Hi,
At https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82:%D0%92%D0... we have 28730 (!) potential images to be added to the list. I added some images to a list, but a bot removed them again (?). Russia has over 3.300 images in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cultural_heritage_monuments_in_R... . These can't be categorized by the bot, because the lists at Wikipedia don't contain any links to Commons the bot can use. If an image can't be categorized, the bot will try it again the next day. This batch of images is really slowing down the categorization process. The whole bot run takes already over 16 hours now.
Can someone please tell me what is going on in Russia? Any plans to fix it? Please reply because this is affecting other countries and otherwise I'm forced to drop Russia.
Maarten
Ps Russia is not the only country with problems, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Categorization...
Maarten Dammers, 20/09/2013 20:38:
Ps Russia is not the only country with problems, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Categorization...
Fixing Italy depends on https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53686 doesn't it? If not, I have no idea what to do from the instructions (we already added the Commonscat links), so a clarification would be useful. If it can't be fixed and it slows you down, feel free to drop Italy for now.
Nemo
On 20.09.2013 21:21, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
Maarten Dammers, 20/09/2013 20:38:
Ps Russia is not the only country with problems, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Categorization...
Anybody knows the situation with the Philippines? If they need some categorization help, I believe there would be people available to help. They just need to explain what exactly they want.
If I read correctly, Philippines, Russia, and Italy are the only three countries with a number of uncategorized images over a thousand. We used to have a problem with Ukraine which got stuck at the first level of administrative divisions, but I believe that one was solved.
Cheers Yaroslav
Hi Yaroslav and Nemo,
Op 20-9-2013 21:38, Yaroslav M. Blanter schreef:
On 20.09.2013 21:21, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
Maarten Dammers, 20/09/2013 20:38:
Ps Russia is not the only country with problems, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Categorization...
Anybody knows the situation with the Philippines? If they need some categorization help, I believe there would be people available to help. They just need to explain what exactly they want.
I looked into that yesterday. The tracker template didn't work and apparently nobody noticed. I fixed that. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cultural_heritage_monuments_in_t... got completely over flooded by one user. I moved these (4600) photos to a subcategory so we can worry about these later. About 370 photos left that don't have a valid identifier. A lot of these photos are from last year. I would really appreciate it if these could be sorted out.
If I read correctly, Philippines, Russia, and Italy are the only three countries with a number of uncategorized images over a thousand. We used to have a problem with Ukraine which got stuck at the first level of administrative divisions, but I believe that one was solved.
For Ukraine: The bot seems to move images to oblasts, raions, cities and to specific monument categories. Not a lot of images to the oblasts though. Over 400 images in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cultural_heritage_monuments_in_U... the bot can't sort out. Some help there would be nice.
Op 20-9-2013 21:21, Federico Leva (Nemo) schreef:
Fixing Italy depends on https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53686 doesn't it? If not, I have no idea what to do from the instructions (we already added the Commonscat links), so a clarification would be useful. If it can't be fixed and it slows you down, feel free to drop Italy for now.
Nobody else bothered to update Italy, so I ended up doing it again. Bot is now sorting out the category. Please help with the remaining images.
Maarten
Maarten Dammers, 21/09/2013 15:11:
Op 20-9-2013 21:21, Federico Leva (Nemo) schreef:
Fixing Italy depends on https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53686 doesn't it? If not, I have no idea what to do from the instructions (we already added the Commonscat links), so a clarification would be useful. If it can't be fixed and it slows you down, feel free to drop Italy for now.
Nobody else bothered to update Italy, so I ended up doing it again. Bot is now sorting out the category. Please help with the remaining images.
Thank you so much, Maarten. It goes without saying, but you are awesome. I'll give a look at the remaining images later today.
Nemo
On 21.09.2013 15:11, Maarten Dammers wrote:
If I read correctly, Philippines, Russia, and Italy are the only three countries with a number of uncategorized images over a thousand. We used to have a problem with Ukraine which got stuck at the first level of administrative divisions, but I believe that one was solved.
For Ukraine: The bot seems to move images to oblasts, raions, cities and to specific monument categories. Not a lot of images to the oblasts though. Over 400 images in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cultural_heritage_monuments_in_U... the bot can't sort out. Some help there would be nice.
Hi Maarten,
could you may be move the Ukraine images the bot could not sort out to
Category:Cultural heritage monuments categories in Ukraine to sort out ?
Right now, the root category has over 500 images, and it is sometimes difficult to figure out which are the problematic ones and which are the regular recent uploads which would be soon handled by bot.
Thanks Cheers Yaroslav
Hi Yaroslav and Maarten, I've had a look at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cultural_heritage_monuments_in_U... , and I have found three different types of images "blocking" your bot: * images with definitely wrong IDs, e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AbDSC_1833.jpg%C2%A0 * images without any IDs, like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ukrainian_Anthem.jpg * images with IDs starting with 99 - those participate in partner-sponsored contests (e.g. Armenian monuments in Ukraine, Greek monuments in Ukraine) but do not appear in the monument database as they are not on the national heritage lists - e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%86%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%27%D1... Is there any way to sort them to separate categories based on these criteria? This would greatly facilitate our work of sorting them out. Thanks, Mykola WM UA --- Оригінальне повідомлення --- Від кого: "Yaroslav M. Blanter" < putevod@mccme.ru > Дата: 21 вересня 2013, 15:42:35
On 21.09.2013 15:11, Maarten Dammers wrote:
If I read correctly, Philippines, Russia, and Italy are the only three countries with a number of uncategorized images over a thousand. We used to have a problem with Ukraine which got stuck at the first level of administrative divisions, but I believe that one was solved.
For Ukraine: The bot seems to move images to oblasts, raions, cities and to specific monument categories. Not a lot of images to the oblasts though. Over 400 images in
the bot can't sort out. Some help there would be nice.
Hi Maarten,
could you may be move the Ukraine images the bot could not sort out to
Category:Cultural heritage monuments categories in Ukraine to sort out ?
Right now, the root category has over 500 images, and it is sometimes difficult to figure out which are the problematic ones and which are the regular recent uploads which would be soon handled by bot.
Thanks Cheers Yaroslav
_______________________________________________ Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
On 21/09/13 15:53, Mykola Kozlenko wrote:
Hi Yaroslav and Maarten,
I've had a look at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cultural_heritage_monuments_in_U... , and I have found three different types of images "blocking" your bot:
- images with definitely wrong IDs, e.g.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AbDSC_1833.jpg
- images without any IDs, like
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ukrainian_Anthem.jpg
- images with IDs starting with 99 - those participate in
partner-sponsored contests (e.g. Armenian monuments in Ukraine, Greek monuments in Ukraine) but do not appear in the monument database as they are not on the national heritage lists - e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%86%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%27%D1...
Is there any way to sort them to separate categories based on these criteria? This would greatly facilitate our work of sorting them out.
Sure, to which categories should each be moved?
When is an ID “definitely wrong”?
You only seem to have a few wrong identifiers, though: http://toolserver.org/~platonides/wlm2013/uploads.php?country=ua&type=ba...
But ~400 with no id: http://toolserver.org/~platonides/wlm2013/uploads.php?country=ua&type=em...
These are the big chunk waiting to be categorized.
Finally, there are 18 images with an id starting with 99:
Інтер'єр_костелу_станом_на_травень_2009р._(ракурс_1).JPG | Інтер'єр_костелу_станом_на_травень_2009р._(ракурс_2).JPG | Костел_вірменський_1764р..JPG | Інтер'єр_костелу_станом_на_травень_2009р._(ракурс_3).JPG | Інтер'єр_костелу_станом_на_травень_2009р._(ракурс_4).JPG | Belltower_of_St._Nicholas_Church._Kamianets-Podilskyi.JPG | Church_of_St._Nicholas._Kamianets-Podilskyi.JPG | Церква_Сурб_Геворг.JPG | Церква_Сурб_Геворг_Миколаїв.JPG | Церква_Сурб_Геворг_2.JPG | Хачкар_біля_церкви_Сурб_Геворг_Миколаїв.JPG | Церква_Сурб_Геворг_у_Миколаєві.JPG | Церква_Сурб_Геворг._Архітектор_Попов_В.,_Миколаїв,.JPG | Церковь_Сурб-Рипсиме..jpg | The_Armenian_Church_of_St._Resurrection_in_Kharkiv_1.jpg | The_Armenian_Church_of_St._Resurrection_in_Kharkiv_2.jpg | The_Armenian_Church_of_St._Resurrection_in_Kharkiv_3.jpg | The_cross-stone_of_Armenian_Church_of_St._Resurrection_in_Kharkiv.JPG
On 20.09.2013 20:38, Maarten Dammers wrote:
Hi,
Can someone please tell me what is going on in Russia? Any plans to fix it? Please reply because this is affecting other countries and otherwise I'm forced to drop Russia.
Maarten
Ps Russia is not the only country with problems, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Categorization...
Yes, sure.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BC#WL...
Putnik and Lvova, the coordinators of WLM-2013 (and occasionally also WLM-2012) somehow decided that the Wikipedia community would not be interested in WLM. Therefore they decided not to make any announcement of WLM on Wikipedia or Commons. None of them have any WLM-related edits on Commons in September.
Last year, they have chosen to not use the lists, resorting to their own "database". This database is a deteriorated version of the official Russian monument database, which has all problems which the original database has, and a number of additional problems due to bad conversion and due to the lack of understanding what the cultural monument actually is. It only has one advantage - there are some coordinates over there, and monuments can be found according to these "approximate coordinates" which typically refer to the centers of closest big cities.
They were repeatedly told that this is not the way to go but have chosen to ignore this critique, calling it "unconstructive". Last year, several Commons users tried to make heritage lists of reasonable quality, which requires a lot of manual work. These lists are still available on Commons, but were not used for 2012 and 2013 contest.
This year, apparently after the meeting with Lodewijk in Moscow, they suddenly decided to participate and to use the lists. Indeed, they generated the "lists" from their database. As Maarten noticed, the "lists" are bot-generated, and adding the files there is useless since they are overwrited by bot. This completely excludes any community participation in the contest, except for uploading photos. On top of this, lists are full of errors. In particular, the list on Moscow Oblasts starts from three monuments allegedly located in the town of Kotelniki (all three not surprisingly have the same coordinates). In fact, the monuments are located in the Sakha Republic, 10K miles away, and this is pretty much obvious from the list.
When the Commons Russian community realized that we get several hundreds photos per day, which are not properly categorized and have wrong labels, and Lvova and Putnik are not available to help with the photos and also not available to help the uploaders who have questions or misunderstand smth, and the photos are not used anywhere and can not be used, I had to open the discussion which I referenced above proposing to stop the contest. Lvova and Putnik have chosen to not take part in the discussion, having a discussion instead on the internal mailing list of Wikimedia.ru to which none of the active commons users subscribed. Essentially, putnik said that we are troublemakers, and if we work on Commons with the photos, this is our problem. This is the link to the mailing list archives:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-ru/2013-September/thread.html (everything that has WLM in the subject).
Lvova basically said she is not interested in what the community thinks.
On the other hand, all Commons participants who took part in the discussion came to the consensus that the 2012 and 2013 organization was substandard and it should repeat in 2014. The Russian Wikipedia participants promised that in October, they will organize a drive to add photos to the articles (not to the lists, which are unusable). In the Russian Wikivoyage, where I am an admin, we are also interested in the photos, and we might be interested in working on compiling a high-quality cultural heritage lists. This issue is currently under discussion.
The only strategy I see right now is to wait till October 1, and then for 2014, if there will be WLM-2014, find the organizers who do not regard community as a problem, and are more interested in doing the job and workimh together with the community. If such organizers for Russia would not be available, it is best that Russia does not participate in 2014.
I personally will do my best in helping with the images on Commons (we currently have six users working there every day, including me) and with compiling the heritage lists from scratch, but this is more a longer term goal. May be if everything is really planned very well, the lists would be ready by September 2014, may be not. For the current lists, just forget them.
Cheers Yaroslav
Hi Yaroslav,
thanks for sharing your view on this matter. I also had a few discussions about this situation with Lvova, Putnik and Reve in Moscow, and later also with Spider. I realize it is a complicated situation - unfortunately not really helped by the longstanding conflicts inside the Russian community (I think it is no secret that you and Lvova are not exactly on good terms).
Based on the discussions we had in Moscow, where I was explained that they were in a hard situation, and there was some serious discussion of not having a WLM at all in Russia, we were able to work out a 'minimum' scenario, and I helped Putnik understand how to create the lists. I'm very glad he did even though he was extremely busy those days with non-wiki work.
I can't say much about community discussions here, and I don't think discussing that would be very fruitful on this list. However, what we can do is try to analyze what would be constructive steps to resolve the problems.
1) perhaps someone could take a look at how the special russian database - russian monument lists interaction works. I understand from Yaroslav that currently the database is the master, instead of the lists. It might make more sense to reverse that: this is how it works in most countries. So if someone adds a picture on Wikipedia, that the bot reads that, and adds it to the database (like Multichill does with the international database). This is primarily something technical, maybe Putnik can comment? 2) Adding commons templates: For each list, you could add a commons template at the bottom, with a link to the relevant category where these images should be added. This can be recognized by erfgoedbot, and then erfgoedbot can move the images linked to those lists to the right category on commons. This seems like something anyone could do - one edit per list. 3) If issue 1) is handled, anyone can make the fixes Yaroslav gave as examples of errors in the lists. Lets be clear: every list in every country contains mistakes and problems. It would be nice though if we can correct them (as long as it doesn't damage the integrity of the official list - for example, we should not add new monuments or remove them).
For the coordinates: Yaroslav indeed is right that there are coordinates available for the closest big city. I actually agree with the decision of the organizers that it is probably better to have a 'clean' list on Wikipedia, with only coordinates of the specific monument. Having coordinates of the nearest big city would not be helpful of course.
I suggest to focus on improving the situation. Stopping the contest wouldn't help anyone, and wouldn't solve anything - it doesn't come across as a very constructive suggestion. Lets try to wok together where possible. Also, lets please not use this list to just complain about something, but primarily as a way to get more input, suggestions and help. I'm confident that one way or another, we'll get this to work even better!
Best, Lodewijk
2013/9/20 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru
On 20.09.2013 20:38, Maarten Dammers wrote:
Hi,
Can someone please tell me what is going on in Russia? Any plans to fix it? Please reply because this is affecting other countries and otherwise I'm forced to drop Russia.
Maarten
Ps Russia is not the only country with problems, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Commons:Monuments_** database/Categorization/**Statisticshttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Categorization/Statistics
Yes, sure.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Commons:%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%** 80%D1%83%D0%BC#WLM-2013https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BC#WLM-2013
Putnik and Lvova, the coordinators of WLM-2013 (and occasionally also WLM-2012) somehow decided that the Wikipedia community would not be interested in WLM. Therefore they decided not to make any announcement of WLM on Wikipedia or Commons. None of them have any WLM-related edits on Commons in September.
Last year, they have chosen to not use the lists, resorting to their own "database". This database is a deteriorated version of the official Russian monument database, which has all problems which the original database has, and a number of additional problems due to bad conversion and due to the lack of understanding what the cultural monument actually is. It only has one advantage - there are some coordinates over there, and monuments can be found according to these "approximate coordinates" which typically refer to the centers of closest big cities.
They were repeatedly told that this is not the way to go but have chosen to ignore this critique, calling it "unconstructive". Last year, several Commons users tried to make heritage lists of reasonable quality, which requires a lot of manual work. These lists are still available on Commons, but were not used for 2012 and 2013 contest.
This year, apparently after the meeting with Lodewijk in Moscow, they suddenly decided to participate and to use the lists. Indeed, they generated the "lists" from their database. As Maarten noticed, the "lists" are bot-generated, and adding the files there is useless since they are overwrited by bot. This completely excludes any community participation in the contest, except for uploading photos. On top of this, lists are full of errors. In particular, the list on Moscow Oblasts starts from three monuments allegedly located in the town of Kotelniki (all three not surprisingly have the same coordinates). In fact, the monuments are located in the Sakha Republic, 10K miles away, and this is pretty much obvious from the list.
When the Commons Russian community realized that we get several hundreds photos per day, which are not properly categorized and have wrong labels, and Lvova and Putnik are not available to help with the photos and also not available to help the uploaders who have questions or misunderstand smth, and the photos are not used anywhere and can not be used, I had to open the discussion which I referenced above proposing to stop the contest. Lvova and Putnik have chosen to not take part in the discussion, having a discussion instead on the internal mailing list of Wikimedia.ru to which none of the active commons users subscribed. Essentially, putnik said that we are troublemakers, and if we work on Commons with the photos, this is our problem. This is the link to the mailing list archives:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/**pipermail/wikimedia-ru/2013-** September/thread.htmlhttp://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-ru/2013-September/thread.html(everything that has WLM in the subject).
Lvova basically said she is not interested in what the community thinks.
On the other hand, all Commons participants who took part in the discussion came to the consensus that the 2012 and 2013 organization was substandard and it should repeat in 2014. The Russian Wikipedia participants promised that in October, they will organize a drive to add photos to the articles (not to the lists, which are unusable). In the Russian Wikivoyage, where I am an admin, we are also interested in the photos, and we might be interested in working on compiling a high-quality cultural heritage lists. This issue is currently under discussion.
The only strategy I see right now is to wait till October 1, and then for 2014, if there will be WLM-2014, find the organizers who do not regard community as a problem, and are more interested in doing the job and workimh together with the community. If such organizers for Russia would not be available, it is best that Russia does not participate in 2014.
I personally will do my best in helping with the images on Commons (we currently have six users working there every day, including me) and with compiling the heritage lists from scratch, but this is more a longer term goal. May be if everything is really planned very well, the lists would be ready by September 2014, may be not. For the current lists, just forget them.
Cheers Yaroslav
______________________________**_________________ Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments@lists.**wikimedia.orgWikiLovesMonuments@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/**wikilovesmonumentshttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.**org http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
Hi Lodewijk,
I agree that this is indeed a complex situation, and the way both sides act is not optimal.
I just feel obliged to note that I spent the whole 2012 trying to resolve the situation, while lvova and putnik have chosen not to discuss anything on Commons and on Wikipedia. They also opposed the idea of any transparent discussion at all. This year, it became clear that there is consensus on Commons that WLM Russia can not continue any further like this. This is the bottom line.
Wikimedia is about crowdsourcing and collective work, and not about writing complicated computer programs while completely ignoring the community. Unfortunately lvova and putnik do not seem to understand this. They also need to realize that being responsible organizers means, in particular, being responsible - for the uploaded pictures, for the lists, and for the new users who are clueless and need help. So far their position was that all this is not their business.
Whereas I indeed have strained relations with lvova, one can easily check that the current Russian Commons community consists of all kinds of users - those who have good relations with lvova, those who have bad relations, and those who have never heard of her. Nobody on Commons supported the 2013 organization, or, in fact, had any good words reserved for it.
The 2013 WLM would continue per community decision. There was no consensus to stop it.
However, if the 2014 WLM-Russia would proceed in the same way as WLM-2013, a community action against it is likely to be undertaken. If the organizers believe that what happens on Commons is not their business they should go or seriously revisit their approach. The main problem is not the lists and not the database, these can be fixed. The main problem is lack of transparency and lack of responsibility.
We had the whole 2012/13 to prepare the 2013 contest - they have chosen to not do anything and to not discuss anything. Now we have 2013/14 - it would be best if they would finally start discussing.
Cheers Yaroslav
On 21.09.2013 12:23, Lodewijk wrote:
Hi Yaroslav,
thanks for sharing your view on this matter. I also had a few discussions about this situation with Lvova, Putnik and Reve in Moscow, and later also with Spider. I realize it is a complicated situation - unfortunately not really helped by the longstanding conflicts inside the Russian community (I think it is no secret that you and Lvova are not exactly on good terms).
Based on the discussions we had in Moscow, where I was explained that they were in a hard situation, and there was some serious discussion of not having a WLM at all in Russia, we were able to work out a 'minimum' scenario, and I helped Putnik understand how to create the lists. I'm very glad he did even though he was extremely busy those days with non-wiki work.
I can't say much about community discussions here, and I don't think discussing that would be very fruitful on this list. However, what we can do is try to analyze what would be constructive steps to resolve the problems.
- perhaps someone could take a look at how the special russian
database - russian monument lists interaction works. I understand from Yaroslav that currently the database is the master, instead of the lists. It might make more sense to reverse that: this is how it works in most countries. So if someone adds a picture on Wikipedia, that the bot reads that, and adds it to the database (like Multichill does with the international database). This is primarily something technical, maybe Putnik can comment? 2) Adding commons templates: For each list, you could add a commons template at the bottom, with a link to the relevant category where these images should be added. This can be recognized by erfgoedbot, and then erfgoedbot can move the images linked to those lists to the right category on commons. This seems like something anyone could do - one edit per list. 3) If issue 1) is handled, anyone can make the fixes Yaroslav gave as examples of errors in the lists. Lets be clear: every list in every country contains mistakes and problems. It would be nice though if we can correct them (as long as it doesn't damage the integrity of the official list - for example, we should not add new monuments or remove them).
For the coordinates: Yaroslav indeed is right that there are coordinates available for the closest big city. I actually agree with the decision of the organizers that it is probably better to have a 'clean' list on Wikipedia, with only coordinates of the specific monument. Having coordinates of the nearest big city would not be helpful of course.
I suggest to focus on improving the situation. Stopping the contest wouldn't help anyone, and wouldn't solve anything - it doesn't come across as a very constructive suggestion. Lets try to wok together where possible. Also, lets please not use this list to just complain about something, but primarily as a way to get more input, suggestions and help. I'm confident that one way or another, we'll get this to work even better!
Best, Lodewijk
2013/9/20 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru
On 20.09.2013 20:38, Maarten Dammers wrote:
Hi,
Can someone please tell me what is going on in Russia? Any plans to fix it? Please reply because this is affecting other countries and otherwise I'm forced to drop Russia.
Maarten
Ps Russia is not the only country with problems, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Categorization... [1]
Yes, sure.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83%D0%BC#WL... [2]
Putnik and Lvova, the coordinators of WLM-2013 (and occasionally also WLM-2012) somehow decided that the Wikipedia community would not be interested in WLM. Therefore they decided not to make any announcement of WLM on Wikipedia or Commons. None of them have any WLM-related edits on Commons in September.
Last year, they have chosen to not use the lists, resorting to their own "database". This database is a deteriorated version of the official Russian monument database, which has all problems which the original database has, and a number of additional problems due to bad conversion and due to the lack of understanding what the cultural monument actually is. It only has one advantage - there are some coordinates over there, and monuments can be found according to these "approximate coordinates" which typically refer to the centers of closest big cities.
They were repeatedly told that this is not the way to go but have chosen to ignore this critique, calling it "unconstructive". Last year, several Commons users tried to make heritage lists of reasonable quality, which requires a lot of manual work. These lists are still available on Commons, but were not used for 2012 and 2013 contest.
This year, apparently after the meeting with Lodewijk in Moscow, they suddenly decided to participate and to use the lists. Indeed, they generated the "lists" from their database. As Maarten noticed, the "lists" are bot-generated, and adding the files there is useless since they are overwrited by bot. This completely excludes any community participation in the contest, except for uploading photos. On top of this, lists are full of errors. In particular, the list on Moscow Oblasts starts from three monuments allegedly located in the town of Kotelniki (all three not surprisingly have the same coordinates). In fact, the monuments are located in the Sakha Republic, 10K miles away, and this is pretty much obvious from the list.
When the Commons Russian community realized that we get several hundreds photos per day, which are not properly categorized and have wrong labels, and Lvova and Putnik are not available to help with the photos and also not available to help the uploaders who have questions or misunderstand smth, and the photos are not used anywhere and can not be used, I had to open the discussion which I referenced above proposing to stop the contest. Lvova and Putnik have chosen to not take part in the discussion, having a discussion instead on the internal mailing list of Wikimedia.ru to which none of the active commons users subscribed. Essentially, putnik said that we are troublemakers, and if we work on Commons with the photos, this is our problem. This is the link to the mailing list archives:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-ru/2013-September/thread.html [3] (everything that has WLM in the subject).
Lvova basically said she is not interested in what the community thinks.
On the other hand, all Commons participants who took part in the discussion came to the consensus that the 2012 and 2013 organization was substandard and it should repeat in 2014. The Russian Wikipedia participants promised that in October, they will organize a drive to add photos to the articles (not to the lists, which are unusable). In the Russian Wikivoyage, where I am an admin, we are also interested in the photos, and we might be interested in working on compiling a high-quality cultural heritage lists. This issue is currently under discussion.
The only strategy I see right now is to wait till October 1, and then for 2014, if there will be WLM-2014, find the organizers who do not regard community as a problem, and are more interested in doing the job and workimh together with the community. If such organizers for Russia would not be available, it is best that Russia does not participate in 2014.
I personally will do my best in helping with the images on Commons (we currently have six users working there every day, including me) and with compiling the heritage lists from scratch, but this is more a longer term goal. May be if everything is really planned very well, the lists would be ready by September 2014, may be not. For the current lists, just forget them.
Cheers Yaroslav
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