Grants talk:PEG/ARCHÉ/Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 in Romania

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC members who support this request

1. MADe (talk) 18:59, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
2. Polimerek (talk) 21:17, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
3. Well done! I wish you big success.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 07:59, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
4. I think it is a realistic request. I support it. --Packa (talk) 21:42, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
5. Support, see no issue worth mentioning here.. NLIGuy (talk) 10:20, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

GAC comments

comments by MADe

I support this request. It takes the existing WLM competition, adds some local flavour, some nice news things as well (the weekend!). There's external funding as well. So for me this is a go. MADe (talk) 18:59, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Comments from the WM community

Tony1

• Start-date is 1 Sept, but "if you get the grant" there's a press release three days ago. Mmm. Done that? Bit early, isn't it? Got help from WMF staff on press release?
• Promotional packages: 100 euros is not cheap: what is in them?
• Risk of low participation, you say. Errr ... I'm worried. Any strategy for attractive new participants? Romanian WP banner possible?
• Lack of time: got some back-up volunteers for the sudden rush, then, if you need them?
• Any plans for editors to organise description pages on Commons, categorisations?

Memo to staff—could there be an instruction from now on that where funding is split between PEG and another source, there be separate tables for each? It's pretty messy looking at rows one to five, seven, nine and ten, with no separate additions. Tony (talk) 15:43, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Here are my responses:

• The contest will take place regardless of the grant, so we will stick to the activities listed for july/august no matter what result will this request have. Only collateral activities are conditioned by the funding. If you look in the history of the page you will see the start date was initially set to July 21st, but I've been instructed by the WMF staff to put the date at which funds will begin to be spent.
• There was a typo in the table header - the sums requested are in RON, not EUR. Sorry for not catching that earlier. 100 RON is about 22.5 EUR, not that much, considering a customized T-shirt is about 45-50 RON. The package should contain at least a T-Shirt, a calendar/album with the winning pictures, a notepad and pen, all marked with the WLM logo.
• For every edition of WLM so far we had a banner running as well as sitenotice announcement. So yes, we'll very likely have that this year as well.
• Yes, we will be recruiting volunteers for the more time-sensitive periods in September. This is mentioned in the list of activities (see the text below the list).
• In the past, we have not had such things organized, but the community response has been tremendous. Many Romanian users that did not participate in the contest (or even on ro.wp) have created and populated categories related to historic monuments. We do not expect this to change this year. AFAIK, there is also a robot that does basic categorization (put the image in categories organized by county)--Strainu (talk) 16:05, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Strainu, thanks for your responses. OK, start-date. The press release is important. Do you already know how to get the best out of press releases, or do you need assistance? Ping my talkpage if you want to discuss it. County-related categorisations on Commons would be good; but if you were able to organise thematic categorisations too—at least for a few ?hundred images you think are the best or unique—that would multiply their value for WMF sites. It's also important to check that sufficient identifying information is inserted into the upload descriptions pages. I've seen some WLM pages that are a mystery to me. Tony (talk) 02:29, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer Tony. We will most certainly take advantage of your help offer. We have already sent out the first announcement, but we will follow-up closer to September. I think I understand your concerns regarding Commons as well. I will bring this up with the Romanian community to see if we can organize something.

As to the separation of WMF and external budgets, I have reordered the tasks and changed the background color for externally-funded expenses. Hope it's more visible now.--Strainu (talk) 07:31, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

You're most welcome, Strainu. Even though I don't speak Romanian, I can probably give you a few tips about a presss release after seeing a draft through Google Translate. Tony (talk) 08:45, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

• Strainu: have you seen the recent "learning patterns" for photography? Would these be helpful for your community participants, and do you think those pages should be translated into Romanian for them?

  Grants:Learning_patterns/Photographing_your_local_buildings

  Grants:Learning_patterns/Improving_your_building_photography

Tony (talk) 13:25, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

• I haven't seen these before, but they do seem useful. Can they be translated on-wiki or should we do it on the website?--Strainu (talk) 13:53, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Comments from WMF

Thank you for this grant request and your engagement with the discussion. We having the following questions/comments:

• It is really useful to have numbers from WLM 2013 for reference. Under the Commons category "Images from Wiki Loves Monuments in Romania 2013", there are 4,972 photos. Using the glamorous tool, I found that of the total photos, 1,015 distinct photos are used on wiki projects (20.41%). This is a great integration rate! Do you know how many partipants there were?
• Based on the 2013 outcomes, please added metrics for number of participants and percentage of photos integrated on wiki projects 2 months after the event. This metric is a good measure of photo quality and importance relevant to our wiki projects.
• We recommend you also plan to include at least one edit-a-thon to support photo integration. The best time to do this would be after the submission deadline and before the award ceremony.
• Please see our program resources for photo events.
• Who are you hoping to partner with and what to you hope to gain from those partnerships?
• Please provide more cost details for the Wiki Weekends.
• Has this project been discussed on wiki? If yes, please provide a link.
• What is the level of volunteer engagement? Do you already have committment from "at least 5 volunteers" who are interested in organizing?
• Please provide more information on the OSGEO talk -- what database will you presenting on and how does this relate to WLM?
• Having a more developed outreach/communications strategy beyond just the banner is a good idea. We're happy to read that you will follow-up with Tony regarding best practices in writing press releases.

Please let us know if you have any questions and we look forward to your response. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

• There were 123 participants to the contest in 2013 [1], not including the Wikipedians that contributed to categorization and article writing.
• Will do. Do note that pictures of monuments with no previous image are added to the list of monuments by a robot, so this might not be extremely relevant for editor engagement.

• Please be sure to add the integration metric. A good goal is 20-30% integration of all photos. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

• I have not discussed this with the rest of the team, so this is only my personal opinion. Previous experiences on Wikipedian gatherings in Romania have been less than happy (many meetings with 2/3 participants, the latest attempt to organize a meeting was in 2011) so I am somewhat skeptical that we will be able to gather a sufficient number of experienced wikipedians in order to ensure a constructive working environment. I would rather engage in activities that take advantage of the community on-wiki.

• I understand this is an issue. Is there a way to promote integration in a way that is on-wiki? Perhaps have a prize category for the person who integrates the most number of photos? Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 25 July 2014 (UTC).

• Would be great to hear your thoughts on this and if perhaps an upload/integration activity can be included in the wiki weekends instead of separate edit-a-thons? Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

• In September, ro.wp is running its writing contest; we have tried to have a monuments category 2 years ago, but it was only moderately successful (mostly because of fights between jury members, which spoiled the interest); this might be a good idea provided we have an external jury - we could ask the volunteers to double as members of the jury, together with our team.--Strainu (talk) 13:20, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

• I will read that page in more detail over the weekend. However, on first glance, it seems difficult to obtain the number of female participants reliably. Most participants do not save their preference, so we can only estimate based on the usernames. The rest of the metrics seem useful, so we will try to include them in our project

• Yes, not all the metrics will be relevant or useful. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• I added metrics for participants and usage on projects--Strainu (talk) 13:20, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

• Here are a few of the ideas we have. Other opportunities might appear as news of the contest spread:
  • At WLM 2011, we've had a partnership with a high-traffic portal from Romania which donated their unused banner space. This brought us a few thousand visitors. We're planning on contacting them again this year.
  • The Geography Faculty in Timișoara will offer us the space for the exhibition there
  • Another partner will host the exhibition in Bucharest. We hope this will be the National Library, but we have only begun exploratory talks. We will only begin serious talks if the grant is approved
  • We have sent a few emails to companies in the photo business who showed interest in the contest after Mihai Petre won the international contest in 2011, asking for additional prizes. We do not yet have any positive responses.
• I have asked Alina for a breakdown and will provide a response next week
• We have made the announcement on ro.wp yesterday: ro:Wikipedia:Cafenea#A_patra_oar.C4.83_Wiki_Loves_Monuments.
• No, we have not yet selected the volunteers. Do note that while we will ask on-wiki, we expect the volunteers to be mostly non-wikimedians - students from art history/architecture faculties (see the answer about edit-a-thon on reasons)
• I was referring to the monument database that was the basis for WLM from the beginning. The global database should be at [2], but it seems to be down after the toolserver transfer. This will not impact us in any way, as we use the wiki page as basis for our tools.

I've hold a similar presentation in Cluj in the spring. I intend on building on the experience gained there and have a more hands-on approach this time - actually take a few monuments with pictures uploaded during the contest and show the audience how to identify and update the related pages on Wikipedia (category/article/monument list)--Strainu (talk) 06:08, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• Who is the audience for this presentation? It seems that a presentation on this topic is most useful for Wikimedians or photographers that want to take part in photo projects on wiki. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Audience is mostly made of GIS and CS students. The point is not to edit the Wikipedia page (it would not make sense to illustrate that with a page made up of hundreds of template calls), but to let the audience know:

• There is a freely licensed database of historic monuments they can use in their projects
• There is a huge (50K+ in Romania) pool of free images they can reuse, many of them georeferenced, all of them with meaningful metadata
• Content on Wikipedia can be edited and remixed with other Wikipedia pages and external sources (OSM, Europeana etc.), thus allowing different views for the same information (e.g. articles and lists containing coordinates extracted from images, partial lists of works of an architect)
• One can do all of the above both manually and programatically
• They can directly get involved with little or no programming knowledge, by uploading images, extracting informations from other free databases etc.
• Wikipedia is a great platform for building such large-scale projects; this one might be a bit tricky to pass along, as examples (except Wki Loves * contests) do not abound.

There is also the possibility of a hands-on lab (which can become an edit-a-thon), but there is still the issue of mentoring the participants.

In your experience, what is the optimum ratio of mentors/participants for an edit-a-thon?--Strainu (talk)

Added details about Wiki Weekend in the budget.--Strainu (talk) 13:43, 27 July 2014 (UTC)