[Wiki Loves Monuments] Re: Photographic Film Special Nomination in Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine: Outcomes

Hello there! I am sharing my reflections below as the organiser of the Photographic Film Special Nomination in Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine this year -- this was the first time we did something like this, and we have just announced the results on Friday: https://wlm.org.ua/film-results-2022/ (the blog is in Ukrainian, but you can see the pictures, and the years they were taken in are in the attribution). == Context == So, 2022 was especially challenging for us as the organisers, as we had to limit accepting participants' submissions only to pictures taken before February 24, 2022, when the russian army started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as we feared for the participants safety (believe me, even in peaceful times a stranger coming to your remote village to take pictures of buildings can be weird; during the active full-scale invasion the level of suspicion is tripled at least), and we also worried about encouraging their accidentally filming some military actions or objects. This does mean less quality (people might upload pictures from their archives they have not uploaded during previous years, as they know about the contest, but have no chance to upload newer pictures) and quantity (for obvious reasons of people who just learnt about the contest not being able to join, unless before February 24, 2022, they had a hobby of taking pictures of cultural monuments around them). And it is also challenging interest-wise -- unless you had something to upload -- you are out. We also realised that we have very limited resources to organise ourselves -- too many things and people to worry about, while taking care of lists or templates. So we needed a light version contest, but also to find something interesting to try to tap into new audiences we have not yet had time/resources to tap into. So, we decided to implement an idea a Ukrainian Wikimedian, Nataliia Lastovets, had -- to have a special category for scanned photographic film -- the Photographic Film Special Nomination -- with pictures (of course) taken before February 24, 2022, accepting files of cultural monuments created from scanned photographic films or scanned/photographed prints, made by a film camera originally. == Challenges and lessons learnt == First of all, if one aims at having a light version of the contest -- *this nomination is not an easy *one to organise :) We, of course, went lighter on the promotional part of this due to our own limited volunteer resources (and promotion is really important, and we should have done more there, of course), but we did have ads on social media (Facebook, Instagram), and did reach out to cool professional photographers on Instagram, telling them about the contest, and that if they are not interested in taking part, maybe they would agree to become jury members. We also had to figure out *how to check the uploads* -- our upload form was asking people to mark pictures as "photographic film" ones, and we had a separate category for them, but we still ended up with more than 600 pictures, and before giving them to the jury members, we had to check them. The WLX Jury Tool <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:WLX_Jury_Tool>we are using to rate pictures would not be useful for this, opening ~600 files to check the EXIFs and descriptions would be quite time consuming. So User:Ahonc had to create a script to get all the possibly useful data from the pictures in the category in one table: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ahonc/WLM-2022_UA/images/films With this, we just needed to check the uploads done by non-film cameras. Of course, we could not just dismiss those files, as a film print from 1990 could have been photographed with a modern non-film camera (or even a mobile), so we also looked at the user pages, sometimes people mention that they are professional photographers, and chances of their pictures being on a photographic film are higher. We also reached out to those users we knew -- some of them indeed mistakenly marked pictures for the nomination... Long story short -- it took us quite some time to remove pictures we were certain didn't belong. And when we had ~400, we started the first jury round. *More information is needed at the upload stage. *For the first round we asked them to select up to 50 entries out of ~400 that would go to the next round. They selected 95, and then they rated them with points (20 points was max, 1 point was minimum). We planned to award 10 best pictures, but we ended up with 23 entries to select from. If we had time and resources, we would have tried to organise an additional round, an online call or meetup, but this was just a bit too much to do, so, I just basically wrote to each author directly, listing pictures, and asking to provide for more details. And indeed, some of those pictures were not taken using a photographic film. That really helped to narrow the pool. What's more, the authors using photographic films, were able to provide quite detailed stories about their pictures, when they were taken, and in most cases technical information including camera models, what kind of film they used, lenses etc. It was quite impressive, to tell you the truth :) We ended up selecting 10 best pictures. But it seems that the upload form for this kind of content should include not only a checkbox for this special nomination, but also fields for camera model, lenses, film, year it was taken, additional information -- first, it will help the participants themselves to make sure they are not making an automatic mistake, and secondly, it will help with checking the uploads. That way people do not upload hordes of pictures, they (in a way) treasure them, and remember (sometimes) each frame, the weather it was taken in, angle, context, etc. *The jury has to have professional photographers, who themselves use photographic film*. It is sometimes more difficult to organise -- we expect them to be volunteers, and cost them working hours; it is not as if we provide them with a lot of professional fame or that the quality of our submissions is guaranteed. Finding these people is still possible, just... difficult. == Outcomes === We have determined the 10 best pictures as we planned. We also showcased 8 more pictures, sometimes adding up to a set. You can see them here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2022_in_Ukraine#«Фо… We still have ~400 pictures we cannot be certain have been taken using photographic film, unfortunately. On the bright side -- we are now smarter as organisers, and if we decide to do it again, we would take into account our lessons learnt. And we would probably be better positioned to make more new and interesting mistakes :) Anyway, sorry for the long read, I just thought documenting our experience here, on the list, has some value for organisers to (maybe) come. See you all around! З повагою / Best regards, antanana Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine Wikimania 2023 Program Subcommittee Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2023 Programme Committee Disclaimer: This letter is sent in my Wikimedia volunteer capacity, not as a Board member of Wikimedia Foundation нд, 18 вер. 2022 р. о 12:33 attolippip &lt;attolippip(a)gmail.com&gt; пише: Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list To unsubscribe send an email to wikilovesmonuments-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org