On 6/7/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/06/06, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, What would be really cool if we can make a contest out of creating these pictures. When we want to provide pictures in certain categories for EVERY country, we can use it to stimulate interest in these countries.. when the "enemy" has a face, it becomes more like a "friend".
Hm... Featured Pictures is already quite a contest, and not such a friendly one. God forbid you nominate yet another sunset. :) I am not sure that encouraging generic-type images is such a great idea. It tends to be better if we have images created for a specific purpose, that happen to be beautiful and awesome and wallpapery.
Why are they such a fierce contest? Probably because there are only so many days in a month. We have precious little material illustrating many countries. And when we get great quality expressive pictures, not necessarily beautiful and wallpapery but certainly awesome it will stimulate the articles we are lacking. Yes, there is some notion of an article on every locality in the USA but do we have the same for Iran of the Ivory Coast?
Or if you mean encourage it just for specific countries, that's probably a good idea (save half a dozen countries which are probably already overrepresented).
When we have a contest and we exclude the Netherlands, the USA or the UK we will have many people call foul. The rules of the contest can be such that the photos that we have are part in a category are part of the quality demands for a winning picture. When we have many GREAT pictures for the USA, the price winning pictures have to truly add something that was not there before...
Even when a contest costs us money (a T-shirt a Certificate with the name of the photographer and the picture on it) it also helps us raise awareness of Commons. When we make this an anual event it will only be bigger next year.
CafePress also does prints. We have some amazing panoramas that would go perfectly on your corporate boardroom wall.... or your parents' hallway.
Didn't Wikimania have several photo competitions last time, or was that something else? Is Wikimania doing that this year?
Also I don't know if cash is even necessary - we're talking about wikicontributors, after all. Prestige and bragging rights tend to be a big drawcard.
Bragging rights, do you have a T-shirt saying that you are a winner of the Wikimedia Photo challenge? A T-shirt does not cost much but it can be a really attractive item. I would only talk prices as in money when a sponsor takes up the tab.
Thanks, GerardM