My opinion as promised.
I will save my time saying how great the organizers are that we managed to go above 160K photos etc. This is certainly correct, and I am sure we will have more of this as we categorize the pictures and the juries analyze the results. Let me instead go straight to the business.
1. Success or failure?
To my understanding, the purpose of WLM is a subset of WMF mission: To facilitate creation and propagation of free knowledge related to cultural heritage (specifically, monuments of architecture and history).
Did WLM advanced this mission? Yes and no. Why?
Well, if you set smth as a competition, then you should expect that the results conform with the conditions of the competition. The upside of the competition is that it makes it easy to motivate people, to create high profile which facilitates advancing the cause (especially if the Guinness book thing will go through), and to attract new users. The downside is that you get what is determined by the competition program: In our case, this was a photo competition with prizes for quality and quantity, and, consequently, we got a big number of pictures, many of which are of poor quality (to achieve the quantity bar) or represent well-known objects which were already sufficiently well illustrated (to have a shot at quality). In many cases this is a huge step forward, since the monuments which were not previously illustrated at all get poor quality illustrations, and this is much better than no illustration at all.
Another point which was repeatedly discussed is the scope. Only 18 countries participated, all of them in Europe, one of them (Russia) imposed strict geographic limits and started with a two-week delay, another one (Hungary) also started later.
2. What can we do better next year?
One obvious thing to realize is that different countries are now in a very different positions. To give examples, Andorra now has the pictures of all their monuments, the Netherlands stands at about 60%, Denmark has I guess below 10%, Russia is still having difficulties compiling the lists, and Japan and Canada did not even start researching. Obviously, Andorra would not be so much interested in WLM-12 if it is positioned as a photo contest, the Netherlands will be in a situation when all the easy pictures are still done, and what is left are mostly monuments in smaller towns or those which are not publicly accessible, and for Russia or Canada this might still be a major event with lasting consequences.
This means that next year we would need to be more creative and differentiate more. One obvious step is to make the competition worldwide, so that every country which is able to produce the list(s) of monuments will be eligible to participate.
Second, I guess we should keep photos as the main target, but we should make it clear that we are interested in (i) photos of the monuments which previously had no photos; (ii) new photos of the monuments which illustrate some particular details not covered previously; (iii) photos which have superior quality over those previously existed. The points (ii) and (iii) are tricky (not everybody understands quality in the same way - for instance, if you need to take a picture of a house at a side of a narrow street, is a better photo from the side but not distorted, or upfront with strong distortions?), but I think as a direction it is appropriate.
Third, I think we should start slowly moving to writing articles and have prizes for this. I am not sure what is the best way to organize this (one way for instance would be like in GLAM Derby, with a number of points for an article in each language depending on the quality of the article - in this case it needs to be sorted out whether a particular country gives prizes only for the articles on the languages of this country, only about monuments of this country or whatever, we have a year to discuss the terms), but if in 2012 articles are no part of the competition, we seriously risk to lose the most successful countries - those which are better organized and where are little or no photos left.
There are also some minor issues for improvement. Translation of the lists could be one thing (I spent yesterday a couple of hours trying to figure out the structure of Danish and Swedish lists - and I am not a complete stranger to these languages. A list in Japanese next year would mean only Japanese could contribute with Japanese monuments). In this way, we make sure that the competition is really worldwide: One can upload not just the monuments from his/her own country, but from any eligible country (and may be even from every country at all, provided there is an access to the monument IDs). Some of the countries may get preferential treatment like Switzerland this year: Indeed, in Norway, Russia, or Chile September may not be the best month to take pictures. There have been several more issues which came to my mind during September but completely escaped by now. If these issues come back, I will post them.
3. Meta-project and long-term goals.
Another good thing we should realize is that this is an example of successful grass-root cross-project collaboration. (The only other one I know is GLAM). Such collaboration was extensively discussed last year in the Strategy discussions where I was an active participant. I think the activities actually require a continuous work and coordination, and for this coordination we need a meta-project - an analog of a Wikipedia project based on Meta and doing cross-project work. Obviously only people interested in the advancement of the cause would participate since this an everyday (and mostly routine) work - I would definitely be interested in doing this. Obvious issues to be handled by the project are:
* Coordination of cleaning up Commons after WLM-2011: What is the best way to categorize pictures, what is suitable for creation into articles etc.
* Coordination of article writing: This is clearly a cross-project activity and should be done on Meta. The project created by Jane on en.wp could be a good starting point, but in my opinion this should not be WLM11, WLM12 or WLM24, since the article stay (hopefully) forever, but just one WLM or even Cultural Heritage cross-project.
* Reaching out the countries which do not participate in WLM. If a country is unfortunate to have no chapter, or to have an unable chapter, or to have a chapter not interested in WLM it still can be helped if the lists of monuments somehow exist. I would definitely invest time in creating the heritage lists for say Albania or Guatemala if there is some input provided somehow. This is the work for the project.
* Translating the lists I believe is also the work appropriate for a meta-project.
I think the idea of a meta-project is also interesting since it could become a pilot meta-project. Lodewijk mentioned once that there was interest expressed in extending things from monuments to rivers and I do not remember what else - if monuments are successful as a meta-project, then it shows the rivers how they could be successful too.
Cheers
Yaroslav
PS The will be no Analysis II from my part unless solicited.
hi Yaroslav, thank you for this analyse. But it is typically, that every comment, longer than 140 characters, seems for many of us like an attack on her personal circumstances. No, for me your analyse is not a flame.
I very agree, that the goal, to attrakt new users with such an competition as long-term wikipedia-autors, is almost completely missed. This is still an inside job. Who will address those people and encourage them to continue with article work?
I don´t know, if other countries have some person, who does the Job of an Wikipedia-Mediator for new users. we make this for the area of the monument lists for more than half a year, and have great success with it. It is not an coincidence, that we have - relative to the population - more co-worker than in most other countries, except countries with a very small population.
Our motto is: Every seriously edit of a new User is more important than any edit of an old, experienced user.
Fact is, that in more than 2400 different artikles from the Monument-lists, we had only two joke-edits from IPs.
New Users within this projekt are immediately recognized and they will also immediately offered help when they want it. And it works really!
this should be one of the main goals for the future.
second: The European Heritage Days are held in 49 countries, also the International Heritage Photographic Experience" with 50 countries.
In austria, the IHPE starts in October (until March) in cooperatian with Wikimedia-Commons/Wikipedia and the Bundesdenkmalamt.
http://www.bda.at/text/136/Lernort-Denkmal/16991/BDA-und-WikipediaWikimedia
Another competition starts maybe in spring 2012, the target audience are schools and people of communites, prior in smaller villages in Austria.
This is a chance to work together and to expand OUR next competition
h.
Am 01.10.2011 17:22, schrieb Yaroslav M. Blanter:
My opinion as promised.
I will save my time saying how great the organizers are that we managed to go above 160K photos etc. This is certainly correct, and I am sure we will have more of this as we categorize the pictures and the juries analyze the results. Let me instead go straight to the business.
- Success or failure?
To my understanding, the purpose of WLM is a subset of WMF mission: To facilitate creation and propagation of free knowledge related to cultural heritage (specifically, monuments of architecture and history).
Did WLM advanced this mission? Yes and no. Why?
Well, if you set smth as a competition, then you should expect that the results conform with the conditions of the competition. The upside of the competition is that it makes it easy to motivate people, to create high profile which facilitates advancing the cause (especially if the Guinness book thing will go through), and to attract new users. The downside is that you get what is determined by the competition program: In our case, this was a photo competition with prizes for quality and quantity, and, consequently, we got a big number of pictures, many of which are of poor quality (to achieve the quantity bar) or represent well-known objects which were already sufficiently well illustrated (to have a shot at quality). In many cases this is a huge step forward, since the monuments which were not previously illustrated at all get poor quality illustrations, and this is much better than no illustration at all.
Another point which was repeatedly discussed is the scope. Only 18 countries participated, all of them in Europe, one of them (Russia) imposed strict geographic limits and started with a two-week delay, another one (Hungary) also started later.
- What can we do better next year?
One obvious thing to realize is that different countries are now in a very different positions. To give examples, Andorra now has the pictures of all their monuments, the Netherlands stands at about 60%, Denmark has I guess below 10%, Russia is still having difficulties compiling the lists, and Japan and Canada did not even start researching. Obviously, Andorra would not be so much interested in WLM-12 if it is positioned as a photo contest, the Netherlands will be in a situation when all the easy pictures are still done, and what is left are mostly monuments in smaller towns or those which are not publicly accessible, and for Russia or Canada this might still be a major event with lasting consequences.
This means that next year we would need to be more creative and differentiate more. One obvious step is to make the competition worldwide, so that every country which is able to produce the list(s) of monuments will be eligible to participate.
Second, I guess we should keep photos as the main target, but we should make it clear that we are interested in (i) photos of the monuments which previously had no photos; (ii) new photos of the monuments which illustrate some particular details not covered previously; (iii) photos which have superior quality over those previously existed. The points (ii) and (iii) are tricky (not everybody understands quality in the same way - for instance, if you need to take a picture of a house at a side of a narrow street, is a better photo from the side but not distorted, or upfront with strong distortions?), but I think as a direction it is appropriate.
Third, I think we should start slowly moving to writing articles and have prizes for this. I am not sure what is the best way to organize this (one way for instance would be like in GLAM Derby, with a number of points for an article in each language depending on the quality of the article - in this case it needs to be sorted out whether a particular country gives prizes only for the articles on the languages of this country, only about monuments of this country or whatever, we have a year to discuss the terms), but if in 2012 articles are no part of the competition, we seriously risk to lose the most successful countries - those which are better organized and where are little or no photos left.
There are also some minor issues for improvement. Translation of the lists could be one thing (I spent yesterday a couple of hours trying to figure out the structure of Danish and Swedish lists - and I am not a complete stranger to these languages. A list in Japanese next year would mean only Japanese could contribute with Japanese monuments). In this way, we make sure that the competition is really worldwide: One can upload not just the monuments from his/her own country, but from any eligible country (and may be even from every country at all, provided there is an access to the monument IDs). Some of the countries may get preferential treatment like Switzerland this year: Indeed, in Norway, Russia, or Chile September may not be the best month to take pictures. There have been several more issues which came to my mind during September but completely escaped by now. If these issues come back, I will post them.
- Meta-project and long-term goals.
Another good thing we should realize is that this is an example of successful grass-root cross-project collaboration. (The only other one I know is GLAM). Such collaboration was extensively discussed last year in the Strategy discussions where I was an active participant. I think the activities actually require a continuous work and coordination, and for this coordination we need a meta-project - an analog of a Wikipedia project based on Meta and doing cross-project work. Obviously only people interested in the advancement of the cause would participate since this an everyday (and mostly routine) work - I would definitely be interested in doing this. Obvious issues to be handled by the project are:
- Coordination of cleaning up Commons after WLM-2011: What is the best way
to categorize pictures, what is suitable for creation into articles etc.
- Coordination of article writing: This is clearly a cross-project
activity and should be done on Meta. The project created by Jane on en.wp could be a good starting point, but in my opinion this should not be WLM11, WLM12 or WLM24, since the article stay (hopefully) forever, but just one WLM or even Cultural Heritage cross-project.
- Reaching out the countries which do not participate in WLM. If a country
is unfortunate to have no chapter, or to have an unable chapter, or to have a chapter not interested in WLM it still can be helped if the lists of monuments somehow exist. I would definitely invest time in creating the heritage lists for say Albania or Guatemala if there is some input provided somehow. This is the work for the project.
- Translating the lists I believe is also the work appropriate for a
meta-project.
I think the idea of a meta-project is also interesting since it could become a pilot meta-project. Lodewijk mentioned once that there was interest expressed in extending things from monuments to rivers and I do not remember what else - if monuments are successful as a meta-project, then it shows the rivers how they could be successful too.
Cheers
Yaroslav
PS The will be no Analysis II from my part unless solicited.
Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu
2011/10/2 Hubert hubert.laska@gmx.at
I very agree, that the goal, to attrakt new users with such an competition as long-term wikipedia-autors, is almost completely missed.
Quick comment: that may have been your goal, it was not mine - or maybe a side goal.
My hope, if anything, was to raise awareness. Have people notice that cultural heritage is just around the corner. Make them aware of the fact that they can contribute photographs to Commons (and just that, and that even that is great). Have them take part in a free knowledge/culture project. Make them realise that Wikimedia is a volunteer thing.
Wikipedia and articles are important, of course. But the whole world does not revolve around it. The free culture world, and even the Wikimedia world, do not either.
Just to be clear: We were successful :) Talking about new users: 4000 of the 5000 participants were new accounts! Of course you are right if you say we're not done yet, but there is an opportunity, lets grab it. Oh, and by the way, in Austria 66% of the uploaders were new. not bad!
Lodewijk
No dia 2 de Outubro de 2011 22:08, Jean-Frédéric < jeanfrederic.wiki@gmail.com> escreveu:
2011/10/2 Hubert hubert.laska@gmx.at
I very agree, that the goal, to attrakt new users with such an competition as long-term wikipedia-autors, is almost completely missed.
Quick comment: that may have been your goal, it was not mine - or maybe a side goal.
My hope, if anything, was to raise awareness. Have people notice that cultural heritage is just around the corner. Make them aware of the fact that they can contribute photographs to Commons (and just that, and that even that is great). Have them take part in a free knowledge/culture project. Make them realise that Wikimedia is a volunteer thing.
Wikipedia and articles are important, of course. But the whole world does not revolve around it. The free culture world, and even the Wikimedia world, do not either.
-- Jean-Frédéric (Commonist & proud of it).
Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu
I agree with Lodewijk. We're still wrapping up, but we at WLM-PT soon realized this event would break all expectations we had. A warm thanks to Lodewijk and Maarten to bring this thing to all countries involved.
We had people actually running through the country taking photographs, and I personally don't think it was for the prizes (at least, only). It was a "call to action" and, in that terms, WLM was perfect.
And Fréderic said it all: awareness it's so much needed - at least in Portugal - rather than making obvious we need participants.
Just replying to some points.
Yaroslav M. Blanter, 01/10/2011 17:22:
To my understanding, the purpose of WLM is a subset of WMF mission: To facilitate creation and propagation of free knowledge related to cultural heritage (specifically, monuments of architecture and history).
:-/ Not necessarily WMF mission, but Wikimedia [movement] mission, which is broader.
Second, I guess we should keep photos as the main target, but we should make it clear that we are interested in (i) photos of the monuments which previously had no photos; (ii) new photos of the monuments which illustrate some particular details not covered previously; (iii) photos which have superior quality over those previously existed.
I agree, but I think that not so great submissions should be welcome if they're the only way someone can participate: there's no reason to reject them, I don't think they give much more work. Your points are already included in the rules, but they will be applied by the jury ex post: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011/Concept#Judging_criteria (i) can be measured, I suppose: it would be a nice statistic.
Third, I think we should start slowly moving to writing articles and have prizes for this. I am not sure what is the best way to organize this (one way for instance would be like in GLAM Derby, with a number of points for an article in each language depending on the quality of the article - in this case it needs to be sorted out whether a particular country gives prizes only for the articles on the languages of this country, only about monuments of this country or whatever, we have a year to discuss the terms),
I'm not so sure about it: prizes for articles have proven to be difficult and AFAIK they've mostly failed. There are some successful examples but it doesn't work everywhere.
but if in 2012 articles are no part of the competition, we seriously risk to lose the most successful countries - those which are better organized and where are little or no photos left.
Not necessarily: you can choose another target to take photos of.
- Reaching out the countries which do not participate in WLM. If a country
is unfortunate to have no chapter, or to have an unable chapter, or to have a chapter not interested in WLM it still can be helped if the lists of monuments somehow exist. I would definitely invest time in creating the heritage lists for say Albania or Guatemala if there is some input provided somehow. This is the work for the project.
I'm not sure I understand this: how would you get the official lists with no local contact? not to mention the importance of local promotion, which is useful but might be not necessary (one should study the country statistics).
PS The will be no Analysis II from my part unless solicited.
+1 solicitation (for that matters).
Hubert, 02/10/2011 08:27:
I very agree, that the goal, to attrakt new users with such an competition as long-term wikipedia-autors, is almost completely missed.
How can you say it? We have 4000 new users; we need some months to see what they're going to do.
This is still an inside job. Who will address those people and encourage them to continue with article work?
I don´t know, if other countries have some person, who does the Job of an Wikipedia-Mediator for new users.
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:B%C3%BCcherw%C3%BCrmlein/Best_practices_in_mentoring_programs (and there's some ongoing work elsewhere). This certainly helps; it would be interesting to see the de.wiki project at work on German-speaking users and compare the new users retention with other languages.
Nemo
Hi Yaroslav, I agree with you on most points. I haven't had time to analyse what I think but you touch on many topics that are worthwhile to spend time on:
1) Writing articles - I think there are two main categories here to discuss; one is the number of articles that have to do with cultural heritage (see your own remarks about the translating heritage-lists), and those that have to do with specific monuments. I also think it would be great to somehow be able to use WLM as a way of stimulating article generation, but can't think of a way to do this without complicating things a lot. I also think GLAM Derby is great, so maybe there should be another event scheduled in March (organized by you perhaps?) for some "multi-lingual cultural heritage challenge". As far as I see it, this is completely outside the scope of WLM.
2) Number of monuments "scored" per list. Of course it would be great to have 100% coverage of heritage lists, but I also have enjoyed seeing beautiful detail photos come in for parts of monuments. I am an "inclusionist" rather than a "deletionist", so my gut feeling is "the more the merrier". Personally I think very few bad pictures have come in, and I feel any picture is better than no picture.
3) Participating countries - I think it would be great to have each country taking part that a) has a national heritage list, and b) has a group of people willing to commit to getting their country in the competition.
4) Timeline - the last sprint to the finish was awesome and shows yet again how the Wikipedia community can respond to a deadline. I think we all understand now why keeping to the September 1st through September 30th dates is important.
5) Meta-project rivers - do you mean Meta as in meta.wikimedia.org, or do you mean some sort of project to create multi-lingual content on specific subjects at specific moments of the year? Sorry, I didn't get this point entirely, but both interpretations are interesting.
6) My en.wiki WLM2011 project - I wrote about this in a former mail. It was a useful experiment, but I don't think a central portal for all countries is very useful on en.wiki (especially not if we go worldwide or to Mars next year!). I think it would be great to have national WLM projects in each country's portal on the en.wiki; so a Rijkmonuments wikiproject for [[WP:Portal:The Netherlands]], and so forth. It would be great to have each country work on their own multi-language heritage lists throughout the year (see Hubert's comments). This would be dependent on en.wiki volunteers for the various countries, and these people will be hard to find and get on board for this. However, the idea of a comprehensive portal per language wiki for all countries in that language area is a good one I think (see the German one).
Thanks for posting your analysis! I feel that this year was an amazing success and am still dazzled by the result. Jane
2011/10/3 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com
Just replying to some points.
Yaroslav M. Blanter, 01/10/2011 17:22:
To my understanding, the purpose of WLM is a subset of WMF mission: To facilitate creation and propagation of free knowledge related to cultural heritage (specifically, monuments of architecture and history).
:-/ Not necessarily WMF mission, but Wikimedia [movement] mission, which is broader.
Second, I guess we should keep photos as the main target, but we should make it clear that we are interested in (i) photos of the monuments which previously had no photos; (ii) new photos of the monuments which
illustrate
some particular details not covered previously; (iii) photos which have superior quality over those previously existed.
I agree, but I think that not so great submissions should be welcome if they're the only way someone can participate: there's no reason to reject them, I don't think they give much more work. Your points are already included in the rules, but they will be applied by the jury ex post: < http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011/Concept#...
(i) can be measured, I suppose: it would be a nice statistic.
Third, I think we should start slowly moving to writing articles and have prizes for this. I am not sure what is the best way to organize this (one way for instance would be like in GLAM Derby, with a number of points for an article in each language depending on the quality of the article - in this case it needs to be sorted out whether a particular country gives prizes only for the articles on the languages of this country, only about monuments of this country or whatever, we have a year to discuss the terms),
I'm not so sure about it: prizes for articles have proven to be difficult and AFAIK they've mostly failed. There are some successful examples but it doesn't work everywhere.
but if in 2012 articles are no part of the competition, we seriously risk to lose the most successful countries - those which are better organized and where are little or no photos left.
Not necessarily: you can choose another target to take photos of.
- Reaching out the countries which do not participate in WLM. If a
country
is unfortunate to have no chapter, or to have an unable chapter, or to
have
a chapter not interested in WLM it still can be helped if the lists of monuments somehow exist. I would definitely invest time in creating the heritage lists for say Albania or Guatemala if there is some input
provided
somehow. This is the work for the project.
I'm not sure I understand this: how would you get the official lists with no local contact? not to mention the importance of local promotion, which is useful but might be not necessary (one should study the country statistics).
PS The will be no Analysis II from my part unless solicited.
+1 solicitation (for that matters).
Hubert, 02/10/2011 08:27:
I very agree, that the goal, to attrakt new users with such an competition as long-term wikipedia-autors, is almost completely missed.
How can you say it? We have 4000 new users; we need some months to see what they're going to do.
This is still an inside job. Who will address those people and encourage them to continue with article work?
I don´t know, if other countries have some person, who does the Job of an Wikipedia-Mediator for new users.
See < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:B%C3%BCcherw%C3%BCrmlein/Best_practices_...
(and there's some ongoing work elsewhere). This certainly helps; it would be interesting to see the de.wiki project at work on German-speaking users and compare the new users retention with other languages.
Nemo
Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu
wikilovesmonuments@lists.wikimedia.org