New subject: The philosophy behind the few rules we had in 2011

9 Mar 2012


      Dear all,
(apologies for the long message, but I think this info is helpful. Please
feel free to translate and/or post elsewhere.)
We're well on our way for organizing Wiki Loves Monuments 2012! With
already many countrieshttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Participating_countriesconfirmed,
and working on their local organization, it starts to look all
exciting. With many new countries on board, it is probably helpful to
explain a bit better what Wiki Loves Monuments is all about, and why
certain parameters have been chosen in the past. This email will contain a
bit background information about the philosophy we had in mind, and several
useful (in-text) links too.
First of all I would like to share some thoughts about the goals we usually
have in mind when we were talking about organizing a Wiki Loves Monuments
in the Netherlands. Because although it seems pretty obvious that the many
photos that are collected are a big advantage, that was at least for me
personally not the main reason to organize. My main incentive was to make
more people aware of what Free licenses are all about, and to make people
aware that they can add content to Wikimedia projects. Let them take that
first step, and allow then the community to welcome those people. It is a
wonderful outreach opportunity, but also an 'inreach' opportunity. We bring
the core communities in contact with motivated photographers who have
quality content to share.
At the same time, it is a way to motivate the volunteers who normally edit
WIkipedia, to go a little step further - and help a little big in the
organization. Because it is a reasonably well outlined event - but still
gives plenty of freedom, it is a great opportunity to try out how to
organize something in your country if you're not actively doing so. It also
is a breeding ground for further collaborations with cultural heritage
institutions which you may not have had contacts with yet. I would dare to
say we have been successful with that. More than 200 volunteers
collaborated in 18 countries. More than 5000 people uploaded images, of who
4000 never contributed anything to Wikimedia. More than 160.000 images were
released for usage on Wikimedia projects.
You may already have found the Concept
pagehttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Documentation
on
Wikimedia Commons which contains basic documentation about how the Wiki
Loves Monuments looks like. There are some important principles we try to
keep constantly in mind, which are in our understanding of the past two
years the reason for its success. They may seem intuitive to some, but the
consequences are unintuitive to many.
First of all, it is important that it is *easy to participate*. The
threshold should be as low as possible for people who have never uploaded
anything. This is both technically (easy upload forms) but maybe just as
important: socially. We should not throw up rules which are not absolutely
necessary, and be as welcoming as possible. Lets just accept it that there
will be some low quality images, because thanks to lower thresholds, there
will also be more high quality images. Lets not bother the new users too
much with our obsession with categories, templates and layout - but let us
focus on welcoming them, and suggesting how they can *easily* write
articles about their object of interest: cultural heritage.
It should of course be *fun to participate*. This sounds obvious, but many
things can make it a lot less fun. For example, bureaucratic measures such
as sending permission emails and (again) adding categories. Lets try to
take that away from them, and for example think through the upload process
in such a way that emails are not necessary (only own work). No
categorization is strictly necessary (use the available databases to
automatically categorize based on the identifier). But also, organize
events, thank people. Something we can improve on this year by the way, is
a thanking/badge system for participants. If there is anyone willing to
take this up, I would warmly welcome that (please create a separate thread
about that).
Where-ever you live, participating should be *nearby home*. This is similar
to easy to participate, but very practical: we don't want people to have to
travel long distances to get to a monument. Lets try to use a definition
for monuments that allows many people to photograph monuments nearby their
home. For your comparison: the Netherlands has 60.000 monuments on a
population of 17 Million. This may be at the higher side of the range, but
it seems to work just fine. You may for example consider adding
'state-level' or 'province-level' monuments if you want more objects. Think
out loud and definitely ask for input if you think you have very few
monuments. Don't worry about not completing the list with a photo for every
object: that is not the goal. If we cover 10% in one contest, that is a
major achievement. Nearby home is not *just* important because of the time,
but also because people are proud of their own area, and want to tell the
rest of the world about it!
We learned that for many people the main reason to participate is to *Help
Wikipedia*. We should incorporate that in all our messaging. They care
about prizes to some degree, but especially the super-participants with
many uploads, and the many people who just upload their vacation pictures
because they have them anyway, will mainly participate because they want to
help. Those are also the people who are more likely to stick around. This
is also why it is so important to have the monument lists on Wikipedia, and
use the images there.
Finally, it is imperative that participants get *quick and visible results*.
If they upload something, we should try to have a mechanism to actually
being used. Maarten created a wonderful bot to make suggestions which
images can be used where. I'm sure he will share that in more detail later
on, but this is why online volunteers are also important during the
contest. If we can put up images on the lists quickly, that has two major
effects: people see that their contributions have an actual impact, and
will continue to participate, but also they will be able to focus on the
monuments that need their help most: monuments without a photo, or a very
bad photo. By adding the contributions to the lists quickly, we avoid that
they are disappointed because someone else already created a photo which
was waiting, while they were taking the photo.
Please try to keep these lessons in mind when organizing your contest.
Internally, this translates to two good practices: *Communicate often,
communicate well *both inside your group as with other countries. And also:
*Keep it Simple*.
Thank you for reading through the end. I hope it helps.
Best,
Lodewijk