[Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments (Was: On curiosity, cats and scapegoats)

[Lodewijk]

Hi,

just a few clarifications:

I totally agree with Naoko of course. However, for me the main goal is not
even just the photos itself, but the reach it gives us to involve more
people. If I understand the statistics correctly; up to date, we have been
able to involve roughly 1000 people throughout Europe in this contest who
never before uploaded/edited anything.

Involving new people was also the reason to set WLM up as a contest - that
assists at least in Europe very well in attracting attention of people who
normally do not edit Wikipedia, and persuade them to participate. However,
in the end they often keep participating because it is fun and because they
like it that their images appear on Wikipedia.

@Yaroslav: the main reason to focus on Europe this year was the large
concentration, intergovernmental support (European Commission & Council of
Europe) and lack of resources (mainly man power). If there are next year
enough people to carry on the idea, I'm sure we can include more countries,
*if* the concept works for them.

Then lists etc are a very practical precondition - not a fundamental one. If
we can find other ways to make it work, that is find of course. Also, if
countries rather run a project on different topics (volunteer involvement is
important, otherwise it won't work) they should definitely do that (I heard
suggestions for Wiki Loves Wildlife, Wiki Loves Rivers and many others!).

Finally a note about chapters. Yes, having a chapter is very helpful -
usually it is a group of organized volunteers who has existing experience
with media and volunteer coordination (because some coordination is
necessary) and they have access to some kind of budgeting / bank accounts.
But also this is very practical - this year four countries without any
chapter participated: Andorra (with the help of Amical), Belgium &
Luxembourg (with a lot of dedicated volunteers, mostly in Belgium) and
Romania (with the help of a local pro-linux association and local
volunteers). So there is definitely no rule against chapters without a
chapter to participate, but it does require a steeper learning curve, and
some extra dedication.

You can find much of the thinking behind this concept in our post-mortem of
2010 and the notes on the Berlin meeting last May with many participating
countries; all available on Commons. Of course I invite all comments
regarding improvements for next years in our post-mortem after September.

Best regards,
Lodewijk

Am 12. September 2011 07:49 schrieb Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod at mccme.ru>:

> On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:51:33 +0900, KIZU Naoko <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Off topic alert:
> >
> > I haven't given a closer look to your main topic, Milos, so I cannot
> > give a responsible statement in any way. But your reference to Wiki
> > Loves Monuments, while I agree it's heavily Europe-focused, I strongly
> > disagree with you on its decadency, as an (retired) aesthetic. While
> > the determination what artworks are heavily depends on the community
> > to appreciate, so partly I understand your concern, if WLM is carried
> > on only by European chapter people, it can hardly of NPOV at some
> > future moment, but artworks belong to the critical part of "the sum of
> > human knowledge" along with the information who created them and then
> > have appreciated or rejected them.
> >
>
> Only countries which have lists of monuments compiled by the government
> and having the status of the law are eligible for WLM. This is in some
> sense POV but no more POV than say writing articles of members of
> parliament who were elected by direct vote. If Japan has such a list (I
> hope it does) next year it would be eligible to participate. My
> understanding is that somehow the organizers did not expect such interest
> and did not try to contact chapters outside Europe. Presumably next year
> they will do. On the other hand, by the next year some of the European
> countries may exhaust their monuments (in the sense that the most of the
> pictures will be taken and the articles written or judged to be impossible
> to write). Thus, NPOV does not seem to be a problem to me.
>
> I do see two other problems with WLM, which are (i) competition format,
> which implicitly stimulates certain strategies we normally do not want to
> stimulate; (ii) involvement of the chapters as a precondition - some
> countries do not have chapters, some chapters showed no interest, some were
> unable to organize anything in the end. But I am not sure such discussion
> belongs to this thread.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
>
>
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