Long term, let's "do nothing" and see what happens. I mean to say that we should just let WLM grow and morph organically in a natural way. We have a successful formula today in the Netherlands, that's for sure. The decrease in entries for 2012 over 2011 only shows how extraordinary the amount was in 2011 and the effort last year was bigger than this year. But we sure got lots of gorgeous photo's again in 2012, so why stop ever?
I think an important long term contribution from WLM should be it's formula for successful non-controversial Wikipedia-Government relations. Look at the Gibraltor hype - because there is no clear-cut "unique-id list" we are seeing a lot of negative publicity about "product placement". One could possibly claim that some fancy restaurant somewhere claims "product placement" by placing detailed photo's of their protected restaurant in a castle, old monastery, or whatever. Personally, I think it's a good thing. You force the product-placers into a strict Wikipedia-formula and a win-win situation occurs, i.e. they are on Wikipedia, and we get the illustration for historic articles on people and places.
According to recent internal squabbling on the English Wikipedia, the Did-You-Know? part of the homepage today (right now) features a Gibraltor product placement. I read the article and thought it was very interesting, and the pictures and subject are all cultural heritage.
WLM has managed to avoid such controversy, because of the unique identifiers, and I think this process, as a formula, is what WLM needs to properly document going forward.
In the Netherlands, municipal monuments have just been added, so next year should be interesting! Perhaps in future, outdoor art could be added (if there's a valid list anywhere). Such outdoor art could only be photographed in countries with full FOP rights however...
Jane
2012/11/7 Andre Koopal
<andre@molens.org>
On Wed, Nov 07, 2012 at 01:14:15AM +0200, Ynhockey wrote:
>
> Having said all of the above however, the question we should ask is whether
> there is no better of the extraordinary effort requires by all of our
> volunteers to organize this competition. I'm sure that for some countries
> the answer is yes, there are better ways to spend this time. However, the
> answer is rarely clear-cut and each country needs to consider all the
> options.
>
Just a quick reply on this remark, I think you can say that the Netherlands
will become a bit more exhausted regarding WLM, however as being 'the country
that started it all', I think we should keep participating if only to
implicitely support the other countries by having a lot of countries
participate. Although indeed most organisations will be focussed national,
being part of something big worldwide will certainly help there.
And if you have the lists already, the organisation is much easier.
Regards,
Andre