Wikipedia:WikiProject AfroCreatives/Resources
Preparing for the FESPACO Edit-a-thon[edit]
Campaign Dashboard[edit]
Once you’ve registered, sign up to the campaign dashboard where you can track your activities in the FESPACO Edit-a-thon. Once signed on to the dashboard the ACWP team can also determine your eligibility for one of the campaign prizes.
How to Create a Wikimedia Account[edit]
While Wikipedia welcomes contributions from unregistered editors, there are a host of benefits that make it worthwhile to create an account and is strongly encouraged. If you’re participating in an AfroCreatives WikiProject campaign, it’s necessary that you register. Read more.
How to Avoid and Manage Getting Blocked[edit]
Wikipedia administrators routinely block accounts and IP ranges to reduce or prevent suspected vandalism and other inappropriate behavior. Contributors, particularly newbies, sometimes can get blocked without even realizing they’re doing something wrong. This useful guide will help you avoid any pitfalls before they happen.
Know the Essential Wikipedia Guidelines[edit]
Notability Guidelines for Films[edit]
This notability guideline for film-related articles helps decide whether a film-related topic should have its own article, and builds on the general notability guidelines and other core Wikipedia policies and guidelines, with additional criteria applicable to film. Read more
Notability Guidelines for People[edit]
On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article. For people, the person who is the topic of a biographical article should be "worthy of notice"or "note"—that is, "remarkable" or "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded"] within Wikipedia as a written account of that person's life. "Notable" in the sense of being famous or popular—although not irrelevant—is secondary. Read more. For advice about how to write biographical articles, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons.
Self-published sources[edit]
Anyone can create a personal web page, self-publish a book, or claim to be an expert. That is why self-published material such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings are largely not acceptable as sources. Read more.
Neutral Point Of View[edit]
All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.
NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. It is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are "Verifiability" and "No original research". These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material acceptable in Wikipedia articles, and because they work in harmony, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another. Editors are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with all three. This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus. Read more.
Conflict of Interest[edit]
Conflict of interest (COI) editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships. Any external relationship can trigger a conflict of interest. Someone having a conflict of interest is a description of a situation, not a judgment about that person's opinions, integrity, or good faith. COI editing is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. It undermines public confidence and risks causing public embarrassment to the individuals and companies being promoted. Editors with a COI are sometimes unaware of whether or how much it has influenced their editing. If COI editing causes disruption, an administrator may opt to place blocks on the involved accounts. Read more.
Know the Essentials of Wikipedia Editing[edit]
How to do basic copy-editing[edit]
Discovering that pages need basic copyediting, i.e., correcting for grammar, spelling, readability, or layout, may surprise new visitors to Wikipedia, but this is the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit": it is not perfect yet! Thousands of articles need simple improvements you can make without being an expert in the subject. Copyediting involves the "five Cs": making the article clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent Here is a guide for new copyeditors.
How to add and correct Citation[edit]
Every piece of content on Wikipedia needs to be supported by a citation, or reference, to a credible source that shows where the information comes from. This allows readers to trust and verify what they are reading. Content provided without a source is significantly more likely to be removed from an article and why citations are fundamental to editing on Wikipedia. Read more.
How to Add a Category[edit]
For an encyclopedia with millions of articles, categories are an essential feature of Wikipedia. They help readers navigate around a subject area and find article relationships that are relevant to them. Always remember to add at least one category and that defines the person, film, or other topic. For the topic of African film and television, it is important to at a minimum categorize the country of the article’s subject. For example, a “South African director” Additional categories can be added such as “Science Fiction directors” or “Action Film directors.” Read more.
HotCat is a gadget that helps registered users easily remove, change, and add categories to Wikipedia pages. It has a suggestions list that will propose existing categories for auto-completion.
How to Add an Image to Infoboxes and Articles[edit]
Images are an essential element on Wikipedia. They bring dynamism and color to articles and make them more compelling to readers.
Here’s a quick and easy guide on how to add an image to article.
If an article already has an infobox at the top right, then the usual place for the article's first picture is within the infobox. This page describes how to add that picture.
How To Create a Stub Article[edit]
A stub is typically a very short article—often as short as a couple of sentences--that has useful information but lacks the breadth of coverage expected from an encyclopedia. It’s essentially a placeholder with enough information for other editors to expand upon into a longer definitive article. Stubs can be an excellent way for new editors to get comfortable contributing new content on Wikipedia before moving on to lengthier articles.
How To Add the #ACWPFESPACO2024 to your Wikipedia Edit Summary[edit]
Make sure to add to campaign hashtag #ACWPFESPACO2024 to all your edits–whether a new article or a simple edit–in the “edit summary” box before publishing any edits during the campaign. This allows the ACWP international team to track and account for all your contributions.
Know the Essential Templates and Other Film and Television Wikipedia Contributions[edit]
Manual of Style for film articles[edit]
The following is a manual of style for film-related articles under WikiProject Film.
The majority of the guidelines focus on writing articles about individual films. Sections under "Primary content" are content that is expected and what constitutes a quality article about film. This includes plot, cast, production, themes, release, box office, critical reception, audience reception, accolades, references and external links. Sections under "Secondary content" are content that may be less common such as source adaptations, soundtracks, marketing, and controversies. Read more.
Remember, writing articles on Wikipedia is a collaborative process. You should not feel compelled to contribute an entire article. Small, but quality contributions are always welcome. Editors should play to their strengths. Not everyone enjoys writing. Some editors are better at copy editing. And others may not like to write at all, but prefer to organize content into infoboxes and tables or to add images, which are all important contributions in creating quality film and television articles.
Naming Conventions for films[edit]
This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention surrounding film. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. The guidelines cover general naming conventions, as well as for specific circumstances such as if a film’s article shares the same title; is part of a film series or franchise, is an upcoming film, or foreign language film. Read more.
How to Create Film and TV Infoboxes[edit]
An infobox is a panel, usually in the top right of an article, that summarizes key features of the page's subject. Infoboxes for African film and TV articles should typically include an image such as a promotional poster or a photograph of the person who is the subject of the article. This list of African film and television related infoboxes are linked to best-in-class examples as well as instructions on how to create them. The list of film and TV related infoboxes include:
Film and TV related infoboxes
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How to Create a Filmography Table[edit]
Most Film and Television bios (whatever the discipline: actor, director, producer, cinematographer, costume designer, composer, screenwriter, etc) should include a filmography table, though, in cases of a short listing of credits, the filmography may be better presented in a list form, rather than table form. Filmography tables provide a clear visual representation of a person’s body of work and allow for easy updating.
How to Add Links to External Film databases[edit]
External links to IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, AllMovie, BFI, Metacritic film and other entertainment databases help Wikipedia readers learn more about a film or a person’s filmography. A specific template generates an external link to a web page for a person, film, or television series for different databases. These links are for use in the external links section of an article.
Here you can find a comprehensive list of templates for various film databases and how to generate them. The below are among the more commonly used ones.
Film databases
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Template:Metacritic television |
How to Expand African Film and TV Stubs[edit]
A stub is any article that has only basic information while omitting important aspects of the topic. There is no exact size that defines a stub, but most articles under 250–300 words are considered stubs. Articles with more than 500 words are rarely stubs. Editors can play a vital role in enhancing African film and TV content by expanding stubs into more useful articles.
Click here to the main ACWP page to access African film and TV stubs that you can search by country.
How to Add a Stub Template to an Existing Article[edit]
After writing a short article, or finding an unmarked stub, you should insert a stub template. Choose from among the templates listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types, or if you are unsure what template to use, just use a generic
, which others can sort later. Stubs should never be manually added to stub categories—always use a template.
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Images are an essential element on Wikipedia. They bring dynamism and color to articles and make them more compelling to readers. For film and TV articles, relevant images include those of industry creatives and professionals; stills from films and TV series; images of film and festival posters; industry events; logos; and even behind-the-scenes photos from movie sets.
Here’s short cut that will allow you to upload African film and TV related content onto Wikimedia Commons.
How to locate existing African Film and TV Wikipedia articles that need improvement[edit]
Click here on the ACWP main page to search for film and tv related articles to improve.
On English Wikipedia editors can use two different tools to identify articles that need improving.
PetScan allows users to profile articles by country and then by one or more categories.
The CleanUp tool categorizes and lists problematic articles by the type of issue and alphabetically from any one set category. For example under the “Content” category, editors can search for articles by issue such as missing plot summary or introduction, requiring basic copy editing.
How to Document Film and Television on Wikidata[edit]
Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others.
Documenting film and Tv related subjects on Wikidata is different from documenting regular items. A well documented film on Wikidata would include cast, soundtrack, trailer, film poster and many other elements. Here is an example of what a film entry looks like on Wikidata.
What is Wikimedia Commons[edit]
Wikimedia Commons is the media repository for Wikipedia and its sister projects. The media files contained in this repository are under Creative Commons licenses that allow them to be reused and remixed according to the terms and conditions of the particular CC license the uploaders released them under.