Hello all,
We are excited to announce that the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/West_Bengal_Wikimedians is going to organize Wiki Loves Monuments https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2021_in_India this year again in the month of September. The organizing team https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2021_in_India/Team remains the same. We have a list of news to share.
- Like previous years, we are adding more and more data about Indian monuments, both for designated and non-designated ones, on Wikidata and the WLM lists of monuments https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_in_India/Monuments are fetched from there. If you find monuments from your locality or district or state that are present on Wikidata but are not reflected on our list https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_in_India/Monuments, please let us know, so that we can include them.
- We are introducing one more way to upload photographs of monuments this year. In this page https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_in_India/Upload, you will get a map of India with states and UTs in it and if you click on your desired state or UT, it will automatically direct you to the respective upload wizard buttons. Our 3 other options to upload in the tables designated for monuments, i.e. through Upload Wizard, Wikidocumentaries and WLM maps tools remain the same as the previous year.
- This year, most probably, the Wikimedia Commons app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.free.nrw.commons will support WLM and photographers can upload easily through their mobile devices.
- The national prize money also remains the same as the previous year. But we have two more special prizes this year. For details, please visit this page https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2021_in_India/Prize .
- Also the Monuments database https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database has included https://heritage.toolforge.org/api/api.php?action=search&srcountry=in&srname=&sraddress=&srmunicipality=&userlang=en-gb&format=html&srproject=commons our lists of monuments https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_in_India/Monuments from Commons this year, which will help a bot https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ErfgoedBot to crawl more Indian monuments than before to do regular maintenance works. There are still some bugs to resolve though. - We are contacting potential jury members for the national competition. This page https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2021_in_India/Jury will be updated as soon as we get confirmation from them.
A lot of efforts were taken to build structured databases related to Indian monuments in the previous years. Still, most of our monuments lack coordinates and it would be great if this gap can be filled up by the community volunteers. Without coordinates, maps won't show the location of the monuments and powerful tools cannot be utilized fully. If you start adding coordinates or correcting faulty coordinates one at a time starting from your locality, we might fill up the huge data gap one day. For perspective, we have coordinates for more than 3000 Indian designated monuments and still around 7000 designated monuments don't have them.
I would like to sincerely thank Krishna from the WLM international team; André Costa and Jean-Frédéric from the Monuments database and Susanna Ånäs from the Wikidocumentaries for partnering with us in different ways and helping us execute our plans.
Regards, Bodhisattwa (On behalf of Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 in India team)
wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org