Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 2/Participating in organized work

So another thing you can do on Commons is to participate in organized work. There's all kinds of projects or contests or campaigns on Commons that are opportunities to contribute around a certain theme or a certain kind of file. Maybe you've heard of some of these competitions, like Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Food, Wiki Loves Folklore, Wiki Loves Fashion. There's all kinds of things that Wiki loves, and all of these are essentially content contribution campaigns. They are an invitation for you to go and systematically contribute pictures of monuments, pictures of natural landscapes or wildlife, pictures from Africa, pictures of food, whatever the topic of the contest is.

There are also things that are not necessarily contests, but are projects like Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos. That's actually a program designed in Africa. Maybe you've heard of it. I hope you've heard of it. And that is a program that has ended. But it is an example of the kind of organized effort that you can be part of, where you can literally see articles that need a photo and maybe, maybe you're in a position to contribute such a photo.

There are also monthly photo challenges on Commons. If you go to Commons and go to the photo challenge, you can see that this month, the challenge is photographic silhouettes. And there's a description here of what kind of images are silhouettes. You can see examples here. Pictures where the object that is photographed is actually in the shadow, not lit. And if you have photos that are like these examples, you can contribute them as part of this challenge.

And it's fun to just challenge yourself every month to look for certain kinds of photos. Every campaign will have its own rules and criteria, and you should take the time to read them, especially if you're actually interested in potentially winning the prize or whatever the the recognition that goes with this contest is, because the rules do matter. And if you upload something that is against the rules, it will not be considered.

As an example of this, there is a video tutorial here about contributing to Wiki Loves Monuments. If you watch this tutorial, it'll also give you a good idea of how what it's like to contribute to these other contests, because they're fairly similar.