I strongly suggest that you get some native English speakers, say from the UK, Canada, India or Australia to review the record banner. "Participate in the world's biggest photo competition and help improve Wikipedia!" It just sounds odd to an American ear, something about mixing formal words (participate, competition) with more informal words (biggest, photo). I've also never much liked "help improve Wikipedia!" It's more understandable at first reading, but is pretty vague on what "Help" means. You've got to be careful in asking for help or it will sound like begging.
For the record, we'll likely use something like the following for the US banner.
"Join in the world's largest photo contest! Historic sites, photos and prizes."
Pete User:Smallbones
Hi Pete,
if I may then give some feedback on your proposal :) For a non-native like me thís sounds quite confusing. The first is OK (although I personally feel 'join' is not activating enough), but the second 'sentence' doesn't contain a verb and that makes it very odd for me.
Since we're using the same banner at enwiki for all countries (I think?) we should try to find a good balance here I guess...
Lodewijk
2012/9/4 Peter Ekman pdekman@gmail.com
I strongly suggest that you get some native English speakers, say from the UK, Canada, India or Australia to review the record banner. "Participate in the world's biggest photo competition and help improve Wikipedia!" It just sounds odd to an American ear, something about mixing formal words (participate, competition) with more informal words (biggest, photo). I've also never much liked "help improve Wikipedia!" It's more understandable at first reading, but is pretty vague on what "Help" means. You've got to be careful in asking for help or it will sound like begging.
For the record, we'll likely use something like the following for the US banner.
"Join in the world's largest photo contest! Historic sites, photos and prizes."
Pete User:Smallbones
Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
Thank you for your kind word, Pete. Actually, this slogan has been reviewed by /two/ native speakers, one from the United States, and the other from the United Kingdom.
I also cannot see a reason for the US to have a different banner from the rest of the world, as we are /not/ using a cultural heritage-related term ("monuments" vs "historic sites") this time.
As for the banners, we are currently using two different ones on all projects: one for all participating countries except Israel ("Wiki Loves Monuments: Photograph a monument, help Wikipedia, and win!"), and one only for the US ("Wiki Loves Monuments: Historic sites, photos, and prizes!").
wikilovesmonuments@lists.wikimedia.org