Hi all,
it is good to see that between all the SOPA noise, there is some Wiki Loves Monuments discussion ongoing! I want to use this opportunity to once again point to the brainstorm meeting in London next month (details on the wikimedia UK wiki), where we can probably tackle these and other issues much more effectively.
I don't want to go into detail here on every single issue, and I don't have all the answers immediately either. However, I would like to make a few general points which might help in finding solutions.
1) Wiki Loves Monuments is indeed an international contest, however it is organized very much in a federative way. Our general credo is always that you should "do whatever works best in your country" within a few main restrictions of course. And these restrictions are not even thát tight - if you have very good reasons to deviate that is up for discussion (at the international WLM mailing list of course, which everyone is welcome to join). This means for example that it is common to hold the contest in September, and it is common that it is called 'Wiki Loves Monuments' (or a translation), it is common that we offer a high number of objects ('monuments' in the broadest sense of the word) so that there is sufficient coverage throughout the country, and that each object is identified with an identifier. However, you can create special categories, choose to have a jury or a public vote, you can organize local events or not, you can even create a prize for categorizing existing photos. Do whatever works best in the UK.
2) I hear many worries about categorization - this is something we have tried to tackle in previous years already. You may have noticed that I mentioned times that objects have an identifier. The idea is that a submission to the contest is only valid if the uploader identifies the object on the photo with that identifier. Because this identifier is linked to a database, it would then be pretty easy to categorize the images once you know what the object is - you can even immediately geo-locate them (exceptions probably present). Surely there is community work involved still in fixing up stuff, broken templates and whatever else, but categorization would be one of the last tasks I'd expect - that can be done with a bot.
3) You could definitely choose a theme to give extra attention - such as war memorials. Personally I would advise not to limit yourselves to that, and allow all historic sites you can get a list for. However, that would be your call as organizers of the national contest of course.
4) The definition of 'monument' worries some people. I would like to make a note that this definition simply differs from country to country. It is probably clear that we mean all kind of buildings that deserve preservation - however thanks to our NPOV principles, we tend to choose an external definition for what buildings fall inside that category. In the Netherlands we use the definition that it has to be a national monument ('rijksmonument'), and this year we may expand that definition with municipal monuments and provincial monuments. In the UK you would have to choose a definition which suits your needs best. Some good criteria would be imho: a) get the list (will possibly require negotiation with the government agencies/agency responsible), b) coverage throughout the country (everybody should be able to get to a monument easily, where ever he or she happens to live), c) usefulness on Wikipedia (if the photos don't end up on Wikipedia, people are not that interested - so lists of these monuments would have to be(come) available) and d) diversity and interest (people need to feel "wow, interesting, I never knew that this cool building was so nearby"). You can probably find more and even more relevant criteria, but this as a trigger to think about it.
Keep the thoughts flowing, and hopefully see you in London soon!
Best,
Lodewijk
No dia 18 de Janeiro de 2012 21:11, WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers@gmail.com> escreveu:
I was in the same discussion as Charles last night, and I'm one of the people who has categorised bits of the Geograph backlog.
Currently we have 1.7 million images from the Geograph on Commons, roughly two thirds of the Geograph has been loaded and that bit constitutes two thirds of the Geograph. The Geograph is a UK and Ireland project, and its 2.5 million images are probably rather more images than Commons has from the British isles, even including the 1.7 million geograph ones loaded so far. The bot lad was stopped due to categorisation problems, much is done by geocode and there are anomalies, and not just the predictable ones of places on either side of the Solent being categorised to the wrong shore.
We don't know how big the categorisation backlog is because Catalot won't remove the uncategorised Geograph template - though it is possible that we might get a bot to fix that.
The migration is unlikely to resume en masse, but the licenses are compatible so we can still suck in the images we want.
I'd suggest that we run a WLM contest asking people to add war memorials and listed buildings that we don't have images of or views of those images that we don't already have. Obviously we don't want yet more images of the Gherkin, Tower Bridge or Buckingham Palace.
But there are circa 30,000 war memorials in the UK and we only have a minority of them.
As for judging, it is easy to create userboxes for participants to claim, much more difficult to judge thousands of images and fairly choose a winner.
On the categorisation side I think we could do some outreach work and recruit people to categorise images of the UK. I'd be up for a training session if we put an ad in Metr or somesuch inviting people to help.
WSC
I would argue that the UK is a uniquely bad place for wikipedia loves
monuments. Not only has it already been done directly:
http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/
But geograph has also covered a lot of the ground. Repeatedly.
So what are the alternatives. If you want to insist on architecture
then everything listed in the Pevsner Architectural Guides is an
option. At least the stuff there has a reasonable chance of being
notable. Alternatively everything listed in the Defence of Britain
project
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/dob/
While I think photos of everything there exist they are not all online.
If people are prepared to move away from monuments options include
every single species native to the UK and underwater wrecks (which
have a higher challenge aspect). The species approach has the
advantage that we could also include videos.
--
geni
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