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WikiFact-Checkers
A group of media professionals coming together to fight misinformation and disinformation on the social media space and on Wikipedia using Fact-checking tools...

Project Overview

The Media is the focal point of any information ecosystem and without the media, there can be no effective information dissemination system, for us to have a balanced information delivery system. The world has however changed so drastically in the last several decades and citizen journalism has almost taken over the information ecosystem. This has created a seemingly disoriented and easily misinformed society. It has therefore become imperative to train our media professionals not just about sourcing news and corroborations, but also on how to identify and establish items of misinformation and disinformation from the plethora of news and feature articles in the media for example. For Media practitioners to be able to recognise misinformation and disinformation in the information ecosystem, they must be trained on how to fact-check information using fact-checking tools and techniques. Since Wikipedia is at best a tertiary source of information, but actually more of a bank of information from libraries, these primary and secondary sources of information, any effort to assure the reliability of these sources, invariably contributes to making the content on Wikipedia reliable. If Wikipedia is to remain reliable as a free open information and educational resource, it must be kept safe from misinformation and disinformation which may have been deliberately or inadvertently published by the media. This is critical because the reliability of information published by the regular media is directly related to the reliability of information on Wikipedia. This is more so because of the totally open accessibility of Wikipedia which ordinarily places a burden of fidelity of its content on its authors and editors, and where they choose to source their references. In summary, training media professionals and prospective Wikipedia Editors on the need to look out for misinformation and disinformation and equipping them with fact-checking skills and techniques, as well as the tools will help to check and verify the reliability of sources of information before they are put on Wikipedia as references. This is critical to create an in-built quality assurance system for content on Wikipedia and the references used in citations in the articles.

Importance

Why is it important? It is to help save the information ecosystem. The involvement of media men with fact checking skills and Wikipedia skills will critically help to improve the reliability of information on Wikipedia it will also generally improve the quality of Wikipedia articles and ease the creation of new reliable articles that will be more notable for the strength of their reliability and not just the depth of their coverage. The increased reliability of Wikipedia in Nigeria will boost the wider and deeper acceptability of Wikipedia in the long term, creating the possibility of having Wikipedia as a regular companion in Newsrooms of the Nigerian Media. For example, using Wikidata's Query Tools like Query Builder, Open Refine, Quick Statement and Visual Query can open totally new vistas for data journalists and data journalism in Nigeria. With the Nigerian General Elections just around the corner for example, Nigerian journalists will definitely benefit from the tools and diverse training in analytic data journalism, to report and write more-readily understandable and reliable reports on the Nigerian Elections. Nigerians journalists equally need Wiki Commons to keep the world updated with reliable images that can more readily and more copiously, pass information across.

Impact

1. To build a 'force' of at least 1,000 Nigerian media professionals with solid Wikipedia editing and fact-checking skills, starting with the recruitment and training of 100 media professionals not just to enhance and boost the number of quality contribution of Nigerian journalists to Wikipedia, but also how to improve the overall reliability of Wikipedia content from them and others, using diverse fact-checking tools and techniques.

2. To ensure that media professionals being trained in the use of Wikipedia and fact-checking tools and techniques become avowed and practicing converts. This ensures that experienced Wikimedians in the community join in the spread of the fact-checking gospel to fight misinformation and disinformation on Wikipedia.

3. In furtherance of the strengthening of purposeful fact-checking in the Nigerian media, we will also steer the media professionals to improve Nigerian contribution in Wikipedia. Their contributions will also focus on trending global subjects, which are also critical for future national development, as well as subjects of local importance in Nigeria, but on which Nigerian-sourced articles are conspicuously sparse or non-existent.

These subjects include: 1. Climate change discussions in Nigeria.

2. Inadequate presence of details of the Legislative Arm of Nigerian governments across all the states of the federation and the Nigerian federal government. Many Nigerian legislators have neither Wikipedia articles nor Wikidata items on them. Their pictures too, are not on WikiCommons either. Yet, and incidentally, many active media practitioners in Nigeria, have access to the needed information. We will work on getting them to throw the information to the global public domain through Wikipedia.

3. We will also be actively promoting having a lot more easier-to-analyse data on the Nigerian elections on Wikipedia including accurate detailed reports on Nigerian Elections since 1956.

4. We believe this will enable the media professionals to create or improve as many as 400 articles, aside from thousands of minor edits.

5. The project will also help to input hundreds of Wikidata items.

6. It will also help to add pictures to Wikicommons.

Code of Conduct

Please read and follow the Code of Conduct (COC) during the event. The link is here

Timeline

Training break down
Week	Date	Course	Description	Time
Week 1	Feb 16th	Onboarding	What the training entails,creating Wikipedia accounts and citing preferences	2-4pm
Week 2	Feb 22nd	Wikipedia	Basics of Wikipedia and its tools	2-4pm
Week 2 - Session 2	Feb 23rd	Wikipedia	Basic editing 1; Wikilinking, Infoboxes, adding category	2-4pm
Week 3	March 1st	Wikipedia	Writing an article and referencing	2-4pm
Week 3 - Session 2	March 2nd	Wikipedia	Adding images, creating your userpage	2-4pm
Week 4	March 9th	Wikidata	Introduction to Wikidata	2-4pm
Week 4 - Session 2	March 10th	Wikidata	Fact-checking	2-4pm
Week 5	March 16th	Wikidata	Fact-checking	2-4pm
Week 6	March 22	Wikidata	Editing on Wikidata and using Query	2-4pm
Week 6 - Session 2	March 23	Wikicommons	Uploading photos to Wikicommons and how use on Wikipedia	2-4pm
Week 7	March 30th		Digital Archiving	2-4pm
Week 8	April 5th		Fact-checking	2-4pm
Week 8 - Session 2	April 7th		Fact-checking	2-4pm
Week 9	April 12		Digital Arcvhiving	2-4pm
Week 10	April 19th	General	Question and Answer session	2-4pm

Physical event date and venue will be annouced.

Partners