Hello Luis,

Organising Wiki Loves Monuments is a hard job. For the world wide Wikimedia community Wiki Loves Monuments is the largest and important project. Everywhere around the world cultural heritage can be found, and the community organises Wiki Loves Monuments to have content created in words and images to expand Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons in the field of cultural heritage. This project is important to us.

As Wiki Loves Monuments we have tried to collaborate with various people inside WMF concerning the CentralNotice banners

I think indeed we have patience as community, but seeing the troubles we experience for three years on a row, each time getting worse and worse, maybe we should loose our patience to get something changed. This is not the first time we complained about this. And now having this for the 3rd year on a row, enough is enough. This can't continue any longer.

The community understands fundraising is needed, and we can imagine that fundraising should be done in September as well. But it is indigestible that the fundraising team doesn't take into account that the community has an important project going on in September.

This is not the first time Wiki Loves Monuments is organised, it is organised for years. Everyone in the Foundation already could have learned that September is  a month they need to pay special attention to if it concerns fundraising banners.

And Fundraising is possible in multiple European countries as Wiki Loves Monuments isn't organised there this year. It is the fundraising team who has chosen the worst possible country in Europe. This is called bad planning.

And the outcome is ridiculous. This is not a compromise. The Italian WLM team has been crashed under the weight and preponderance of the Wikimedia Foundation.

And again this is not a compromise, besides no banner at all, this outcome is the worst possible outcome for Wiki Loves Monuments. All purely because the fundraising team is bad in planning. If this is called "the best we could", I think it is time to fire some people and start with a team with more capabilities.
"We can continue"
Sorry, it is not acceptable. Completely unacceptable.

"but the team needs to start working now."
Then WMF seeks the confrontation with the community.

"WMF values Wiki Loves Monuments"
WMF is saying this a lot, but when it actually matters it is not shown in the deeds and actions. Just a few examples we have seen:
* Mobile support revoked by WMF.
* Software updates that cause to completely rebuild the infrastructure, in the last days before the start of the contest.
* Various WMF banners that block(ed) Wiki Loves banners.
* A WLM evaluation by WMF that rips out the essence of the project, saying that WLM is doing worse, but forgets to mention that a large part is caused by WMF itself.

What deeds show that WMF really cares?
Have I seen any?

And the responses we get a lot from WMF are fairy tales.
And no, it doesn't clarify the situation.


I think it is for WMF time to answer these questions:

1. When does WMF start with actually caring for community projects, like Wiki Loves Monuments and others, to be shown in deeds and actions?

2. Is WMF going to cancel the fundraising banner in September for Italy when it is too late, or when they are still in time?

3. Why is the question what the loss is worth it for the movement still unanswered?

4. Why is it worth to damage the largest project of the year while the fundraising could be done a month later as well?



Romaine


2015-08-22 20:02 GMT+02:00 Luis Villa <lvilla@wikimedia.org>:
Hi, Romaine-

[tl;dr: Fundraising has a hard job. The Board has asked them to raise a lot of money, and fall in Europe is very important to doing that efficiently. We have tried to reach a compromise, but no compromise is perfect. In the long run, we would like to work together to try to figure out a calendar and other alternatives.]


Thank you for reaching out, and for working patiently with us to find a solution.


Let me explain how I see both the short term and the long term.


In the short term, Fundraising has been asked to raise $68 million this year to support the movement (including funding some parts of WLM!). This is going to be extremely difficult, given the decline in pageviews (details). They also have to coordinate campaigns around the world, with a staff that is small by non-profit fundraising standards.


For them to meet their goals, they must be effective in the fall in Europe. This means they must fundraise somewhere in Europe during September. Because of this, disrupting some part of WLM is hard to avoid. :/ This is why we started working with you, Andrea, and others to work out a compromise last month.


My understanding is that Fundraising and the Italian chapter have already adjusted their campaign dates as part of the compromise. Fundraising also cooperated with the French chapter to move those dates. No compromise is perfect, but I think we did the best we could under the circumstances. We can continue to make small changes (for example, Lisa offered earlier in this thread to add WLM suggestions in fundraising emails) but the team needs to start working now.


In the long term, WMF values Wiki Loves Monuments and the many other projects that use Central Notice. Clearly, we need a better process to help coordinate Central Notice, including WMF projects like fundraising. We would like to work on setting up such a process, but that will require more work on our side. So Lisa and I are talking about how we can trim back on other work to make this happen.


We would also love to work with WLM and other programs to figure out better ways to communicate with potential contributors. For example, if we asked potential contributors to give their email (as Italia already does), we could almost certainly make the process more effective and reduce banners at the same time. Again, though, helping with something like this will require cutting back elsewhere in Fundraising/Community, and so that will take some time to figure out.


Hope this helps clarify the situation. Lisa and I are happy to answer more questions if we can.


Thanks-

Luis



On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 11:42 AM, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,

Sad news.
The title of this thread seems a bit hard, but that is practically the situation as it looks now.

Background
Wiki Loves Monuments is the yearly photo contest since 2010, organised by many local Wikipedia communities and local chapters. For this contest a banner is shown on top of Wikipedia pages in the specific countries to attract attention from the public to participate in enriching Wikipedia with photos of the local cultural heritage.

Wiki Loves Monuments depends for at least 99% on the banner. When there is no banner, the uploads and results drop dramatically, as possible participants are not informed and can't easily find the contest site. Also participants need time to go on location to take photos and see the banner above Wikipedia afterwards to find their way back.


What is the situation?
* The fundraising team plans to have a fundraising banner in Italy during the month September.
* The local team of Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy is organising the contest in Italy and needs a banner as well.

As there can be shown only one banner at the time, there have been talks about these conflicting banners. Result: Wiki Loves Monuments get only 37,5% of the time, the fundraising banner 62,5% of the time.

Now you maybe think that 37,5% of the time is still large, but the appearances are deceptive because of the different ways the banner is used, and because the differences in numbers of upload throughout the month September. Also the banner is not shown at all during two full weeks, important weeks to attract participants. In the end I estimate, based on the usage and issues of previous years, etc, that only 10-15% of the uploads are made in comparison what normally would have been expected.

This is what I would call a devastating effect.

And this is purely because of bad planning at WMF:
* They haven't checked which countries participated continuously the past years.
* They haven't informed which countries are likely to participate.
* And they say they can't move the fundraising banner to another month, but it is still a mystery why that isn't possible.

This same issue was originally the case in two countries, but somehow it was possible to move it for the second country.

This is really sad for Italy. Extra sad because of the difficult copyright situation in Italy, what requires the local team already to do much much much more work than in most other countries, just to have a normal contest. The Italian team does a great job this year.


My conclusion
The community is working very hard on improving and expanding the content of Wikipedia by organising Wiki Loves Monuments. I always thought that this was the number one priority of the whole Wikimedia movement. Did I made a wrong assumption somehow?

But when it actually matters, the community project bears the bunt. This is sad, very sad.


Please all, support the Italian team, they do a great job and deserve a successful contest.

Greetings,

Romaine



PS: I am one of the international organisers of Wiki Loves Monuments this year, but this e-mail is written on my personal account only.






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--
Luis Villa
Sr. Director of Community Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
Working towards a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

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