Summary of this email (sorry for long text): We did Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) 2010 in the Netherlands, we would like to do Wiki Loves Monuments again in 2011, but now in Europe. This is only possible when many chapters participate, therefore this e-mail. To be clear: this event will only happen on a European level if there is sufficient chapter participation to combine efforts. Please feel free to forward to whomever you find appropriate.
You might have heard before about Wiki Loves Monuments 2010 in the Netherlands. It was a highly successful photo scavenger hunt with 12.500 submissions and over 250 participants[0]. We recently completed a post mortem of this event with a more extensive description and analysis [1]. However, there are still many monuments in the Netherlands which can be photographed, so we are considering another run for next year - but then in a European context. Below we will explain a bit how we got where we are, what we have in mind, and what you could expect.
So how did this all start? At the Dutch Wikipedia we have the windmill project. One of the main goals was to get an article with an image for every windmill in the Netherlands. Lists were created of windmills per province and statistics were made on a regular basis to track progress. This approach worked very well and made it possible to tackle a big problem; All the windmills have an article now.
Some volunteers, in cooperation with the chapter, managed to get a dataset of all "Rijksmonumenten" (Dutch national monuments - 60.000 buildings/objects with some historical or cultural relevance) from the "Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed" (Dutch national heritage organisation, RCE). This marked the birth of the "Rijksmonumenten" project. The project uses the lessons learned in the windmill project. The data from the RCE was converted into lists by location and put on the Dutch Wikipedia. The community started improving the lists by adding missing information or adding photo's.
In June 2009 Wikimedia Nederland ran Wiki Loves Art /NL [2] : A photo scavenger hunt in more than 40 museums. Also quite successful (5.400 photos), but much more work intensive because you need to keep contacts with all the museums and usually museums are further away from people's homes than the nearest monuments.
For 2010 we were looking for a nice topic for a photo competition. The "Rijksmonumenten" project was running very well so we decided to organize Wiki Loves Monuments to give this Wikipedia project a boost.
So, what would a European WLM most likely look like? Let me give you an idea of what we are thinking of, changes are open for debate of course. Trying to incorporate the main lessons from last year in the Netherlands into a European model, we think it might work best if Wiki Loves Monuments is organized on a national level primarily, but with cooperations, shared resources and international prizes on a European level. The national contests do not have to be identical, but some consistency would be practical. We are not sure yet what countries would be most successful, but our initial hope would be EU chapter countries and Switzerland.
Basically, Wiki Loves Monuments would run 1-30 September 2011, and participants would be allowed to submit photos of monuments which are part of the object list. This object list includes the address and ideally geo-coordinates of all monuments which are allowed to participate. In each participating country there would be some prizes available, to be awarded by a jury for that country. The top-X of each could be competing for European prizes.
You can find more information on how WLM 2010 was organized on the post-mortem [1]. That also lines out in more detail how much work it would be, and what the positive impact could be.
Most of the local work would be to get a database with the objects, create object lists from that (possibly Dutch volunteers could support you with that, they have the experience [3]) and get the community involved on that. You would need to get communications going, both external to the press (press releases etc) as to participants (have a clear website in your language(s) with explanation, rules etc), find a jury and prizes for them to award. We can help each other with example press releases, best practices, template and list examples and community motivation.
So, what to do when you like this idea? Well, it would be good to first of all check with your collegues (at the board, other members, community) what they think of it. You probably need several people to run such a competition over time to some extent. Next step would be to do some analysis on your local situation: who would be good partners (who keeps the lists of monuments?) for you, how many monuments are there in your country, are they well spread? What information/photos are already available of it roughly? Are there community members involved in that kind of topic? Definitely read the post-mortem and some relevant links from there [1].
For the time being, we registered www.wikilovesmonuments.eu and are in touch with CARARE and Europeana (European cultural heritage organizations) - who seem to be interested in laying contacts with local cultural heritage organizations. Hopefully that helps them to realize the European context and impact this could have. The most important partner in each country would be the one that governs the database with all monuments, and could release that to you. This database/list is crucial for the success of such an event.
Please inform us (ideally through internal-l) when you would be interested in joining in such European event, if there is enough enthusiasm, we will create a special (easy to join) mailing list to coordinate efforts to allow more volunteers to join in the discussions. We already took the liberty of discussing this with some other chapters, and are hopeful that it will actually get to a first grand chapter cooperation program. Of course this does not mean you are bound, but that you think you would like to participate. You can also join #wikilovesmonuments on freenode irc of course if you like.
With kind regards,
Maarten Dammers (user:Multichill)
Lodewijk Gelauff (user:Effeietsanders)
[1]:
[3]:
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