Case Studies/Nigrizia
Nigrizia contributes to Africanize Wikipedia — Fabrizio Colombo, director of Nigrizia multimedia, Afriradio and of the Verona African Film Festival (Festival di Cinema Africano di Verona)
Overview
Nigrizia is a monthly magazine founded in 1883 and focused on the African continent. The magazine is published in Italian, it is based in Verona and it is well-known in Italy for its commitment in documenting African social, political and cultural issues and making them accessible. The magazine belongs to the Missionarii Comboniani Cordis Iesuis order and in 2010 is promoted by Nigrizia Foundation. Nigrizia also promotes the Verona African Film Festival (Festival di Cinema Africano di Verona).
License Usage
The texts of Nigrizia magazine and of its website are under cc-by-sa. The license is published in a specific banner in the website and there is a specific news published on the website about the choice of the organization to adopt this license (article dated July 19th, 2010).
The license was specifically adopted to allow the staff member of the magazine Elena Dante to create articles on Wikipedia with texts owned by the magazine in the frame of WikiAfrica project.
Nigrizia received in 2010 the Wikimedia Italia award for making contents on Africa available on Wikipedia and contributing to WikiAfrica.
In 2010, after the cc-by-sa was published on Nigrizia website, a Wikipedia administrator requested Elena Dante to follow the OTRS procedure to give Wikipedia in Italian the authorization to use Nigrizia texts. The Wikipedia administrator didn't consider the CC-BY-SA license published in the banner with its explicative article sufficient.
In 2011 Nigrizia Foundation with the Verona African Film Festival (Festival di Cinema Africano di Verona) joint the project "Share Your Knowledge", designed to facilitate the adoption of the CC-BY-SA license and the contribution to Wikipedia by cultural institutions.
Motivations
Nigrizia magazine the cc-by-sa license to contribute to Wikipedia in the frame of WikiAfrica project.
The involvement in the project is related to the engagement of Fabrizio Colombo, director of Nigrizia Multimedia, Afroradio and the Verona African Film Festival (Festival di Cinema Africano di Verona). Fabrizio Colombo collaborated with Afriradio to a WikiAfrica event organised by lettera27 at Festivaletteratura in Mantua in 2008. He decided to contribute to WikiAfrica with the Verona African Film Festival (Festival di Cinema Africano di Verona) and to involve Nigrizia magazine as well. He organised a meeting with Iolanda Pensa, Vanessa Lanari and Nigrizia collaborators to introduce the topic and he convinced Nigrizia magazine to support WikiAfrica with its documentation.
Since 2008 WikiAfrica promoted the cc-by-sa license for images and artworks; on texts the GFDL was presented but difficult to adopt. In 2010 the cc-by-sa was immediately considered the best choice to allow texts to be partially cut and pasted on Wikipedia.
Nigrizia choose to adopt the cc-by-sa on texts only, for the complexity of dealing with image rights.
Impact
The cc-by-sa license allowed Elena Dante to produce articles on Wikipedia using contents from Nigrizia magazine and website.
