Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/NABA

NABA Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milan contributes to WikiAfrica. NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano contributes to WikiAfrica with 300 articles by 2012. The articles produced are in Italian and English, plus in German and in Spanish (not available online).

The institution
La Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (The New Academy of Fine Arts), also known as NABA, is a privately run Milan-based university, legally recognized by the Ministry of Education, founded in 1980; it has about 1,200 students.

History of collaboration
Students of the Biennio Specialistico Arti Visive e Studi Curatoriali della NABA contribute to Wikipedia in the WikiAfrica project.

Since 2007, some students of the Economics at NABA create Wikipedia entries helping to enrich articles about contemporary art on the encyclopedia. In 2010, the course focusesd on the production of articles about contemporary African art and its system. The collaboration is very unique in that it involves an organization that focuses on training (in this case, the largest private academy in Italy); bringing the Wikimedia projects to colleges and universities is a path that the Wikimedia movement has been firmly following for several years, along with GLAM projects. The continuity of this particular project over the years makes it almost unique in the Italian wikimedian panorama.

Part of the examination for the course above consists precisely in an exercise, writing Wikipedia entries in one or more languages, after signing up. These are some of the criteria adopted for the contents evaluation: On the website of Professor Iolanda Pensa descriptions of the four courses held so far, individual lessons and practical exercises (linked below) are available.
 * Number of people engaged in drafting the article and quality of their contributions;
 * Inclusion of visual documentation, audio, video;
 * Inclusion of content on other Wikimedia projects (Wikiquote, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons ...);
 * Richness and completeness of the bibliography;
 * Historiographical approach in the compilation of the article;
 * Ability to deal with the rules of Wikipedia (including an assessment of the talk page, of the opinion of the sysops and of the relationship with them);
 * Number of items produced (entries, paragraphs, related pages, multiple linguistic versions of the same item);
 * Quality of the editing of voice, spelling, syntax, richness of internal links, use of templates, layout of images etc..;
 * International relevance of the content placed on Wikipedia and resources used for the exercise.

Upload of contents and reactions
Each student has improved or created from scratch one or more articles on the free encyclopedia in English and Italian. As usual with beginners, some of the dynamics and procedures are learned gradually by interacting with the community of Wikipedians. It was for example the case of Mariele, which at first was the recipient of skeptical messages about the relevance of the articles she was creating, but later was advised, consoled and encouraged to overcome early difficulties and be guided in the creation of pages; one of them, proposed for deletion, has been kept because of community consensus. Similarly on the English Wikipedia a misunderstanding about the nature of the template that marks the entries created in the project led to the request for its deletion, which, however, was later deemed unfounded and accordingly dismissed. Approaching Wikipedia not by choice, as is usually the case, but as part of a broader effort, usually coordinated by other people, is a form of collaboration which is being currently tested in many countries, and not everybody may like it or find it interesting. It must be said, however, that both the community and the chapters are struggling more and more to help students and teachers of all levels to overcome the initial difficulties and to find a peaceful and fruitful environment, in which the added contents can both enrich the encyclopedia and satisfy their authors.

Content analysis


In August 2012 there are over two hundred created or improved articles about the contemporary art scene in Africa. Although most of them exists in the Italian Wikipedia (especially those relating to Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon), some have been published in the anglophone one (Côte d'Ivoire and South Africa), while students have also prepared texts in German and Spanish, not available online. Other entries relate to cultural institutions and non-African artists, and art topics related to the economy, which include even a headword on Wiktionary, Mercante d'arte. The entries in the Italian encyclopedia received over 64,500 visits in the first seven months of 2012. Among the most visited there are those relating to the auctioneers Sotheby's and Christie's, improved within this project, as well as the entries it:Collezionismo d'arte and it:Curatore d'arte, along with the pages on the Swiss art fair it:Art Basel, the cultural center it:Haus der Kulturen der Welt and South African artist it:William Kentridge. On the English Wikipedia instead (about 30 pages, but almost 30,000 visits!) the biographies of the South African artist Willie Bester and the Ivorian painter Ouattara Watts are very popular. Many of these pages are almost complete and are especially well-structured, containing, in addition to the biographical notes on the artists, their works and sections about their philosophy, personal and collective exhibitions, projects, conferences, publications and collections, as well as many footnotes and bibliographical references.

Articles on it.wiki

 * it:Category:WikiAfrica/NABA, 190 pages

Articles on en.wiki

 * Category:WikiAfrica/NABA, 27 pages

Wikipedia Books
Two "Books from Wikipedia", which are collections of encyclopedia entries that can be saved on your computer in PDF (or other format) to re-read them as a real e-book, were created within this project. This tool has been around for some years now but it is still not widely used (especially on non-English wikis), so it is furtherly significant that NABA students chose to compile them and exploited their potential.
 * Egypt, contemporary art scene - it:Wikipedia:Libri/Scena artistica contemporanea egiziana
 * Nigeria, contemporary art system - it:Wikipedia:Libri/NIGERIA arte contemporanea

Contributors

 * iopensa, teacher
 * Sains, articles about Egypt
 * Closab, articles about Egypt
 * Almasoul17, articles about Nigeria
 * Vèla jet, articles about Morocco
 * Latulla, articles about Egypt
 * Orbit82, articles about Ghana
 * E.mme86, articles about Nigeria
 * Camilla sakura, articles about Ghana
 * onlyforwikiafrica, articles about Ghana
 * Martycira, articles about Nigeria


 * Dizeta, articles about South Africa
 * Massimiliano M. Cucciniello
 * it:Utente: Mariele22
 * it:Utente: Sbrizi
 * it:Utente:Arianna Carcano
 * it:Utente:Dl1985
 * it:Utente:Noralcala
 * en:User:Dani Ess, articles about South Africa
 * en:User:Zeyneparinc, articles about Cote d'Ivoire
 * en:User:Anita Gazzani

Italian version

 * it:Progetto:WikiAfrica/Istituzioni/Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti

Related pages

 * NABA
 * Economics of the arts and literature
 * Cultural economics

Links

 * NABA official site
 * Lessons 2007-08
 * Wiki test 2007-08
 * Lessons 2008-09
 * Course and Wiki test 2008-09
 * Lessons 2009-10
 * Course and Wiki test 2009-10
 * Lessons 2010-11
 * Course and Wiki test 2010-11