter? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:49, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

It's a very exclusive inner circle of important contributors, i.e., those who add their names to the list. Ground Zero (talk) 22:54, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

I think it would be a great way to monitor the growth and progress of contributions, while also providing a guide to newbies. Although it could be difficult when the page is bulky. Africa is a big continent with over 50 countries, I believe if shared with the various African communities it could be easily achieved. Maybe a contest could also help in driving contributions, what do you think? Timmylegend (talk) 08:17, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Ground Zero, I meant what I needed to do to be a project supporter, but someone (perhaps you) made an edit explaining that. Timmylegend, if you think a contest could help, I suppose we could take a vote on which 5 people made the best contributions or something. Dunno. How about giving everyone a prize of 10 years' free membership to Wikivoyage, with an option of 10 more years after that... ;-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:16, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I did. I've moved the page from my draft to the main space now. Ground Zero (talk) 12:52, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Timmylegend: Sure, please, get all the other African communities involved if you can. I understand that Africa is a very big and diverse place, but the great thing about an online travel guide like this is if an article gets too long, we can always create spin-off articles to move some of that information to. In the example I mentioned, we can have an umbrella article about African history, but if we have a contributor who is an expert on the Benin Kingdom for instance, we can always create a separate Benin Kingdom article, and leave a cursory and brief summary in the umbrella African history article with a link to the new article. The dog2 (talk) 15:45, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

How can I help even though I have never been to Africa? (It's on my to-do list once pandemic is over) OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:12, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Copy edit and fix any formatting that doesn't conform to standard Wikivoyage style. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:25, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Try adding lat/long coordinates. Major attractions should be fairly easy to locate (and may already be in Wikidata). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

This is a cool idea ! Anthere (talk) 17:29, 7 January 2021 (UTC) ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ So are we doing an edit-a-thon so that we can track how many pages and images have been added? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:39, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, our African friends seem to have lost interest, but I would participate if you want to set something up. Ground Zero (talk) 23:27, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: an edit-a-thon is a great idea. As our core editing base doesn't have many Africa experts, we would need to reach out to WMF, get editors interested in improving African content to edit Wikivoyage while the established editors can mentor them on style and formatting. Gizza ^(roam) 00:22, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

We really need a lot better coverage of Africa, but it would be good to know why the Expedition petered out after a short while. Timmylegend, do you have any thoughts on that, and on how we should best go about getting more sustained and broader contributions? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:06, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

A worthy cause to improve our coverage of an all-too-neglected continent. I can't commit 100%, but I'll try my hand at improving listings in capital/major cities in Lusophone nations. I've already made some updates on Luanda. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 02:35, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Ground Zero Ikan Kekek, We are still very much interested in improving the gap on African content on the English Wikivoyage, however as I stated on the Wikivoyage:Africa Expedition discussion page that we would be starting with Nigerian towns and cities as a pilot phase later this year, pending the approval of a grant to organize a contest. As that seems like a more sustainable strategy and to increase the number of potential editors. Apologies for the long silence. Timmylegend (talk) 03:21, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

@Timmylegend: There is no need to apologise. We are volunteers, and everyone contributes according to their own schedule. I am very glad to hear that there is still interest amongst our Nigerian friends,and look forward to seeing Nigerian articles expanded when you get organised. And we will be here to assist you. Best regards, Ground Zero (talk) 23:09, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

@Timmylegend: I am from Ghana which shares boundaries with Nigeria. It would be very much appreciated if the intended contest about the Nigerian towns could be stretched a little further to Ghana so we could also write about some of the Ghanaian towns to improve on wikivoyage Africa. Alhassan Mohammed Awal (talk) 10:54, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Moving forward

Since our local experts so far are all from Nigeria, I think would should take advantage of their knowledge by improving some articles about Nigerian destinations. I have added a banner and some pictures to Benin City to get things started. @Timmylegend, James Moore200, Haylad: is there anything you can add to this article? Thanks. Ground Zero (talk) 22:04, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, we would definitely start with Nigerian towns and cities. Timmylegend (talk) 19:48, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I started to structure Lagos with districts. It's a huge city so districts are needed. I have created Lagos/Lagos Island and added sights. Perhaps the next collaboration could be Lagos/Victoria Island. --Jonte-- (talk) 09:28, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the "history" section of the Africa article itself has some blind spots. If someone can fill them in, giving them due weight, that'd be great, too Hobbitschuster (talk) 09:32, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I wish to become the first Ghanaian wikivoyage expert contributing much to improving wikivoyage Africa. I am happy all the African experts are Nigerians. My country Ghana shares boundaries with Nigeria and the northern part of Ghana where I come from has it in history that our ancestors actually migrated from Zamfara in northern Nigeria to our current location. Wish to be invited to take part in any project that shall be undertaken. Get me along User: Timmylegend Alhassan Mohammed Awal (talk) 11:03, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

I didn’t know all these editors were contributing as part of this expedition. Timmylegend, thanks for doing this, the effort these contributors have made is definitely appreciated. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Northern Ghana

I can't wait to tell the stories about some interesting places in Ghana, especially the northern part of Ghana. The Dagbani wikipedia has active contributors who will be ready to take some tours around the historic and interesting places around northern Ghana in order to take photos and upload them on Wikipedia Commons for use in developing articles about them. A guide to sourcing a grant or funding to embark on the photo walk is welcomed. Nice meeting you all wikivoyagers and hoping to learn and start contributing to wikivoyage stuff as soon as possible through your guidance. Alhassan Mohammed Awal (talk) 10:15, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Looking forward for these new article. Was planning to go to Ghana, Rwanda and Zambia last year but couldn't go due to Covid. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 11:12, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

A great start on Nigeria articles

Over the past few days, there have been a lot of improvements in Nigeria articles. Congratulations to all involved on this great start. A lot of this information will be very useful to people interested in travelling in your country. Ground Zero (talk) 01:17, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Community Notification: Free Knowledge Africa/Movement Strategy Implementation Plan

Dear all,

I wish to inform Wikiproject Africa of the proposed Free Knowledge Africa/Movement Strategy Implementation Plan; the project seeks to research and document in relation to content initiatives in underrepresented communities. There exists a huge gap about African destinations and travel information on Wikipedia and Wikivoyage without any significant attempt at carrying out a complete overhaul and improvement. The proposal seeks to develop an implementation plan. See the details of the project by using the link to the grant: If you would love to join and participate, please feel free to leave a message on my talk page. Thank you. Timmylegend (talk) 23:31, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Looking good :) Do you want me to create an Africa café similar to the Nigeria café? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:43, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

You might also want to mention this in the pub as well. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:27, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you SHB2000, I think the Africa cafe can be deferred till there's a draft implementation plan. I will do well to post in the pub as well.Timmylegend (talk) 08:31, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

We need to talk about the problematic m:Explore Africa project

Swept in from the pub

I'm sorry to be so rude and arrogant here (and hope no-one minds the editorialised title), but to the organisers of this project, we need to talk about the rules because so far, we've only been having problems with minimal net positives. Some of the issues with this project:

• it encourages users to create as many low-quality articles, giving little regards to whether it will actually improve the project
• it encourages users to add as much content as possible, which has resulted in numerous copyright violations
• it encourages users to create articles that would normally fail WV:WIAA, such as Kano to Ibadan by air or ordinary train itineraries (it would be the equivalent of an itinerary of the Amtrak route between Penn Station in NYC and Washington, D.C. or the Eurostar between London and Paris, per se). If AlasdairW didn't comment out a list of mountains, we might have had an influx of articles about individual mountains.
• its point system does not have a penalty for copyright violations (not that I care, but my point is that it seems no organiser seems to care about the copyright violations, though I'm not surprised given that Tesleemah had previously been blocked on this site for repeated copyvios).

What's more concerning is that AlasdairW raised some of these issues on Meta (discussion here), but their concerns have gone unanswered since December 14.

@Timmylegend, Haylad, Bilijin, Godstime Elijah, Ifedohlapo, Hopilo12: (list partially copied from WhatamIdoing's comment above) please, we need you to cooperate with us. Having a project that only creates problems for Wikivoyage is counterproductive and I'm sure you will all agree that playing a game of whack-a-mole with deleting new articles that were created as part of this expedition wastes everybody's time. The lack of meaningful communication also does not help.

So to sum this message up, I'll finish this off with two questions:

1. To the event organisers, what will you do to address the concerns raised?
2. To everyone else, what other concerns do you have with this project that you wish to voice. Sorry for canvassing, but pinging everyone who has dealt with this expedition in some way or another for comment: @Ground Zero, Ikan Kekek, Pashley, AlasdairW, Alalch E., LPfi, WhatamIdoing:.

End of rant. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:10, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. I am disappointed in the results of this project because I agree with the principle of it: wiki projects -- and Wikivoyage particularly -- need more African content. We have had some very good content added by the project participants, but we have had much more of the sort of the low-quality content identified by SHB2000. And unfortunately, not enough cooperation from its participants. The points system does seem to drive participants towards adding volume rather than quality. I think unless the project is changed, Wikivoyage would be better off opting out of it, i.e., asking the organisers to not award points for contributions to Wikivoyage. A better result would be if the organisers changed the points system to encourage expansion of articles by adding original content, but I don't have any suggestions for how that could work. Ground Zero (talk) 11:16, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

See also m:Talk:Explore_Africa Pashley (talk) 16:08, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I am disappointed in how this competition has turned out. Encouraging the right kind of edits of African articles would be very valuable. It has produced some useful content, but also low quality content.

When a competition is organised, I would expect:

• The organiser to expain the competition here, and ask for general agreement on the main points a few months before the start.
• Any comments on the competition talk pages to be responded to by an organiser within 24 hours. This is mainly so that competitors questions are answered promptly.

I don't think that a purely objective scoring system is a good idea, as it can encourage contributions of little value. Many valuable contributions to Wikivoyage do not increase article length - as an example going through all the listings in an existing article, checking that the locations are open (removing those that have closed) and updating prices is very useful, but may make the article have less bytes. An objective points system might be used as a qualification before a subjective judgement of which are the winning entries.

Points should not be awarded for article creation. For a semi-objective points system, points could be given for adding useful See, Do and Sleep listings (to existing or new articles), with full points only for listings that were complete (address, lat/long, url,price, hours and 5-20 words of unique description). Buy, Eat and Drink listings are more likely to attract additions of limited value and so shouldn't get points. Points could also be awarded for bringing an article to Usable or Guide standard (when reviewed by a regular contributor).

With any points system, prizes should only be awarded a month or longer after the competition end. This reduces the chance of prizes being given for contributions that were later deleted or reverted. AlasdairW (talk) 16:50, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

If they're using the Wiki Edu Dashboard, they can manually "uncheck" (remove) reverted edits or other edits that they don't want to count. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I guess they can also do that, but have the organisers demonstrated any interest in responding to issues with a project they're hosting? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:28, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

A proposal

The contest runs until 31 Jan 2023, so we could wee a lot of activity in January that does not contribute to building a useful travel guide. As an interim step, we could ask the organizers to change the points system. Now, participants get:

• "One point (1.0) for every new Wikivoyage article.
• "One point (1.0) for every 1000 bytes of content for the articles."

I suggest that we ask the organizers to change it to:

• "One point (1.0) for every new Wikivoyage article with a minimum of 1000 bytes of non-repeated content.
• "One point (1.0) for every 1000 bytes of non-repeated content for the articles."

"Non-repeated content" means not copying the same text into a bunch of articles, such as identical text about about motos, tro-tros and mobile phone operators. Comments? Ground Zero (talk) 22:50, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I like this. I would say that "non-repeated content" is content that can't be found anywhere on the web (and also not in any published print sources, but that is hard to check). This means nothing that could be a copyvio, or stuff copied from WP or even from public domiain sources. The winner will get $500, so we should expect original new content.

On a postive note, we now have a usable Kinyarwanda phrasebook as a result of the competition. AlasdairW (talk) 00:25, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Even new listings should not receive credit if they are copyright violation. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:38, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposal 2 to reflect the comments above: I suggest that we ask the organizers to change it to:

• "One point (1.0) for every new Wikivoyage article with a minimum of 1000 bytes of content that is not copied from other Wikivoyage articles or from other sources.
• "One point (1.0) for every 1000 bytes of content for the articles that is not copied from other Wikivoyage articles or from other sources."

Ground Zero (talk) 03:09, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

@Ground Zero, Ikan Kekek: Before casting my support !vote, if a user significantly paraphrases text from Wikipedia, would that still earn the user a point? Based on what we've seen, it's extremely unlikely a user would do such, but there's always the slight possibility and I'd like to clear that up before officially casting my support !vote. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:49, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I do not think we need to go into that much detail. We've made suggestions; let the contest organisers work out whether & how to implement them. Pashley (talk) 06:08, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Sure, but I should also clarify that I support this proposal, regardless of how my trivial clarification goes.

However, on the other hand, a discussion here, even if there is a 100% support for amending the rules, is up to the discretion of the organisers and based on the level of cooperation, I don't expect them to participate which means all this will be for nought. I'm not saying they won't, but the only time any organiser has responded to the issues raised was Special:Diff/4576107 on User talk:Dnshitobu. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:43, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Sad, but at least this discussion can give advice for similar future projects. What about adding "twenty points (20.0) for a new article that reaches usable status, a hundred points (100.0) for one that reaches guide"? This would be different for well-covered regions, but for Africa there is no shortage of nice places lacking articles, existing semi-good articles may be reasonably easy to improve from a distant armchair, and while outlines may be useful for a highway stop, in Africa we often need articles for the main stops of an itinerary, which should be reasonably complete. –LPfi (talk) 09:40, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

It would appear that any attempt to get the organizers to change anything would be unsuccessful. What should we do in the future when such contests are started without notice, let alone engagement with us? Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:06, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I think that we should start a policy / guideline page on running competitions. This competition has $1500 worth of prizes, so presumably has had funding from somewhere. If there is a page about running competitions that is easy to find, then funders are likely to ask questions about whether our advice on running a competition is being followed. I think all major competitions should be discussed here 3+ months before they start, and only proceed if there is consensus about the main points of the competition. This would not apply to a minor competition, like that held during an in-person wikimedia event or editathon. AlasdairW (talk) 23:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

How would we enforce that, though? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:40, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we can, in practice. We could complain to the funder (which is generally, but not always, the WMF).

Also, as a minor point, I find that when something is discussed in January, and then nothing happens until April or later, people forget that it was discussed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

See meta:Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Free Knowledge Africa Development Support for what appears to be a related grant of $25k.

Maybe the 3+ months is wrong. I was trying to suggest that a competition is discussed before it is advertised or detailed preparations are made. In practise this means 2 months or more before it starts, otherwise it is too late to say "please start a month later to avoid X". AlasdairW (talk) 11:33, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Not all contests are grant-funded or have a long timeline, but the problem to be solved is having a discussion here in January, that approves an event scheduled for April or later, and the regular contributors here not forgetting by the time it starts that they had already approved it back in January.

My favorite example of this is from enwiki: A group had a small discussion about changing the appearance of a page. Mostly, the discussion was the people who were going to make the changes, plus one other person. The changes were delayed for a while, and appeared a couple of months later. The first comment was from that same "one other person", whose immediate reaction was: Why wasn't this change discussed?! (You can also read about my least favorite example of this at w:en:WP:YDOW.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I think the problem of people forgetting a discussion 6 months ago is easily handled in the detail of the competition guidance, by requesting a brief notification in the pub when the competition starts.

It is more important that the main discussion about a competition happens early enough to make changes, which could be to the start date, suggested articles, maximum value of prizes, or judging criteria. A discussion the week before the competition is too late for such big changes. AlasdairW (talk) 23:10, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

@AlasdairW, Ikan Kekek: I'm a bit late to the penguin party, and I don't know if this is an appropriate comparison, but the organisers of this contest remind me of Veillg1 (before they stormed out of Wikimedia). At first, in 2021, this group was a very competent group (with the Nigeria Expedition), who for the most part, were proactively monitoring their participants and actively participated in several discussions. Then after some time, any feedback given would be implemented, but only for a short period of time, just like Veillg1 who later went and did their own thing. Now, all they've done is completely act as if they did nothing wrong (isn't it obvious with Timmylegend's comment overly focusing on my harshly-worded comments), just like what Veillg1 did in their last few months.

In the meantime, I've revoked Timmylegend's autopatroller right (I gave it to them back in July 2021 when they were a competent user), and would also suggest this for Haylad too. The only way I can see (albeit draconian, IMO) stopping this expedition would be to ban Timmylegend from this project (via WV:UBN) for disruptive editing via an expedition. As users cannot host expeditions on projects they are blocked on, that would mean the juries would be the other juries who have yet to make an edit within the last two months. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 00:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think banning any of the orgainisers would be helpful at this point. It is in our interest that the the prizes are awarded after the judges have looked at the entries rather than just as a result of the automatic byte counts. 2 of the 3 top editors by byte counts also appear on VFD. I wish we could get the organisers to be more active here - eg when one of the suggested articles is created, they should be along a few hours later to add geo, ispartof etc.

You may be interested in meta:Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Free Knowledge Africa Development Support/Midpoint Report. This shows that there are 3 paid staff involved with this, so the lack of hands on management of the competition is more disappointing. AlasdairW (talk) 21:59, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the link – wasn't aware of that. Agreed with your point.

It's also worth noting that Kambai Akau, the second top user, only managed to make it there because of the many phrasebooks they created. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:12, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Response from Explore Africa Contest Team

Hello @SHB2000:, we are not happy with the choice of your words and consistent non-apology apology (saying hurtful things and apologizing immediately is not the best approach). Calling the Explore Africa Writing Contest a problematic project was not necessary. There are better ways to communicate and criticize. However, thank you for raising these issues and initiating the conversation here.

The goal of the contest was not to encourage users to create as many low-quality articles and give little regard to whether it will actually improve the project. We planned to disqualify participants who were going to game the contest by just creating empty articles or copypasting at the end of the contest. We shared the rules with participants, and we can't exactly control the way they contribute.

Thank you @AlasdairW: for reaching out via the discussion page, and we apologize for not responding to your comment. It was an oversight.

The team as a whole started contributing to Wikivoyage in [2021], about two years ago. Most of you here have been contributing for years and know about all the rules and policies. All we have done was in good faith. It wasn't our intention to disrupt Wikivoyage with low-quality and poor edits/contributions. And since we started contributing to Wikivoyage about two years ago, there's been an increased contribution about African destinations by Africans. This is also the first time we are organizing a contest across several African countries.

We would stop organizing contests on Wikivoyage after this and see other ways we can contribute. We chose to organize a contest because it has been a very successful strategy for Wikimedia campaigns in Africa. The local context is very different from what is obtainable in the European/American/Asian context. The contest has helped to raise a lot of awareness about the Wikivoyage project in African Wikimedia communities and for non-Wikimedians as well. We expected a bit of understanding and flexibility during this contest period and not the high-handedness and rigidity that has been experienced in the past few weeks. These folks were excited to contribute and didn't even know any better. Another thing that could be helpful would be setting up a review process where articles are created in a draftspace or soapbox before allowing articles to be in the main space on Wikivoyage.

We made some mistakes with some article suggestions and apologize for that. We could have shared the list for a review to know what was within the scope, especially for itineraries. Another reason for a delayed response here is because of the Christmas celebration currently going on. We would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Thank you @Ground Zero: for the proposals. We will make changes to the rules, and we strongly believe there will be positive changes by January.

On a final note, we would like to remind you that you are admins of this Wiki, and from time to time, new editors will be creating content, and there will be errors while they are doing this. There should be an atmosphere that supports and encourages new editors. Timmylegend (talk) 10:45, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Erm, no, I stand by my words and that's now how things work. I first gave a lot of latitude to your previous expeditions in regard to copyright violations, which is my main concern with this expedition. This is also despite the clear "By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." notice just above the publish changes/show preview/show changes button. If someone was brave enough to blatantly ignore that warning on day 1, then that tells us something. The other issues I mentioned are only a distant second to copyvios.

And I'm guessing you probably did not read or skim read why I mentioned why this expedition was problematic: it encourages users to mass-create articles in a short period of time in order to earn points. It does not factor in the fact that Wikivoyage articles need to be integrated into the hierarchy (which many articles created during the expedition have not and it takes no further effort than filling out the {{IsPartOf}} template). Even that isn't my main concern, which is the influx of copyright violations that have been coming from the participants; continuing on from my first paragraph, blatantly ignoring the warning tells us something.

I'm not sure if you even understand the seriousness of this issue. Legal issues aside (which I'll come back to), Wikivoyage has suffered from a decade of being filtered by Google (mostly) for content too similar to the predecessor site, Wikitravel. The more copyright violations and duplicated content that comes in, the more this site gets affected by a search engine optimisation penalty. Numerous users have worked very hard over the past 10 years to differentiate the content; deliberately damaging the hard work within a few hours for a contest's sake isn't very helpful, to say the very least.

Coming back to the legal issues, I don't think I need to explain this in detail. Stealing another person, group or organisation's work and claiming it as their own, as has happened in this expedition, is not okay. It has legal implications not just for the site, but for the users themselves. That's not to mention this breaks the WMF's m:ToU (see section 4). Even the content copied from Wikipedia doesn't follow Wikipedia's copyleft policy, which is also a problem. If you still don't understand why then there's nothing that I can do. But if I didn't make it clear already, I don't hold high hopes when one of your organisers was blocked for copyright violations before.

The final content-related issues can be summarised in six words: did you read WV:WIAA and WV:TTCF? A lot your article suggestions are out of scope and out-of-scope articles (such as Kano to Ibadan by air) do not help anyone.

Finally, coming back to this:

we are not happy with the choice of your words and consistent non-apology apology (saying hurtful things and apologizing immediately is not the best approach). Calling the Explore Africa Writing Contest a problematic project was not necessary. There are better ways to communicate and criticize.

1. It's natural to say this in my native dialect of English. I stand by this; no one apart from you so far has had an issue with this (because, it IS natural to say this in English)
2. I called it problematic because it was problematic. If it weren't for this thread, then we'd have more problematic contributions, including more copyright violations.
3. Copyright violations: if it wasn't clear already, this is not allowed.
4. As an event organiser, it is your responsibility to follow up on issues that have been raised (such as the one on User talk:Dnshitobu

If you're going to stop hosting expeditons on Wikivoyage because of this, so be it. This expedtion (and Edriiic's last expedition) has mostly been a net negative to Wikivoyage and WV:TTCF. If that means fewer copyright violations, then so be it. If that means less "create as many articles as possible only for the sake of a contest", then so be it.

Finally, a reminder that I stand by my original message. But please, understand that we've had enough with the copyright violations, among other issues. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:34, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree that these expeditions have been a net negative. Yes, they cause some extra work; all contributions from newcomers carry that risk. But we also get some extra content (some of which is quite good) about areas that we wouldn't otherwise have anything. We are also getting more contributors, which is important, especially from a long-term point of view. Most of our editors come from the English Wikipedia or other WMF-hosted projects. Even if the contest participants never come back to edit here, just having them know that we exist is a good thing, because it can result in them recommending Wikioyage to other editors they encounter in the future. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, you're a very constructive and helpful Wikivoyage user, and I'm glad you're here to give various imaginative and clear suggestions and so on, but I don't recall whether you have participated much in the grunt work of nominating new articles for deletion, posting messages about the problems with them on user talk pages and editing poor contributions. If you have, you are just more patient than other people. If you haven't really been doing that much, I think that helps explain how it's easier for you to look at the big picture and say it's not a net negative. Because it's a problem when a large majority of new articles are poor-quality and dozens of them have to be nominated for deletion. I think most admins and other long-term active users are happy to edit new contributions for phrasing and style and so forth but not very happy to see large-scale copyright violation, point-to-point "itinerary" articles or park articles with no practical information of how to get there, how to get around, what to see and do in what part of the park, whether there is an admission charge, etc. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:26, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Nailed it, Ikan. I somehow missed this while writing my message at 22:30 yesterday. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:30, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

[edit conflict] I generally avoid the deletion processes, but I do sometimes go through Special:RecentChanges, with a focus on edits by less experienced editors. This tends to give me a view of how newcomers are doing, but perhaps less of a view of how much work it is to deal with certain kinds of problems. From what I see, problematic edits are a minority, but (a) something like a blatant attack page would have been instantly deleted, so I probably wouldn't see that, and (b) one problem can take 10x time and 100x effort to handle than a good edit, so if you measure your day in "time and effort spent", 10 bad edits and 200 good edits could work out to feeling like you spent half the day on bad edits, even though only 5% of the edits were bad.

At the moment, I'm struggling with Dombeya Game Reserve. The prettiest sentences in ==Understand== are more or less taken from https://www.thekingdomofeswatini.com/north-east-eswatini/dombeya-game-reserve/ but I'm uncertain whether this is a deletion-worthy copyright violation, or something that should be fixed with copyediting. It's the same with Hlane National Park and https://www.thekingdomofeswatini.com/north-east-eswatini/hlane-royal-national-park/ (once you account for a typo being introduced into the article). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I also meant to add: A review of all of today's edits by editors with <500 edits indicate that newcomers from Asia struggle in the same way, and at the same rate, that newcomers from Africa struggle. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:36, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Being overwhelmed by a large number of bad edits at the same time is an issue, though. Thank you for working to improve articles! I think most of us have, and indeed should have, patience for MoS-related problems, but are much less patient with gross copyright violation, patently inappropriate articles per what is an article (not arguable ones but obviously useless ones), and articles that have no practical information for how a traveler could access or do anything at a destination. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:54, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. We all have learning curves when we're new and it's okay to make MoS-related problems as a new user. Unless a paragraph makes zero sense whatsoever (i.e., it's incomprehensible), then I'm usually more than happy to edit the text for style. Copyvios are, however, a whole new story. In fact, I'm going to speedily delete Dombeya Game Reserve because this user has a history of copyvios. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:18, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Nelospecial has now been blocked for three days for repeated copyvios per Wikivoyage:How to handle unwanted edits#Escalating user blocks. The other article you listed has now been listed on WV:VFD. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:41, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

There is a point at which quantity becomes its own quality. I am thinking about the upcoming anniversary (just a couple of weeks away) and wondering whether we are ready to handle an influx of editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Given how our 10-year anniversary expedition does not incentivise people to create as many articles and add as much low-quality content as possible, we should be able to handle that. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:25, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Well... I guess we'll find out. Some people care more about bragging rights than about a small chance at some money. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

By allusion, I think the difference between this and the tenth anniversary, is that I had previously consulted with the community and from there set the rules (which after all the community chose their own rules instead of the global ones). This strategy of consulting first and adjusting later has been quite useful to avoid this type of situation. Best, Galahad (sasageyo!)^(esvoy) 02:34, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

But we are asking people to make the same kinds of edits (e.g., to create new articles), while hoping for a different result. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:28, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I can't not bring this up, but quoting this:

"Thank you @AlasdairW: for reaching out via the discussion page, and we apologize for not responding to your comment. It was an oversight."

Yet proceeds to ignore the issues raised by Pashley on m:Talk:Explore Africa#Itineraries WV does not want. This only accentuates my point that the organisers have not been very cooperative. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:04, 2 January 2023 (UTC)