This was the month of Wiki Loves Monuments, which was conducted in 18 European countries this year, resulting in approximately 175,000 photographs by 5500 users (over 4000 of whom were new users) for Wikimedia Commons. Of those, 13757 photos were uploaded for the Netherlands by 287 users, of which 203 were new users. Despite the fact that the 2010 WLM contest was already highly successfull, this years contest did result in even more photos of Dutch monuments than last year. An evaluation will be conducted based on a short participant survey.
The weekend of September 24th was spent on a two-day strategy session, devoted to creating a working 2012 plan based on the outcomes of the strategy weekend in February. The goal is to publish the plan by October 1st, in order to let members review it before the general assembly. A few ongoing projects did not make it into our 2012 plan due either to a lack of resources, or simply being superceded by new developments on MediaWiki software, such as plans to redesign Wikiportrait for international use.
A training session for aministrators, scheduled for early October, has been cancelled for a lack of participants.
Wiki Loves Monuments was publicized in local and national papers, with multiple interviews given by Lodewijk Gelauff, the main contact for the project.
After ending Wiki Loves Monuments, it was decided to keep the local campaign upload tools live on Wikimedia Commons for all participating countries. Hopefully this will lead to more donations of cultural heritage photos during the rest of the year.
The results of Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 are still being analyzed, but in early November it was clear that a huge spike in new user edits was visible on Wikimedia Commons for the month of September, thanks to the Europe-wide Wiki Loves Monuments contest. For the Netherlands, 60% of the monuments on the Rijksmonuments lists in the Wikimedia Commons database have now got at least one photograph on Wikimedia Commons that can be used in Wikipedia articles. It is not yet known what the actual usage in articles is (number of links from registered monument photos to Wikipedia articles).
At the general assembly of October 22nd, the budget for 2012 has been accepted by the members. Cyriel came into the board replacing Austin. Three motions were passed, two of which affect the budget and if the Grant cannot be changed, then the decision was made to commit funds from the reserves to cover the difference. The first motion was passed to research the need for a separate Grant agreement and a Fundraising agreement, whilst researching the steps needed to become a "payment processor" again. A motion was passed to allocate 5,000 euro's for consulting a lawyer before signing international agreements that involve international law (this was regarding the signing of the previously mentioned agreements in October). A motion was passed to allocate 10,000 euro for publicity regarding Wikipedia, WMNL and the possibilities available for donating to Wikimedia Nederland.
There was a lot of press coverage in the Netherlands about the Wiki Loves Monuments results.
There was also a lot of press coverage about the Wikistrike in Italy (Telegraph & NRC among others). Our member Lodewijk Gelauff was interviewed by BRN radio: http://www.bnr.nl/programma/bnrdigitaal/246149-1110/wikipedia-itali-plat-uit-protest
We issued Nieuwsletter #12.
Cultural Heritage was one of the tracks at the Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland. Presentations were given which will be available later.
Jill Cousins reported during her keynote speech that one of the biggest challenges facing Europeana is convincing partners to offer digital content under a CC-by-SA license. Among common objections such as "fear of loss of potential income" or "fear of unforeseen undesirable outcomes" is the largest objection: "fear of loss of atttribution". To illustrate this, she discussed the case of the "Yellow kitchen maid", a term used to describe en:The Milkmaid (Vermeer), in which a maid is wearing a bodice that is not very yellow. The painting hangs in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, and due to the immense popularity of various internet images, casual visitors feel cheated that the real painting does not show "the true color", and complain about this to the museum.
Interestingly, the most hits from "backlinks" to an actual collection were from direct references in Wikipedia articles in multiple languages, rather than from attribution links in media files on Wikimedia Commons, according to a related presentation on the statistics of Wikimedia contributions from Open Images, by Martin Zeinstra.
The Tropical Museum presented a plan to work together with Wikipedia to create a new website with modern "media mashups" that will help visitors and others understand more about museum material on expeditions. This is very much in an early stage, but the idea is that Wikipedia may use Tropical Museum content in articles in the usual way, and then based on stories locked into 19th and early 20th century expedition diaries, the website will offer mashups of the Wikipedia media and articles to illustrate the stories. Hopefully some volunteers will be interested enough to join their brainstorm sessions and keep us informed on the proceedings.
On November 5th the Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland took place with 120-140 visitors. There were three tracks available and the morning keynote speech by Jill Cousins of Europeana was given to a full auditorium, which was just as full at the end of day for the Wiki Loves Monuments prize ceremony. Some of the presenters have agreed to publish their presentations in the public domain.
On November 11th, Sue Gardner and some other staff members of WMF visited Utrecht and had a dinner with board members and some active members. It was an opportunity to talk face to face about issues on and off the usual Wikimedia mailing lists.
On November 10th, the award-ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments Belgium/Lŭemburg took place in Brussels. WMNL was represented by Lodewijk Gelauff, one of our most active volunteers and lead for this Europe-wide contest.
On November 11th, the cultural heritage association Heemschut had a symposion on the occasion of its 100th anniversay. WMNL was represented by Ziko van Dijk in a panel discussion. Wiki Loves Monuments was mentioned several times at the day.
On November 25th, Ziko van Dijk gave a lecture at the Open Day of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) in Rotterdam. The day after that, WMNL and UEA had a joint seminar on free knowledge led by Marek Blahus and Ziko van Dijk.
Newsletter #14 sent out.
Greetings, Cyriel