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. _______________________________________________ Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu

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).

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.

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.

* 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.

PS The will be no Analysis II from my part unless solicited.

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.