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.
On 18 January 2012 03:38, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I would argue that the UK is a uniquely bad place for wikipedia loves monuments.
There was plenty of discussion of WLM in the UK flying around yesterday, between and after the GLAM events in London. Let me try to give a summary, reserving the right to post my own opinions later. We do have the upcoming workshop, and perhaps discussion on this list can be a stepping stone towards having that workshop addressing issues in depth and more effectively.
The workshop is at the London office of WMUK on Saturday 18 February from 1 pm:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_brainstorm
(A) Aims and objectives:
What running WLM in the UK would do that matters most is that it could make two contributions to the overall effort:
(a) provide useful images usefully categorized on Commons; (b) increase participation in the projects, by bringing in new people.
I heard the opinion that (b) matters more than (a).
(B) Running the thing:
Given that we know why running WLM would be of benefit, there is a Procrustean bed argument that it has to be run in a certain way. This may come in three parts:
(i) WLM is a global “brand”: it has been run before, and any UK version would have to live up to and comply with certain pre-existing ideas and norms.
(ii) Annotated lists: the model is that there are lists of places (“monuments”, a concept that has various definitions) that are annotated in certain ways, at the heart of the photo scavenger hunt. There is discussion about what these lists should be, how to get hold of them, and what to do with them once the required information is obtained.
(iii) WLM is run as a competition, so there have to be rules, a judging process, and prizes set up in a way compatible with what is trying to be achieved here.
So: (i) can be bypassed if there is a better model of what would be good to do in the UK, which just ought to be called something distinctive. I.e. there is an argument that the localization of WLM to UK conditions is too tricky, and we should start with a clean sheet of paper. A counter-argument is that WLM has not yet been run here, so that there is a danger of reinventing the wheel.
Part (ii) is where a fair amount of effort has been placed so far. Here the localization business hits the major issue that different countries hold this kind of “heritage” information in different ways, administratively speaking. Cue quite a long discussion of what is actually done here, depending on what definition of “monument” is taken.
Part (iii) comes down to a couple of issues, it seems. Firstly, scale (success makes more work for the judges); secondly, setting up a system with the right sort of incentives; which then comes down to nuances in A (a) under aims.
(C) View from Commons:
Debates on WLM seem good at throwing up secondary discussions about the issue of UK-related images on Commons. Briefly put: the import of UK images from the Geograph site to Commons has been a huge accession, representing a substantial proportion of the site; the accessioning work is demanding technically with unresolved issues; and the portion of that which is straight categorization work is still largely there to be completed.
Now all this doesn’t actually undermine the aims of running WLM, but it complicates the issue in more than one fashion. The points I understand are these:
1. Technically the position could be improved by the use of bots and tools, but these are not all to hand yet.
2. Running WLM-UK is going to add to the accessioning problem, however you cut it.
3. In a pragmatic sense having more eyeballs on the categorization issue on Commons for UK images is, in accordance with general wiki reasoning, going to help. In other words there may be snags and issues that come up as a result of trying to run WLM-UK, that cannot be minimized or dealt with in the next six months. But that doesn’t mean that ducking those issues is the right decision. It means the decision should be informed by the “view from Commons”.
4. Going back to what would be meant by “useful” in aim A (a), setting up the competitive side in B (iii) above ought to take all this into account. Tweak the system so that competitors get more credit for images considered more useful (e.g. filling a gap rather than duplicating something), and consider a range of prizes, reflecting the way that categorization activity fundamentally improves the usefulness of files on Commons.
(D) The Board and finding a way to run a competition
Here lies one of the things the workshop should be addressing. There is the chicken-and-egg issue of whether the Board can get a volunteer to head up WLM-UK before all the issues above are sensibly resolved; or whether the Board should be prepared to delegate some of the decision-making about how to run it to someone who would then be empowered to get it run in line with a short specification of aims. I think this is roughly where we are.
Charles
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
On 18 January 2012 03:38, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
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
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
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.
TL;DR version: don't worry, problems can be solved, solutions are plenty. Let's discuss it at the London brainstorm on 18 Feb. http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_brainstorm
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
On 18 January 2012 03:38, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
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
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Just picking up on a point that Charles made earlier about whether the board wants to solve all the issue and then find someone to do it .... or get someone to run it and decide the rules....
I would be very surprised if the board wanted to sort everything out and then delegate it. IMO we are not very good at that. We have had some success with choosing the right person and telling them to do it and tell us what they've decided ...
I think you need to decide the objective. Some bad objectives are - create more geograph style pictures (which are actually quite good and quite well categorised considering they were not intended forus to use per se). Another bad one is to run because everyone else it - although I can see the appeal of this one.
My experience so far in Monmouth where we are trying to write something on everything of notability is that we have enough pictures if we put some appeals on Flickr. What we are lacking is historic pictures - but here negotiation has just got us 10,000 pictures. Do we want some incredible quality pictures (which WLM will deliver)? Do you want other types of media files? A 3 second movie clip that we could use to show what Trafagar Square looks like with moving pigeons and cars? ... we have lots of articles that lack a geo-tagged video.
Roger
On 18 January 2012 22:46, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
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.
TL;DR version: don't worry, problems can be solved, solutions are plenty. Let's discuss it at the London brainstorm on 18 Feb. http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_brainstorm
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
On 18 January 2012 03:38, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
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
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
A comment based on my experiences with the Swedish WLM last year.
Since the majority of our "monuments" had coordinates attached to them we could easily display their locations on a map. We then made a visual distinction between which monuments already had illustrations and which were missing. A common reaction when people opened the map page was that they spotted the monuments missing images and, since the map automatically focuses on your local area, often knew which buildings they were. Thus fuelled by a combination of local pride and a feeling that here was a way of making an actual contribution they decided to participate.
As a result you automatically get more attention to the monuments needing illustrations and less to the ones already being illustrated. Of course you'll still get pictures of the more famous places where we already have plenty of illustrations already but that's not always a bad thing.
On a cautionary note though, identifying which monuments already have illustrations can be a pretty arduous task which isn't necessarily easily automated.
Cheers, Andre / Lokal_Profil
On 18 January 2012 23:36, Roger Bamkin victuallers@gmail.com wrote:
Just picking up on a point that Charles made earlier about whether the board wants to solve all the issue and then find someone to do it .... or get someone to run it and decide the rules....
I would be very surprised if the board wanted to sort everything out and then delegate it. IMO we are not very good at that. We have had some success with choosing the right person and telling them to do it and tell us what they've decided ...
I think you need to decide the objective. Some bad objectives are - create more geograph style pictures (which are actually quite good and quite well categorised considering they were not intended forus to use per se). Another bad one is to run because everyone else it - although I can see the appeal of this one.
My experience so far in Monmouth where we are trying to write something on everything of notability is that we have enough pictures if we put some appeals on Flickr. What we are lacking is historic pictures - but here negotiation has just got us 10,000 pictures. Do we want some incredible quality pictures (which WLM will deliver)? Do you want other types of media files? A 3 second movie clip that we could use to show what Trafagar Square looks like with moving pigeons and cars? ... we have lots of articles that lack a geo-tagged video.
Roger
On 18 January 2012 22:46, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
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.
TL;DR version: don't worry, problems can be solved, solutions are plenty. Let's discuss it at the London brainstorm on 18 Feb. http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_brainstorm
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
On 18 January 2012 03:38, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
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
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 18 January 2012 23:36, Roger Bamkin victuallers@gmail.com wrote:
Just picking up on a point that Charles made earlier about whether the board wants to solve all the issue and then find someone to do it .... or get someone to run it and decide the rules....
I would be very surprised if the board wanted to sort everything out and then delegate it. IMO we are not very good at that. We have had some success with choosing the right person and telling them to do it and tell us what they've decided ...
I think you need to decide the objective. <snip>
Indeed, and switching to more opinionated mode, I think (firstly) that the Board here should only be setting the broad strategy, and (secondly) that there is more to say on those aims.
It appears to me, in the context that the future of WMUK's fundraising agreement with the WMF is uncertain, that there is a need of a "Plan B". And there is, independently of that consideration, a good case that WMUK should be plugging into the very widespread support in this country for "heritage".
In other words what Roger says makes sense to me: details of WLM-UK should be subject to management decisions that don't have to go back to the Board. But on the other hand the strategic aim should be linked, not just to participation to promote grassroots activity in the form of people going out of their front doors with a camera to help Wikimedia, and not just to producing a *welcome* addition of a stack of images to Commons, but also to positioning WMUK as a force in its own right in documenting UK heritage on the ground. "Part of the work we do is to mobilise volunteers to create content that makes this country's heritage more accessible and easier to find online" sounds just fine to me.
In what is a crowded and complicated field of UK institutions and charities and websites that already work on "heritage", such positioning does require an assertion of distinctiveness. And this goes back to Geni's initial point. So this is the area where I think the Board ought to be looking carefully right now.
Geni and Johnbod and I were in the National Gallery hashing some of this over on Tuesday, and this was earlier than the conversation to which WSQ alluded, which was in The Euston Flyer, over the road from the British Library. We each argued our own corner. I had some comments about "lists", to the effect that examples come by me often enough that seem relevant here. One that I brought up: in the Whitechapel Gallery not long ago there was a display about murals in London: the non-posh "paint it on the side of a house" type. It said that there were 86 (maybe) known examples, there was no protection and they disappeared over time, and there was no one whose job it was to photograph them and keep a record. So this rang bells with me, especially as there was an opinion piece not long ago in the Signpost about just such ephemeral things, and the required sense of urgency to preserve them."If not us, who?"
So I'd be very happy to see a third "aim" laid down by the Board, not prescriptive, but getting closer to a mission statement: to the effect that WLM as run and developed should be seen as part of a distinctive and "reaches the parts that others don't" approach to a UK heritage strategy. What Geni has said in my hearing about (for example) concrete pillboxes is compatible with that approach; taking "monument" in a too restricted and unambitious sense is not. Bearing in mind also that a first year of running a competition need not be the last word on what happens in another year,
Charles
I may have missed the point.. but.... doesn't this article need expanding urgently? I feel these types of articles should be expanded routinely (Grade I listed buildings).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmondsworth_Barn
In the news currently because English Heritage have just bought it.
Perhaps it should look more like this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Mill
And, yes, I will edit the article - REAL SOON NOW.
Gordo
On 30 January 2012 11:46, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
I may have missed the point.. but.... doesn't this article need expanding urgently? I feel these types of articles should be expanded routinely (Grade I listed buildings).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Harmondsworth_Barnhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmondsworth_Barn
In the news currently because English Heritage have just bought it.
There are quite a number of Grade I listed buildings: getting on for 10,000. This one has had an article since earlier this morning. Judging by Cambs, that makes it one of the lucky ones ...
Charles
Perhaps it should look more like this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**House_Millhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Mill
And, yes, I will edit the article - REAL SOON NOW.
Gordo
--
Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com http://www.joly.org.uk/ Don't Leave Space To The Professionals!
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On 30/01/2012 14:29, Charles Matthews wrote:
There are quite a number of Grade I listed buildings: getting on for 10,000. This one has had an article since earlier this morning. Judging by Cambs, that makes it one of the lucky ones ...
Charles
There are 9,352 according to http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/listing/listed-buildings/
I really had no idea that there were that many!
Gordo
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 7:12 PM, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
There are 9,352 according to http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/listing/listed-buildings/
I really had no idea that there were that many!
It's a reasonable number of monuments to deal with for WLM. By comparison, last year in Spain about 15,000 monuments qualified for WLM. Marco
On 30 Jan 2012, at 18:26, Marco Chiesa wrote:
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 7:12 PM, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
There are 9,352 according to http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/listing/listed-buildings/
I really had no idea that there were that many!
It's a reasonable number of monuments to deal with for WLM. By comparison, last year in Spain about 15,000 monuments qualified for WLM.
"In England there are approximately 374,081 listed building entries."
Enough to keep everyone happily photographing and editing for a long, long time? ;-)
Mike
On 30/01/2012 18:26, Marco Chiesa wrote:
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 7:12 PM, Gordon Jolygordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
There are 9,352 according to http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/listing/listed-buildings/
I really had no idea that there were that many!
It's a reasonable number of monuments to deal with for WLM. By comparison, last year in Spain about 15,000 monuments qualified for WLM. Marco
I see...
My point is why not start with all the Grade I listed buildings, since they are obviously **NOTABLE**? Somebody else decided that... and then move on to the Grade II* and Grade II? And then Borough based listings and the conservation zones?
El Gordo
*Anecdotal story*: My wife decided to take me outside for a trip and asked where I wanted to go. I'd recently seen a tool by Magnus Mankse called *Shoot me* which lists out all the wiki articles geo tagged near you that lacked pics. So I quickly went
http://toolserver.org/~magnus/wikishootme/index.html
and that listed out half a dozen useful places near me that lacked pics. We went out .... took the pics and when I went to load them I found out that all these pictures already existed ..... they were uncategorised, but there. I think I loaded some *new* pix but I'm not sure I added much to "the wealth".
So if our objective is to "supply everything to everyone" (paraphrase our vision), then first we need a copy of everything. It could be that we already have a copy of nearly everything if we could just sort out what we had and what we lacked. However the chances of running a successful UK categorisation project is low..... or is it?
Do you know I just typed the last sentence and realised that that is what we want. *We want a categorisation project*. What we know will appeal is a successful photography project. Hmmm * UK WIKI LOVES MONUMENTS* - wacky proposal
Prize goes to the b*est five media files in a complete Wiki-Commons-Category *
Entrants will ensure that they use a valid commons category for a village, road, type of monuments etc. They will populate that category with as many photos and videos and sounds as possible. They are invited to add their own pictures, viideo and sounds but also to collect as many freely sourced files they can find from other sources too.
Judges will look at wikimedia commons pages, wikipedia, wikisource etc pages that use or could use these resources. They will choose the winning category and the five media files that best illustrate its reason for winning. This is a "beauty" competition that is is not just based on the quality of the media but also the quantity, meta data and completeness of the chosen category.
So thats an idea for what might work Please feel free to ignore, delete or modify
On 30 January 2012 11:46, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
I may have missed the point.. but.... doesn't this article need expanding urgently? I feel these types of articles should be expanded routinely (Grade I listed buildings).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Harmondsworth_Barnhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmondsworth_Barn
In the news currently because English Heritage have just bought it.
Perhaps it should look more like this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**House_Millhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Mill
And, yes, I will edit the article - REAL SOON NOW.
Gordo
--
Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com http://www.joly.org.uk/ Don't Leave Space To The Professionals!
______________________________**_________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-lhttp://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 03:38, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
If people are prepared to move away from monuments options include [...] underwater wrecks (which have a higher challenge aspect).
You have the most tremendous gift for understatement.
Bod
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