Hello Lodewijk & all,
Yes we disagree on that, but that is fine.
My personal goal of organising Wiki Loves Monuments is to get the cultural heritage monuments on Wikipedia with photo, and that is the actual thing that happens for sure with Wiki Loves Monuments. If other people want to set other goals, I am fine with that.
But, I have analysed for myself what is to me a realistic goal, and I do
only come out on having more cultural heritage monuments on Wikipedia
with photos. As side effect it is fine to have more people on board, but not as main goal. Let me explain why.
For me personally Wikimedia/Wikipedia is a relative nice environment as I well in easily learning myself new things and to pick up new stuff. For people who have the capability to explore the Wikimedia environment themselves, it works fine. For those people it is easy to continue after a contest with taking pictures and writing articles, because they have the capability to find those other things to do. But I think most people who have that as strong personal characteristic have already tried this and are still active or found it not interesting enough. The software and environment is excellent for those people to work with, for early adopters and pioneers. But those kind of people are almost sold out now. But still the focus is still pointed towards this kind of people.
Over the past 5 years I have helped many people with editing Wikipedia and with uploading pictures to Commons, and I have spoke with a lot of people why they stopped editing Wikipedia. Almost none of those people have the capacity of exploring the environment on their own. Besides the (hostile) mentality and atmosphere on Wikipedia, the environment of Wikipedia/Wikimedia does not full-fill basic needs those people have. There is not a really friendly environment, there is no productive environment that gives sufficient stimulation, and it is not a really social environment the large majority needs. With the VisualEditor there is an easy way to edit Wikipedia for people who are not comfortably with wikisyntax, but it still lacks a social environment in what those people are comfortable.
As a figure of speech: The early adopters like the assignment to build a house in the middle of the desert, the large majority wants that house already been built and wants to do the decoration only or wants a much more comfortable living.
There is after a contest like Wiki Loves Monuments no environment at all that fits to handle all the participants and give guidance so that they can continue to be active. Those users that participated in a contest fall in a black hole afterwards. This is with all the contests volunteers from Wikimedia organised. But not just with contests, this is also the core problem why edit-a-thons and workshops in editing Wikipedia gives so little result in editor retention: it is going fine during the edit-a-thon and the workshop when they have a personal coach next to them to ask questions. But after the edit-a-thon or workshop, those users are on their own. Wikipedia is aiming on creating content, with all kinds of pages that try to support that. What Wikipedia misses is a social environment that fits with these people and gives them stimulation.
With past edit-a-thons I noticed also another strong need with the participants. After the editing they all are interested to continue doing this together as group. Then you can say that they can use a project page on Wikipedia, but that does not work for them at all. It appears way too primitive for them.
WMF is trying to push and pull on editor retention, but that is pulling a dead horse as long as the environment is not adapted to those the people.
And please understand me well: I consider it as the most important to get more people on board, but with the current environment it seems to me to be unrealistic to have a big influence on this.
And yes, I think it is great all the organising teams have done so much work. All the organisers have achieved something really great. <- This is actually something I miss as well in this "evaluation".
Romaine