Wikimedia Conference 2012/Documentation/Day 2/WLM

• Wiki loves monuments calendar 2012 is distributed
• 2011 - World record for most photos submitted in a month (Details?)
• 2012 - started organising in Dec '11
  • 25 countries participating (no antarctic rep)
  • 300K - 500K photos expected.
• Federative process
  • Has to be done by local people!
    • Team can assist with technical things
  • 5 basic recommendations, but can add local rules to cover local situations.
  • Small budget for a grant programme.
  • Add incentives to get better pictures.
  • Talk to other countries!
  • See the FAQ and the Who's who page.
  • Documentation will be on Commons

Contest rules

• Pictures have to be self-taken
• Has to be uploaded in September
• Default license must be CC-BY-SA-3.0
• Pictures have to be identified by locally determined identifier. The database should be able to do geolocation based on this, and a bot geotags them.
• Participants must have their email identified.

Judging criteria

• Technical quality
• Originality and Wow! factor
• Usefulness for Wikipedia (advised)
• Still a question of taste

Jury suggestions

• Have a diverse jury
• Have it ready one month ahead
• e.g. 2 photographers, 2 heritage specialists, 3 WIkimedians & a facilitator.
• Lock them in a room, set a deadline, provide cookies and coffee and medical help (very advised) - not too much alcohol though.
• Can also have public voting on the wiki if you want.

Organisers

• Gather at least 3 people
• Get your local chapter to support you
• Divide the tasks (NB, if you try to do all the work yourself, it won't work!)
• Watch the timeline: which tasks by when? Registering domain, getting a jury, etc. (start early)
• Build a portal on your local Wikipedia in your local language
• Create a Wikimedia Commons page
• Subscribe to the international mailing list.
• Be bold in contacting partners!

Incentives

• Make it easy
• Make it fun
• Make it local (e.g. by having a monument list which is so extensive that people in all places can participate)
• Help Wikipedia (this way they will keep participating even if they know that they can't win)
• Give quick and visible results (e.g. seeing their photo on Wikipedia - this is an honour to many people!)

commons:Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments/Philosophy

Partners

• Write to them, call them, meet them!
• Make use of the name Wikipedia
• Three main types:
  • Government institutions
  • Publicity partners
  • Sponsors
• Use European Heritage Days to promote WLM

Q&A

• National heritage days: usually monuments open their doors for the public
• including geo-tagging? most pictures in WLM are geo-tagged already
• Heritage days are really good for "wiki takes" days - because monuments open their doors.
• Pictures that already exist aren't a problem: you can often take a better one.
• How to inform winners? Was previously a problem, but they will have a better handle on the timeline now.
• Had a pro photographer on the panel of judges in France, also had a prizegiving in a great venue in Cluny. Has been a great PR opportunity.
• need to sort out sponsoring opportunities: clashes between competing brands is a risk, but the international sponsorship will take a long time, so don't wait for it. If local chapter can help with international sponsorship, great.
• Have to be clear that it's not going to become the Sony competition with a Wikipedia logo. * risk of becoming a war of logos. Must also not tarnish the Wikipedia brand or sell ourselves out.
• geo-tagging is not required but makes it much more interesting for the participants. Monuments can be shown on a map etc.
• Open Street Map: difficult to get a cooperation, but it's worth trying.
• some official source has to determine whether a monument is worth documenting, i.e. if it is part of the national/cultural heritage
• Partnership with other social media, e.g. facebook? This is difficult because we don't have contacts with them at the moment.
• Verification of whether the picture is of the monument itself? Always an issue in WM Commons, but in this case, if you see a picture and it doesn't match the description of the monument as per its ID number, that will clearly disqualify it.
• What are the "nice to have" vs "must do" parts? There are only a few people in some chapters, and it's a lot of work. Only 3 people from Polish chapter did WLM, but they got about 50 volunteers.
  • Must-have are list and jury
• Sign up for the Wikimania DC event to make sure that it happens!