An excellent idea, Chris.
I am curious what are the exact reasons for having the fundraising banner in September. We were always told that December is the best month. It is no secret that many (and which) chapters run the WLM event in September. Maybe the FR team can explain about that, so that we have the bigger picture.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Mittwoch, 19. August 2015 schrieb Chris Keating :
I can definitely understand your frustration, Romaine.
However, if there is a strong operational reason why the Fundraising team can't move the activity they have planned for Italy in September, then I can't really see what resolution there can be except for sharing the banner space.
Normally though one would expect repeated banner impressions to have diminishing returns, rather than increasing returns - so I would expect the impact on Wiki Loves Monuments to be a fair bit less than what you make out.
One thing I don't understand though - I thought fundraising banners were set to display ~once per person these days, rather than actually site-wide as they used to - is it not possible to have the (less intrusive) WLM banner displaying for the people who aren't getting the fundraising messages?
Thanks,
Chris
On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 7:42 PM, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki@gmail.com javascript:;> wrote:
Hi all,
Sad news. The title of this thread seems a bit hard, but that is practically the situation as it looks now.
*Background* Wiki Loves Monuments is the yearly photo contest since 2010, organised by many local Wikipedia communities and local chapters. For this contest a banner is shown on top of Wikipedia pages in the specific countries to attract attention from the public to participate in enriching Wikipedia with photos of the local cultural heritage.
Wiki Loves Monuments depends for at least 99% on the banner. When there
is
no banner, the uploads and results drop dramatically, as possible participants are not informed and can't easily find the contest site.
Also
participants need time to go on location to take photos and see the
banner
above Wikipedia afterwards to find their way back.
*What is the situation?*
- The fundraising team plans to have a fundraising banner in Italy during
the month September.
- The local team of Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy is organising the
contest
in Italy and needs a banner as well.
As there can be shown only one banner at the time, there have been talks about these conflicting banners. Result: Wiki Loves Monuments get only 37,5% of the time, the fundraising banner 62,5% of the time.
Now you maybe think that 37,5% of the time is still large, but the appearances are deceptive because of the different ways the banner is
used,
and because the differences in numbers of upload throughout the month September. Also the banner is not shown at all during two full weeks, important weeks to attract participants. In the end I estimate, based on the usage and issues of previous years, etc, that only 10-15% of the uploads are made in comparison what normally would have been expected.
This is what I would call a devastating effect.
And this is purely because of bad planning at WMF:
- They haven't checked which countries participated continuously the past
years.
- They haven't informed which countries are likely to participate.
- And they say they can't move the fundraising banner to another month,
but
it is still a mystery why that isn't possible.
This same issue was originally the case in two countries, but somehow it was possible to move it for the second country.
This is really sad for Italy. Extra sad because of the difficult
copyright
situation in Italy, what requires the local team already to do much much much more work than in most other countries, just to have a normal
contest.
The Italian team does a great job this year.
*My conclusion* The community is working very hard on improving and expanding the content of Wikipedia by organising Wiki Loves Monuments. I always thought that
this
was the number one priority of the whole Wikimedia movement. Did I made a wrong assumption somehow?
But when it actually matters, the community project bears the bunt. This
is
sad, very sad.
Please all, support the Italian team, they do a great job and deserve a successful contest.
Greetings,
Romaine
PS: I am one of the international organisers of Wiki Loves Monuments this year, but this e-mail is written on my personal account only. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:;
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