Interview with new contributor - WikiLovesMonuments

6 Sep 2011

Hi everybody,

I interviewed one of the new contributors for wlm.eu. Since it will take
some time untils it's published, Lodewijk suggested I send it to the list as
well.

Kilian

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It's been almost a week since Wiki Loves Monuments started and we're about
to reach 17,000 uploads. Germany, the first country with more than 2,000
submitted pictures, is now keeping a steady second place behind France.
Among the most active uploaders is a user called Hippie Bug93 (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Hippie_Bug93) who
despite being new to the Wikimedia projects has already contributed almost
130 pictures.

Hippie Bug93, in the real world a 17-year-old named Daniel, became aware of
the contest through local press coverage and his hometown's Facebook
account. In a partnership with Wikimedia Germany, Bergheim, a small city
near Cologne, calls upon its citizens (link those four words to the "old"
article about Bergheim) to photograph the monuments in their neighbourhood
and upload them to Wikimedia Commons.

As a member of the local heritage club, Daniel has been interested in the
region's history and old buildings for a long time. "I had thought about
contributing to Wikipedia before," he explains, "but I never actually
did."
For the contest, Daniel is taking his hometown village by village, with the
printed lists from Wikipedia as a guide.

With the first pictures uploaded, Daniel started to add them to the lists on
Wikipedia as well. "It took some time to figure out the editing," Daniel
says. He has already set up his User page and started to edit regular
articles as well. So asked for his future plans, he states: "If I see the
opportunity to contribute to Wikipedia after Wiki Loves Monuments has ended,
I will certainly do so."