My opinion as promised.
I will save my time saying how great the organizers are that we managed to
go above 160K photos etc. This is certainly correct, and I am sure we will
have more of this as we categorize the pictures and the
juries analyze the results. Let me instead go straight to the business.
1. Success or failure?
To my understanding, the purpose of WLM is a subset of WMF mission: To
facilitate creation and propagation of free knowledge related to cultural
heritage (specifically, monuments of architecture and history).
Did WLM advanced this mission? Yes and no. Why?
Well, if you set smth as a competition, then you should expect that the
results conform with the conditions of the competition. The upside of the
competition is that it makes it easy to motivate people, to create high
profile which facilitates advancing the cause (especially if the Guinness
book thing will go through), and to attract new users. The downside is that
you get what is determined by the competition program: In our case, this
was a photo competition with prizes for quality and quantity, and,
consequently, we got a big number of pictures, many of which are of poor
quality (to achieve the quantity bar) or represent well-known objects which
were already sufficiently well illustrated (to have a shot at quality). In
many cases this is a huge step forward, since the monuments which were not
previously illustrated at all get poor quality illustrations, and this is
much better than no illustration at all.
Another point which was repeatedly discussed is the scope. Only 18
countries participated, all of them in Europe, one of them (Russia) imposed
strict geographic limits and started with a two-week delay, another one
(Hungary) also started later.
2. What can we do better next year?
One obvious thing to realize is that different countries are now in a very
different positions. To give examples, Andorra now has the pictures of all
their monuments, the Netherlands stands at about 60%, Denmark has I guess
below 10%, Russia is still having difficulties compiling the lists, and
Japan and Canada did not even start researching. Obviously, Andorra would
not be so much interested in WLM-12 if it is positioned as a photo contest,
the Netherlands will be in a situation when all the easy pictures are still
done, and what is left are mostly monuments in smaller towns or those which
are not publicly accessible, and for Russia or Canada this might still be a
major event with lasting consequences.
This means that next year we would need to be more creative and
differentiate more. One obvious step is to make the competition worldwide,
so that every country which is able to produce the list(s) of monuments
will be eligible to participate.
Second, I guess we should keep photos as the main target, but we should
make it clear that we are interested in (i) photos of the monuments which
previously had no photos; (ii) new photos of the monuments which illustrate
some particular details not covered previously; (iii) photos which have
superior quality
over those previously existed. The points (ii) and (iii) are tricky (not
everybody understands quality in the same way - for instance, if you need
to take a picture of a house at a side of a narrow street, is a better
photo from the side but not distorted, or upfront with strong
distortions?), but I think as a direction it is appropriate.
Third, I think we should start slowly moving to writing articles and have
prizes for this. I am not sure what is the best way to organize this (one
way for instance would be like in GLAM Derby, with a number of points for
an article in each language depending on the quality of the article - in
this case it needs to be sorted out whether a particular country gives
prizes only for the articles on the languages of this country, only about
monuments of this country or whatever, we have a year to discuss the
terms), but if in 2012 articles are no part of the competition, we
seriously risk to lose the most successful countries - those which are
better organized and where are little or no photos left.
There are also some minor issues for improvement. Translation of the lists
could be one thing (I spent yesterday a couple of hours trying to figure
out the structure of Danish and Swedish lists - and I am not a complete
stranger to these languages. A list in Japanese next year would mean only
Japanese could contribute with Japanese monuments). In this way, we make
sure that the competition is really worldwide: One can upload not just the
monuments from his/her own country, but from any eligible country (and may
be even from every country at all, provided there is an access to the
monument IDs). Some of the countries may get preferential treatment like
Switzerland this year: Indeed, in Norway, Russia, or Chile September may
not be the best month to take pictures. There have been several more issues
which came to my mind during September but completely escaped by now. If
these issues come back, I will post them.
3. Meta-project and long-term goals.
Another good thing we should realize is that this is an example of
successful grass-root cross-project collaboration. (The only other one I
know is GLAM). Such collaboration was extensively discussed last year in
the Strategy discussions where I was an active participant. I think the
activities actually require a continuous work and coordination, and for
this coordination we need a meta-project - an analog of a Wikipedia project
based on Meta and doing cross-project work. Obviously only people
interested in the advancement of the cause would participate since this an
everyday (and mostly routine) work - I would definitely be interested in
doing this. Obvious issues to be handled by the project are:
* Coordination of cleaning up Commons after WLM-2011: What is the best way
to categorize pictures, what is suitable for creation into articles etc.
* Coordination of article writing: This is clearly a cross-project
activity and should be done on Meta. The project created by Jane on en.wp
could be a good starting point, but in my opinion this should not be WLM11,
WLM12 or WLM24, since the article stay (hopefully) forever, but just one
WLM or even Cultural Heritage cross-project.
* Reaching out the countries which do not participate in WLM. If a country
is unfortunate to have no chapter, or to have an unable chapter, or to have
a chapter not interested in WLM it still can be helped if the lists of
monuments somehow exist. I would definitely invest time in creating the
heritage lists for say Albania or Guatemala if there is some input provided
somehow. This is the work for the project.
* Translating the lists I believe is also the work appropriate for a
meta-project.
I think the idea of a meta-project is also interesting since it could
become a pilot meta-project. Lodewijk mentioned once that there was
interest expressed in extending things from monuments to rivers and I do
not remember what else - if monuments are successful as a meta-project,
then it shows the rivers how they could be successful too.
Cheers
Yaroslav
PS The will be no Analysis II from my part unless solicited.
