Commons talk:Photo challenge/Archives/2017

November results

Towers: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Jedlová observation tower, Czech republic	One World Trade Center, New York, USA	Clocktower in Graz
Author	Mirek256	Olga1969	Ermell
Score	19	13	9

Congratulations to Mirek256, Olga1969 and Ermell. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:10, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

An idea for a prize

They will take months to leave a reply so we have all the time to think about it but since I see no drawback, I left a message in m:Talk:Merchandise_giveaways#Using_it_has_a_prize_for_commons_Photo_challenge.

I would like to use the Wikimedia Merchandise giveaway platform as a prize for the users who "perform better" in our challenges, that is the users who upload "a lot" of "good" pictures. We can define the details in a better way if the idea is approved, depending on the threshold they give us (e.g. a dozen shirts per year). What do you think?--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:41, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea. Some people might not want anybody to know their identity, so the prize should be optional. Some also might not want the tenth identical shirt. But I like the idea. --Jarekt (talk) 12:34, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Privacy was discussed already in the past. But as far as I can see many good uploader are smart professional, and they kinda want their name to be known around. You see from their nick and user pages. Also, I have not started to reorganize the summary pages as I promised, the lists of "winners" would probably emerge at that point in a natural way somehow. I am sorry but I wasn't even following the themes suggestions page as usual, busy holidays.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:51, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

On the other side those gathering tons of QIs, VIs, FPs, POTY don't even get a "thank you"...Poco² 09:26, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm not really sure how one would objectively decide users who "perform better" in the way you say (users who upload "a lot" of "good" pictures). Surely the only winners are those who get 1/2/3 place in a given month. I wouldn't really want to get into picking favourite contributors outside of that, and as Poco says, there are other forums too where people nominate a lot of great pictures. A prize has been suggested for photo challenge before, and it maybe worth experimenting with one month. But adding such a reward does change the dynamic of the competition from being just a bit of fun to being something a bit more serious. It provides more incentive to up-vote friends or to down-vote someone you think has won already or is undeserving. The UI for photo challenge deliberately makes it harder to know who created a given photo before voting on it, but it doesn't hid this info completely. While winning a WMF t-shirt is unlikely to lead to trouble, a larger prize may. It may end up being more hassle than it is worth, if the postage + person's time queing in the post office, adds up to more than the value of the merchandise. Then one has to question if adding a prize really achieved anything, such as making someone more likely to contribute more or stay longer? Perhaps, as Poco hints, we should simply be more generous in saying "thank you" or noting a particularly great image on someone's talk page. That might be a lot more encouragement than simply being picked to win a t-shirt. -- Colin (talk) 10:59, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

At this point I feel that apart from all those contributing with great material in the Challenge, this "Thank you" goes to all those, especially to Colin, for setting all this up. I don't participate often here (probably because I plan my photographic tours rather long-term) but the result of this initiative is outstanding! Poco² 11:49, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh my G**, are we discussing even about this scenario? Deciding who gets a gift is a simple detail, and users who upload many good pictures can already get a t-shirt, they just have to be selected. The main reason they didn't get one is probably because people who should be there on meta submitting the candidature are spending their time in other discussions (like this one? :D). I proposed for T-shirts dozen of users from many platforms, I will do probably even for commons users one day. And some of them I didn't even know them, I just saw how hard they were working and noone was caring enough. In the meantime I thank quite a lot of users on commons for their uploads, every type of upload. And I don't see this problem at all. I see a lot of users who should maybe focus more on thanking, but not offering to give a T-shirt to good uploaders of monthly competition won't change them. I thank dozens of people in all possible ways, from merchandise giveaways to thank edits to wikilove from personal mail to direct contact in meetings. I don't see any problem.

Also, you don't get a t-shirt if you don't want to. You just don't send an address when they contact you. I didn't have to queue to get my T-shirt but as soon as I discovered about the custom tax I've always informed people about that. So no big deal. it's still a thank you, you decide to get it the stuff in the end. It is a just a thank you with a possible gift. You inform people in a standardize message about "issues", they decide. It's just a copy and paste.

Also it is NOT serious. A new camera is a serious gift. Leaving a T-shirt after a while I think it is not (no, it's not for every winner, it's for people who constantly take part with good results, that is usually getting in the first three or getting some votes or having images reused in a short time, my idea was to decide later depending on the number of shirts we could have. But really there are so many objective ways to define that...). My comment was clearly oriented about a summary of the last year or similar, so we can't try it for a month. Did you also read what I wrote on meta?

I have the feeling that there was a need to give some generic comment in certain direction and it has been superimposed to my original idea, forcing it when it was fulfilling "your imagination". If you think about a "serious" gift (probably because of some previous discussion? No idea...) it has to be kinda for every competition, otherwise it wouldn't be serious enough. So you start to think of it as something we can try for a month (but that's not what I said on meta, I said a year and I said I have to reorganize summary pages just above, that's not something you need for a simple clear winner price right in a month). Then we have this feeling that it alters some dynamics of voting, because it is "serious", people do that for serious stuff right? :D so of course we fear that people may somehow abuse the voting process (for a shirt? really?). But has anyone abused of the merchandise giveaway so far? No. Because it is a simple item and is an internal process, and this idea was intended like that as well. Noone said anything about putting that in the competition header or similar. it was a surprise once in a while, exactly as the giveaway service was intended.

In the end, BTW I am quite amused. --Alexmar983 (talk) 15:57, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Template Photo challenge winner

• Just curious, {{Photo challenge winner}} is not added on the last winners, since some monthes. Is this practice, or the template, deprecated? I think it is possible to modify a bit the template to categorize the pictures in Category:Photo challenge winners and to add a top right icon on the file page as for the QI, VI and FP. Just a suggestion... Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 15:35, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I create a separate section for your proposal/question. I suspect it is one of those details to improve. Actually, I think I had a similar "idea" many months ago. But it is already hard enough to manage the theme proposal page that I probably forgot to discuss or study it. I have much more ideas than i have time, this challenge would really benefit for more constant users in the "management sector". Please, if noone opposes, take charge of that.--Alexmar983 (talk) 16:17, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

•  Done Now an icon is visible on each files that have this template, and the files are categorized in Category:Photo challenge winners, I wonder is fastCCI tool to find the good images could not includes those files.... I also started to put the template on the files that have not been yet tagged with it. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 17:24, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Missing results for 2016 - October - Water Supply Infrastructure

Is there any particular reason why the results for 2016 - October - Water Supply Infrastructure are not displayed on this page?? --Kbh3^rdtalk 22:02, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Water Supply Infrastructure: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Supply of drinking water in Hong Kong	Water tower near Mittweida, Saxony, Germany	Marmeaux, old wash house in Burgundy, France
Author	Cccefalon	Kyriondaniel	Ibex73
Score	26	21	16

Those results were displayed and are now archived at Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/Archives/2016. --Jarekt (talk) 20:14, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't understand. This project page shows results for each month going back to December, 2013. It includes Gardening from October 2016, but omits Water Supply Infrastructure from October 2016. Why is the latter treated differently than the other 69 challenges represented on the page? --Kbh3^rdtalk 18:31, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Kbh3^rd, I am sorry I misunderstood you. I was thinking that "this page" refereed to this talk page where we also display that template. But You meant this Commons page which was missing results. All fixed now. --Jarekt (talk) 15:28, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

February and March themes

Just a proposal: I like to haver this 2+1 systems. I suggest we let the drone challenge open also in february (in the end, it was suggested to have it in the spring, statistically the weather was not our main ally so far). We close home appliance, as it is time, and trains, as it was successful.

As I expected, the train challenge end up with a lot of entries lacking real technical details. I'll think about another more specific challenge later.

So my plan is:

• we keep the drone challenge open
• we find two new challenges, one easy and one more challenging that can be continued in March if necessary.

February is a short month, so I would prefer one of the challenge to be easy.

My easy guess is one about places, probably "barns" or "clocks on public buildings", but you tell me.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:22, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

As a difficult competition we should really do the one about "guessing". I don't know why it was stopped, we still need good pictures about that topic. Now that we are getting used to two month competition I don't see why not.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:26, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I am fine with keeping drone challenge open for another month. I would be also OK with barns or clocks. But I still think we should try some form of undocumented locations, maybe courthouses as suggested by User:P199 or theater buildings, probably can not do clocks or barns as they will not have articles about them. I have a query for undocumented town halls some distance from Fairfax, Virginia and I noticed you played with per county queries. --Jarekt (talk) 04:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes you can do in a similar way to the same query of dismantled buildings I left in the theme pages in November. Please consider that wikdata needs a very strong and constant effort to be updated, so it's also a way to show expert users from other platforms how to use it and take care of it. If we start using queries we must clearly state they are sometimes not complete. Many spots are missing because they have no properties or items do not exist, for example. My long-term goal was always to use them, but to introduce them to users gradually. You have to carefully select a challenge where they are statistically more updated, the more you wait for the following ones, the lower the error would be in any case. For example in country like Italy or Sweden or Germany or UK the situation is quite good, but not everywhere. If we do undocumented town halls we have to suggest also another way to list them, something like "go to the category of commons of the place" (type category:name or open the article on your local wiki, than the cat from there) and check if it is there. Town halls are a very standard image, for big place we have them, for small villages it's easy to check because images are limited in a category. Also, I am basically offline up to the 7th-9th of february, so if we do a "missing place", i have to focus my limited time just to organized that. I am also worried that we do too many "location challenges" in a relatively cold month. So if we accept "barns" I would still go for a second, more difficult (probably to be extended) challenge. if not guessing, than "engines", "Electric Motors", "multilingualism"... and keep the introduction of missing place to March, when I finally have all the time. I keep saying it, but this should be the right moment... very busy months at work so far :D. If we do missing place than I would prefer to do two at same times. That's because what a wikidata list does not show, it may be shown by another. For example you look for missing theaters (difficult) and town halls (easy) in two challenges during the same months. You may find one nopt far way from to the other, but only one is on the wikidata lists. If I make people go somewhere, better do it for as much stuff as possible. March is a better month to go around, and I can prepare both on time. --Alexmar983 (talk) 06:56, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

How about for February barns and Multilingualism or Numbers. And for March "Undocumented Courthouses and Theaters" (combined into one challenge) so there is a higher chance that there is some undocumented building in scope around you. And the requirement would be to have Wikipedia or wikidata page but no image on Commons. Alternatively we could allow cases where there is some bad image, defined by size(?). The wikidata queries (based on radius or region) can help, but will not always be accurate. --Jarekt (talk) 13:12, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok we can arrange March in the following month. Still, "Courthouses and Theaters" sounds strange. Maybe "Courthouses, police station and Prisons"? (prison is one of the theme) But we see later. About next month, "numbers" is easy. For "simmetry", I would like one difficult challenge to be prolonged, and it is difficult for me to see if it is more "multlingualism" or "barns". None of the them is technically too difficult, but they are not common either for a lot of people, and the month is short. We'll see. If one of the two challenge is going to be below 50 submissions, that one IMHO should be prolonged. It would be up to you to make the final page, so if noone has any idea, you have the last choice. --Alexmar983 (talk) 16:23, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Maybe, "Undocumented public buildings": Courthouses, city halls, police stations, etc. --Jarekt (talk) 00:42, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok as soon as I am back I merge all the relative challenge in one to be archived consistenly, and we approve that. At this point this would be an easy challenge. Probably the best would have been to do one about "city halls" (easy) and another one about prisons and courthouse (difficult) and do both, but we can go that way. it's also important that "undocumented place" generic is done after all of these challenges. I will propose also "undocumented religious places" and "undocumented schools" and only after a lot of specific challenge we fill the gaps with what is left.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:14, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I do not think "city halls" would be easy around here. They were all well documented, so I would have to travel, but the point of the exercise is to do a search of missing photographs and than take them. --Jarekt (talk) 12:49, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Let's change "town halls" in "local gov't building". Still, I think that the best option is to start the first two "undocumented place" challenges together in March, and stop the more successful one. We just have to agree how to organize them, as far as i can summarize. More in general, I would always put these challenge together in the same month (other possibilities I will propose are "undocumented lakes and ponds", "undocumented train and metro stations", "undocumented hospitals", "undocumented sport infrastrcutures", "undocumented green areas"...). It can take a while to teach how to find images to non-expert users, there is a certain turn over so we have to be as focused as we can. So one couple now in March, another couple around May-July, another one in the Autumn and so on)

Coming back to the two new challenges in February... one is barns, I think we can pinpoint that as I see no objection. I remind that we have "hut and sheds" too, not to merge but just to point out that at this point it would be better to move that one "far away" (after March) for balance. We still have to agree on a second challenge. I spoke with an user interested in reto-romance languages, he is the one who put a favorable yesterday (Mizar) I think i can arrange some contact to make it a success even if starts this month (but again I am not saying I want it this month). On the other hand, "numbers" is older. Still, numbers is really easy (easy to find, than of course the idea is tricky to elaborate, but there are a lot of possibilities to upload) so I would select it when a real difficult challenge is proposed in parallel. Is "barn" difficult enough? Also with "multilingualism" we have to agree on a "filter" yet. "more than two languages" was IMHO excessive, "an uncommon language" is strange and we can't just rely on variable statistics. If we keep it open, it is simpler but not so much, so we have to equally difficult or easy challenge and we can see which one is less successful at the end.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:13, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok I see we still haven't decided. I proposed multilingualism because I have another interested contact. No limit, we keep it simple. And we see at the end of the month which one of the two to keep open.--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:18, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I am sending emails and leaving messages. It should work fine.--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:47, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

A video challenge?

I have repeatedly downloaded video files, but it seems difficult to judge photos to videos. This is why I submit the question of opening a video section in the category of "Challenges". In view of the download instructions, the maximum size of the files must not exceed 100 MB, it would be very short videos. Is the idea admissible?  Thank you..--Pierre André (talk) 23:06, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

So far one idea is to make just a video-focused challenge. In the end it is called "photo challenge". But we could starting in few months to make a challenge with two output, three best pictures and one best video. Let's hear the others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexmar983 (talk • contribs)

See Commons talk:Photo challenge/Archives/2014#Video entries?. I would not be keen to mix video (or SVG illustrations) in with still photos, as the qualities are quite different. There is no reason why Commons couldn't have a Video challenge either as a separate forum or as an occasional monthly theme or an additional monthly theme incorporated into this forum. The question is whether there'd be enough participants to make the challenge a success. I suspect one way would be to locate users who have supplied their own good quality video recently and invite them to the discussion. A post to the Village Pump might also find some people, thought many photographers don't both watching that page. I suspect it will be much smaller scale than photos and then difficult to get a critical mass to keep people participating. -- Colin (talk) 09:55, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

(confl. it was not saved) Smaller scale means probably that either you merge with the main one, with just one winner, or you make one parallel one with simpler topic. The early topics of the photo challenge were very simple, now we are more and more focused on necessary specific stuff. But it is true that you can also take a video with your camera nowadays so a lot of things changed from 2014, 3 years is a lot of time in the field of technology. the main reason i don't upload video is because I tried years ago, I got a message that they wanted a free format, and than gave up. Maybe that's also one of the bottleneck.

We can make a simple wikimetrics of the users who uploaded the biggest amount of video and were recently active. If they agree, we can reshape the competition in the direction they prefer. To be honest, the only reason why I don't do wikimetrics for the challenge is because we have a clear technical bottleneck and if we get too many entries it takes a lot of time to count the votes and so on.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:00, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Pierre, Have you seen my old proposal at Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Video:_verbs? --Jarekt (talk) 12:41, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I cited it indirectly as a possible strategy, dedicated challenges. In any case, this is a long-term strategy we should adopt. If we arrive to the village pump, I hope we produce very concrete examples, I hope we don't get one of those confused discussion when everybody says something different, we should arrive with clear strategies. One possibility is to introduce video-related challenges. With the current system, I think a new challenge is maybe less stress to gear than a bigger challenge? Not sure, just asking.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:00, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

 Support Jarekt I had no seen the post "Short videos of verbs..." Good idéa. --Pierre André (talk) 22:02, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

FYI, the format shouldn't be an issue now with video2commons. It is just as easy to upload a video or a photo. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:14, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Yann for this tool I did not know. The videos I uploaded were in OGG format. They do not obviously have the quality of files in WebM 1080P format, which seems much better.--Pierre André (talk) 21:41, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Commons photo chalenges, FP, QI, "WikiCommons workshops", ...

Hi. Was a long time (a lot of work on current Commons...).

I'll have a Wiki-Commons conference with a Photo Club and will try to convince a max of adherents to come to Commons so I make up my speech including Commons Photo Challenges...

What can you tell me I may tell them to come to Commons Photo Challenges

Last time I had a 'Wiki-workshop' I didn't know how to answer a question of one of my Wiki-IRL-student (I too teach for Wiki-Commons discoverers): "Can a promoted picture (FP, QI, ...) participate to Commons Challenges?"

What's about around you? Do you meet people that doubt to join us?

Have a good weekend. LW² \m/ ^{(Lie ² me...)} 04:19, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know, you do the challenge and than with calm you can also propose the photo for FP, QI. I don't think there is any rule here against doing this in parallel, and we usually keep things simple, but the photo is newly uploaded. So my advice is. Start here, and once the votation is over, go there.

Here is what I also know if they ask you something more specific:

• I am asking for some contact in WMF to improve one day our interface so maybe we can have something similar to WLM and similar and accept more entries, but so far Photo challenge is mainly "simple" and "flexible".
• We can't have too many photos so 100-150 is an ideal output, it is difficult to process the voting phase (or sometimes even to vote, try to open a page with 200 high-res file if wiki is crappy). We can keep the challenges open if necessary for few additional days (last example: upload pictures of the end of the year) or for a whole month (e.g. a difficult challenge such as "drone")
• We can attract new commons users or new "wikimedians", thanks to the visits of the main page and some messages in "local" talks. New users seem to like the idea, we don't have too many problem (sometimes they make a mess for the entry, but we can fix it) and we are here to improve description and categorization when needed. In general, it is quite newbie-friendly.
• We only give barnstars.
• Some of us could still improve the way we reuse file, or select them for further quality image recognition. We just don't have time. I studied the procedure 4 or 5 times and still I don't know if I am doing it right. My main focus is to reuse the file if it is ok, and I hope that because of the bigger exposition someone else will notice for FP or QI.
• We can schedule challenge according to the need of other users and events if necessary (right now someone asked us to put one about "musical instrument" in July, and I don't think we have any problem with that)--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:42, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a lot  Alexmar983. I'll consider all that. LW² \m/ ^{(Lie ² me...)} 22:31, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Earth 2017

Because of Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2017 let's remember to schedule some natural challenge (mammals in wild habitat, for example, or whatever comes next) in parallel to it around May or June.--Alexmar983 (talk) 17:08, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

December results

Holidays/Vacations: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Buddhist holiday, near Phortse, Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal	Stein am Rhein. Kanton Schaffhausen. Schweiz. Weihnacht.	Halloween costumes in the USA
Author	Gozitano	Hauserphoton	Jarekt
Score	13	9	8

Congratulations to Gozitano, Hauserphoton and Jarekt. -- Colin (talk) 21:57, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Rocks and Minerals: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Sea Glass on Glass Beach near Fort Bragg, CA	Agate	Ghiaia della costa adriatica. Riviera del Conero - Italia
Author	Ryanx7	SKas	Rosapicci
Score	19	18	9

Congratulations to Ryanx7, SKas and Rosapicci. -- Colin (talk) 21:19, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Main project page getting to be quite long

Perhaps move Past Challenges to a different page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miriya52 (talk • contribs) 21:31, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Agree, User:Miriya52. Perhaps a folder per year? -- Colin (talk) 07:35, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean by folder, but maybe a page for each year, with a link from the main page to those. --Jarekt (talk) 14:35, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh good you read my mind. I was hoping to find time to do that. Also in the archive, as i said circa two years ago, the per date archive is usually the best and more neutral option. Otherwise both archive will grow indefintely.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:39, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Warning or Guidelines for proposal page

Hi everybody, I was hoping to leave in the incipit a more structered and clear "warning" like this:

Small advices for the readers and users of this page This can be sometimes a delicate page: requests can wait for a long time and its dimension can increase. So please if you can: 1. Before proposing a new theme, take a look in the archive of both previously approved and rejected challenges (link here). You can get an idea of what has more chance to be approved. 2. Use alphabetical order (the sentence that is already there) 3. Before or after proposing a new theme, please try to comment also the suggestions of other users, even only one or two of them. Comments can be useful to speed up the approval or removal of every challenges. 4. "Learn" how to vote (the sentence that is already there)

We can change the order, the words, the color, the style... this is just a draft. I just hope we can simply suggest to focus a little bit more on how to prepare proposals. Specifically it would be nice if we can slightly reduce the people that come, "throw" a proposal and disappear ignoring the requests of other users. That's not nice, IMHO. What do you think?--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:57, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Looks reasonable to me, I'd say just be bold and put it there … --El Grafo (talk) 11:08, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

archive (already used themes) archive (rejected themes)

Hi! Some advices for the readers and users of this page This can be a delicate page: proposals can wait for a long time and its size can increase. So, please, if you can: Before proposing a new theme, take a look in the archive of both previously approved and rejected challenges (see the filing cabinet icon at the left). You can get an idea of what could have bigger chance to be approved. Before or after proposing a new theme, leave a comment in the proposals of other users, even only one or two of them. Thanks to such comments the approval or removal of the challenges can be faster. When creating a new section for each theme suggestion, follow the alphabetical order and include a gallery of example images. Use {{pro}}, {{contra}} and {{comment}} ( Support,  Oppose &  Comment) to discuss the theme suggestions. Remember that the (usually two) new challenges opened every month are finally approved on Commons talk:Photo challenge. Before removing a challenge that does not have enough support, leave a last reminder. We value all your feedbacks and inputs.Thank you!

How about this? Sorry, I'm not very bold.--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:05, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

ok I paste it today probably. Can you can refine there directly.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:32, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Commons talk:Photo challenge/themes/header ready fro transclusion.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:28, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Preparing the "undocumented" challenge

Hi, we agree to have an "undocumented" challenge in March so I start to prepare the pages for the future "undocumented" challenges.

Some preliminary considerations.

IMHO a robust long-term vision suggests to create an infrastructure to be reused for a long "cycle", that is some years. For 1-2 years I expect that we do a lot of "undocumented" challenges, refining our "skills" and those of our uploaders.

Of course we will still have "free" challenges related to buildings and places but I expect they will be more specific. For example "clock on public buildings" or "obelisks". The idea that is emerging, tell me if you kinda agree, is that we want people to understand that we have a lot of pictures of some buildings or places (example: tour Eiffel), so what we need are pictures of minor undocumented things or pictures of details or somehow "special" of those common things. So the tour Eiffel is fine but it is better if we receive images of a vintage screw, or the elevator or people painting it, or a special combination with a sun eclipse. We would like to, let's say, "softly", pushing the main output in that direction. If you notice, this push for specific requests is emerging in other areas. Compare a challenge about generic tools with the recent one of home appliances where we specifically request to see what's inside. Or the proposed theme of images of all engines but cars.

Ok. back to the "undocumented" challenge.

We will start with different "themes", some of them (town halls, prisons, theaters) have already emerged, and I have said I will make more proposals. The idea is to do a lot of specific themes before proposing the more generic "undocumented places". That's because an image of an isolated building or lake or river very often describes the specific area, so we can fill a lot of gaps indirectly.

Another practical request is to do two challenges at the same time, when possible. The first reason is that uploaders show some turn over and it could take some times to understand how to search for a missing images, so we want to maximize this effort for newbies. The second reason is that if you move somewhere looking for a missing image of X, you can also look for Y if it is nearby so it is more useful to offer a wider option at the same time. And even better, if you understand how it works you can also look for "Z" even if it is not on the current challenge.

One first proposal is that I create a specific template to add to these types of competitions. There I'd like to describe briefly all the possible ways to detect a "missing" image, namely using commons categories, or the articles on the local wiki or wikidata. We will suggest queries of wikidata specific of the challenge outside the template, and I will try to make it simple, but it's important that we translate it in many languages asap. We can't risk not to give efficiently these instructions.

ok?--Alexmar983 (talk) 12:17, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Alexmar983, you have a lot of points, so I will try to respond to each:

• Yes lets do our first "undocumented place" challenge next month and lets make it medium specific: not a generic "undocumented place" (we might just shelf that one for good), but something broad enough that most locations will have some undocumented place that meets the criteria.
• I think we should just start with one "undocumented place" challenge and have some regular challenge as a second one for the month.
• Issue #1: what specific topic for the challenge. Last month we were converging towards "undocumented local government buildings: city halls, courthouses, post offices, etc." or we can do more broad "undocumented public buildings: city halls, courthouses, train stations, post offices, schools, theaters, etc." I am leaning more towards the first one.
• Issue #2: specific rules of the "undocumented place" challenges. I would propose:

1. no images on Commons for the place; and
2. the place would have to have an existing item on Wikidata created before the challenge started. This rule is to prevent creation of short lived articles which do not meet notability threshold and are then deleted. The

• The rules once agreed on would have to be translated. Also there is an issue of verification. So far most challenge rules were wisely set in such a way that they can be verified by C# codes created by User:Colin. The "undocumented place" challenges will be hard to verify. If we add images to the items using image (P18) property we can create a query to test for it. We might be also able to test when item was created (?). I [[d:Wikidata:Request_a_query#Queries_related_to_time_of_item_and_property_creation|started discussion about it on wikidata]. We can definitely do spot checking or crowd source it by asking contestants to check other contestants. But that might not be a good idea if it creates animosity.
• Then there is an issue of querying for possible locations. SPARQL queries are great but not everybody speaks SPARQL. We can have example queries based on county/region or radius from some location. We should also list tools which can be useful of someone does not want to deal with SPARQL queries. I like your idea of translatable template.

@Colin: and other people interested in Photo Challenge, please let us design that type of challenge. --Jarekt (talk) 14:55, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Just one (long) comment before I go to bed (I live in China), let's here the others of course. Using wikidata as a prerequisite can rationalize but if we stick to the concept "existing on wikidata when it starts" than in my experience with users a generic concept of "whatever is missing" is much easier. If we do "undocumented schools" for example I just expect whatever school if an entry existed or not on wikidata. For example there are in the small town where my parents live 3-4 schools or 2-3 small squares and 2-3 parks and 2 bus stations and so on and noone is on commons or wikidata, but they are in the end decent pictures to have for very specific use. I could have taken them myself and in the end I took instead a picture of the bridge and the cemetery. The density of what is missing on wikidata is very different depending on the countries, but if P18 are updated is not so high per single group of location AND specific objects combined. Again, in a generic area for a Italian village no more than 3 or 4 missing P18 for wikidata items is the worst scenario, mainly hamlets from srwiki. When they are more is because of massive creation, like hamlets of srwiki or lakes of svwiki so not so various depending of the combination. So if we want something undocumented but specific we should provide pathway to find something (including looking in the commons category if there is any school or train station in the place X") but accept that we have to allow photos of non-wikidata entry and carefully manually check if the pictures is already here somewhere. If we want to use wikidata as a prerequisite than checking it's no big deal. When I read "place X" I simply update all the wikidata entries around that place, I can check if the only picture I can find it is the one recently uploaded. But in that case the density is not so great, so we can simply make a challenge "find missing things around you whatever they are", at least only very broad groups of "locations" "buildings" and "natural elements" could be used, but that's it. Personally, I prefer to provide also wikidata as a tool, but to focus on "subgroups of objects" and check them manually. Such manual check requires volunteers to follow it, and because of that I prefer two similar challenge at the same time, so I can create the category "buildings of X" for the place and double check more efficiently if there are duplicates, for example (most of the upload on parallel challenge are going to be on the same places, so it's less work combined). The uploader is not going to use more than 4 pictures, so 2-3 locations probably. it is not a big check to do manual with our workflow, it is 100 location maximum. We just have to be there and check the categories and files of commons at every upload, we can still do that.--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:41, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

A few thoughts:

• Worth reviewing how this all started. My intention was to encourge (challenge) our photographers to try new things based on a motivating theme, and to produce images that were good enough (not necessarily FP/QI quality) that it would be a pleasure to review and vote on them. That motivation will vary and could be a technique that you haven't tried, a subject type you haven't photographed, or for some people, it could be images that will fill gaps in our collection (however that is determined). If we continue to run just two or three challenges each month, I think they do have to have wide appeal. A challenge that becomes very focused/restrictive will have few participants, and thus be unenthusiastically voted on too. Not everyone lives in a town, or can travel far, or wants to. Ping User:El Grafo.
• Another feature of Photo Challenge is that it is attractive to newbies. I have long wished for a better UI as many of these stumble over the gallery image format when submitting, or make mistakes when voting. If we add other complications such as wikidata, editing articles, adding precise categories, geolocations, etc, then it may be overwhelming and require a lot of hand-holding -- and with people who may not speak your language well. As you will know, understanding our rules over categories and their creation, is rather complex and likely to lead to unpleasant talk page posts if one gets it wrong.
• Linking this to Wikipedia article images begs the question of why not run the challenge on Wikipedia.
• It is quite possible that the best way to illustrate an existing Wikipedia article will be to actually locate an existing image on Commons (or free image elsewhere) and insert it. A contest runs the risk of participants inserting their own images (and then warring to retain them) when there are actually better ones. This is probably more true of the smaller Wikipedias, where their articles and images may be less well tended than en:wp. You do run the risk that some obscure WP has no image of the Eiffel Tower, to pick an extreme example. Are we (as organisers) really going to investigate every image to make sure there wasn't one on Commons already? I certainly don't have the time to review the facts of 100 images. It is bad enough chasing the few voters to vote wrongly, or nominate images uploaded too early. Many of the users who get this wrong are newbies or do not speak good English.
• While the rule requiring an existing article might be helpful for the purpose of running a contest, it isn't actually helpful for the purpose of improving Wikipedia. For example, when I took photos of St Matthew's Church, I had to create the article.
• Nobody reads the instructions. If you add more rules, you are just making it harder to participate and harder to run. If there are additional requirements, I suggest you investigate some automated way of ensuring they are met (rather than checking them after). For example, on WLM, many countries provide a map of buildings and the user clicks on the building and follows a link to create an image for that place. This works only for well-organised countries and even then requires a lot of effort.
• Having been a reviewer on WLM for several years, I know the trudge of looking through lots of unexciting photos. The fact that someone has taken a cellphone photo of their town hall and added it to WP is really really great, but if it is a dull building taken on a dreary day, with wonky verticals, then it really isn't going to inspire reviewers to vote support. Perhaps a different reward is needed for "undocumented" such as when someone thoroughly documents a building with photos from several sides including inside.
• It may be the complexity of this challege requires different software/UI more akin to that done for WLM.
• To repeat: I think the challenges need to be motivating for photographers and the results motivating for reviewers. Merely being "worthy" is unlikely to succeed. -- Colin (talk) 16:02, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I read it carefully tomorrow but I suspect I heard this partiture a lot of time. A user says that thing don't have to "evolve" so newbies are happier because rules are complicated. But most the time I don't see it in the real feedback. First of all, based on my research based on interviewing more than 80 users of different types, people like to fill the gap in genenral, including photographers. 50% of them learn tool fast, with no big difference, and 50% doesn't care. I have been there, so there is no documented risk to my knowledge. To be honest, they do feel kinda frustrated when people think this "about them". I always link this type discussion, mainly to newbees I meet here and there and they don't really like this lack of confidence.

Secondly, things evolve because there might be a need to. Photographers can be happy in a lot of places, but if they want to be happy here, there is a balance to reach, that is a community. Approval to certain themes is there and evolves every month and it is clear that our community wants to explore this direction too. We have 2-3 per months so everybody is happy to select one. And BTW what you loose on one side, you get on the other one, the final results is always there but in one case you have more of what you need or you don't have it.

For example consider the current challenges of February. One is 100% for photographers, barns, the other one is different. Now I am sure barns picture are great but not totally useful for many project on a medium to long term. you can see that the quality of pictures uploaded under the mulilingualism theme is instead not great but some of the users came back to upload images on commons after years just for it. And some pictures we would have never get in any other way easily: the one of the Vietnam product is perfect for a page "economy of Vietnam". And the one with newspapers in the road of Myanmar I've already used it. Now it is free for every good photograph to try that challenge as well. Some of them I guess will do it in the end. And so goes this month. Where is the real problem if some challenges are not as it was intended years ago? It's about plurality. We can dilute them, fine. We can just do one of them per month (although it is less efficient, but I am happy to sacrifice fro the "common good"), but why is this a problem for a photographer? I don't see it, really.

Sometimes I would prefer to have more challenge so everybody is happy, and I hope that one day with more efficient tool we will reach a bigger "level". In the meantime, let's try to get a compromise. We can postpone it of another month, but we must find a solution that is not "skip it". Problems can be solved if you want to solve them. For example the "missing P18 on wikidata" is good enough if we want to keep it simple. It is possible that the image is already somewhere, but let's ignore that. Undocumented means "not on wikidata yet", we have so many duplicates, who care if we have another one or two in this case. It is less and less common that P18 is wrong so we can afford it. Voilà, let's do that. And let's make it very generic, image of everything, so to introduce it. it will work.--Alexmar983 (talk) 16:50, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Colin thank you for your take, so many of the discussions here are just between me and Alexmar983 that it is easy to forget that just because 2 of us agree on something, it does not mean that we have broad consensus. We were discussing various undocumented challenges for a while and the [Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Undocumented_personalities original proposal received a lot of support], that is why we are exploring in this direction.

• I understand original idea behind photo challenge and I agree with it, but here we were trying to innovate a bit and try something new. If it is not popular we will be less likely to try it again. I personally like the idea of taking photographs which have high chance of actually being used, and the aim of this challenge was for people to do some work on searching for places that we do not have pictures for. Once they have a list of possible subjects than they can work on taking the best photograph they can of that location. I do not agree that will likely result in uninspiring images, and even if all challenges we run so far have some percent of uninspiring images (some even mine).
• I agree that the search for nearby location that meet the challenge criteria might be easier to users familiar with wiki-universe and not for newbies. But I also agree with Alexmar983 that we should not underestimate them.
• Linking this to Wikidata item and indirectly to Wikipedia article, is a way to easily define the constraints, so they clear and concise even after translations. The proposed rule about providing images to existing items/articles is to prevent people from creating items/articles that are not in scope of given project, just because you have a good image of the location. I was trying to foresee issues that such challenge might cause, but we can skip that constraint.
• You raised an issue of a risk of participants inserting their own images. I tend to think that is a good thing and if I have time I try to think about where my images or images I upload might be useful. If that is undesirable I did not realize it. In case of articles with no images, it is almost always better to have something than nothing. And so many articles have very poor quality or very small size images, and it is unlikely someone will suddenly get inspired to look for better images. That said I can see that this could lead to people replacing great images in an article with their mediocre ones or could lead to tensions if some removes your images. In some cases I looked for and article that was a good fit for some image of mine and than found even better one on Commons or flickr.
• You have a valid point about verification of the additional constraints. I hope that if images are added to image (P18) on Wikidata we might be able to do queries on when that field was added. One point of this discussion is to come up with rules that make sense and ways to check them. In the worst case we can rely on spot checking.

--Jarekt (talk) 21:16, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not saying you shouldn't do this, or it won't work. The "Undocumented personalities" got 5 supports, which is good considering how few people vote on that page, but 5 people doesn't a contest make. I remember an early contest we did on Wiki Loves Pride, which was pushed for by motivations other than simply producing great images, and which had poor participation among photo challenge regulars and small participation among those who campaigned for it. The point is that what motivates a couple of people isn't necessarily a popular motivating factor. Some of our more abstract challenges still produce great images that can illustrate WP or will have huge educational value. You guys have years of Commons/Wiki experience, and have both reached an extremely high level of skill with coding, querying and policies. In contrast, PC can get someone who sees the invitation to take a picture of "Silhouettes" and is inspired to do this but has never clicked the Edit button or Upload file button, and is finding the whole Wiki markup a struggle. You'll know if you look at the participants at PC that many are redlink users with small participation, and I think generally weaker English language skills than is common at FP. This is great, because it is helping solve the problem where Commons tends to attract young white men from rich western nations. If you provide the tools, like WLM does (it has a similar audience mix of newbie and experienced), then that could be a big help. -- Colin (talk) 22:15, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I think I try, we try to respect the "consensus". The proposal of going "undocumented" was introduced progressively as a general discussion including the theme pages here and there and so far noone had any issue (look at the visits). Than of course I know asking around that people really like the idea, so it is true when I say it is something that is requested. For example when I selected "multilingualism" it is because I knew at last 3-4 people that said they had pictures to upload. Normally I would have kept it for myself, in that moment as a last moment decision when we were one day late and I used it. So believe, it's not just me and jarekt. There are at least 40 people who would love these type of challenge, and 12 I discussed with them directly. And sometimes there are not even great users at all. I did my effort to postpone the execution (of at least 6 months more or less!) so to give everyone the possibility to discuss it even more, but we should try "something". It may not work as expected , but we should at this point engage and see how it goes. We accepted themes that got one or two support votes, maybe a third party in the monthly discussion, even if we were just "we two" (and we are not) how is this case different? Well there is one big difference, but it is not on the count of favorable people. When two people select "theme X" for just one month is no big deal, when you select "undocumented" you must think it more carefully. If you do a thing like that, you have to work hard and you have to prepare an infrastructure so good that it can be reused (at least to pay off the effort). there's no other option. So let's not make confusion between a simple lack of perspective on the meaning of consensus and an effort to do things right. if we want to do undocumented, it has to be done so well-calibrated that it is something to be reused, and the only way to really make it good is to structure it so... it can be reused.The two things go together, form a practical point of view. So if I prepare it, I adopt this long-term vision.

Again we have to find a balance here, maybe the best option is to do a generic "undocumented" (i.e. not in a wikipedia article, not on a wikidata item) so people are more free, see how it goes, and than start with more specific challenges later. "e might get some duplicates of file on commons but no problem, it is minor issue that we can tolerate. We will teach later how to check if a photo is on commons. What about this compromise? is it "simple" enough? I think it is.

Than, it looks to me that photographers like theme where they can... compare their work? Like they like to see how someone else did the same thing and so a generic "undocumented" is not so great? Let's take something for them as a second challenge. Something they can go around to shot in any case, something common yet if possible relatively missing at a good quality level. For example "balconies" or "clocks on public buildings", "huts and sheds" or whatever other ideas you might have (archway? stairs?)--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not really following your long first paragraph but I'm going to ignore it. OK try this, both of you. Go out and take an "Undocumented personalty" photo. Give yourself a month. I'd like to see something good enough that I'd enjoy reviewing a selection of similar images, but it doesn't have to be good enough for QI/FP. Take a note of what you had to do to identify a personality who is "undocumented" and that you were in a position to photograph, and what steps you took when uploading, adding to the article, categorising, adding wikidata, etc. -- Colin (talk) 09:40, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

My long first paragraoph means 1) it was not just me and Jarekt because many people like the idea asking around 2) indirectly, if someone did not like it would have had some months to say no also in the proposal page in many discussions where it emerged. Look at the visits to the page. These two factor combined makes me think your worries are disproportionate. I also add: OSM people are very efficient too, i have just started to contact them but I am collecting the ML addresses. And they have usually good equipment, so their work is rarely crappy.

But still, I offered a proposal based on undocumented locations, so I don't get now where "undocumented personalities" comes from. You want to intorduce wikidata with "undocumented personalities"? Or is it a test to show that it is difficult to do "undocumented personalities"? I know it is not easy, that is why it has never been my priority, and it is not now. If you do an undocumented challenge you start with something easy, buildings and places, why do you want to specifically to start with the most complex and difficult challenge, that is finding people? I don't get it.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:24, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Undocumented personalities was mentioned by Jarekt as the most popular proposal, and yet you don't feel enthusiastic about doing it. So this kind of sums up my point: (a) several people think it would be really great to have new photos for articles of notable people who don't have one but (b) when you consider the practicalities you either find you aren't able or enthusiastic to do it or would rather take the photo of XYZ but, dang, there's a really crappy photo of them already there. Ok, take the "town halls" option then. I see above a query for "undocumented town halls" but when I ran it the four data entries all had Wikipedia articles with photos. Perhaps it is different in other countries, but from my experience in the UK, we have far, far, far more pictures of buildings than we have articles of buildings. The whole country has been photographed, at a low quality level at least. It would be easier to create a Wikipedia competition called (to bring up El Grapho's point) "Undocumented town halls" were we list all the town halls that Commons has photos of and ask people to write articles about them! For example en:Category:City and town halls in the United Kingdom lists all the articles for town halls in the UK. Every single one is amply illustrated. And yet there are far far more UK town halls than there are articles, and my guess is nearly all of them will have a photo already.

I think El Grafo has a point that people may get started on Commons providing an image for a subject without one, but that image is some obscure topic that concerns them and pretty much them alone. That's true of my first few images. I took photos to illustrate some articles I was working on. -- Colin (talk) 14:11, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

UK has that website with tons of images uploaded, yes. But I don't think that "undocumented" is difficult to do for places in general. I think it is difficult to explain to long-term users with their opinion more than to newbies, but organizing a "mass" event replicating and simplifying what I have been doing during these months, that is the search of generic undocumented "places" (hamlets, villages, buildings, ponds...) via wikidata skipping some more "sophisticated" explanation about false negatives and so on, that's quite simple. So the main issue for me is to find a compromise with people here in this talk that want that specific things or a reason not to do a specific thing, because I kinda have the solution to start with, and I said it immediately when the discussion "degenerated" to keep it simple. Do all the "places" with no P18 on wikidata to introduce the idea. You might have some duplicates, but not a lot of them statistically, it is easy to list, I can also update more with the help of wikidata friends (basically I ask at village pumps if they can speed up for few weeks the P18 maintenance to reduce the false negatives, especially in countries that I know are critical, I also did myself for the USA). Voilà. It is a decent challenge to start with. Than if we want to start with personalities, it is just as efficient on the same principle but more difficult, but I never said I don't accept that compromise. I am open. We don't give money so it's not the end of the word if we have some duplicates...--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:15, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Colin: I'm kind of on a wiki break right now so I would've missed this otherwise. I did not read through the archives of this page, so I may have missed some previous discussions, but here are some random thoughts:

• First of all, I wouldn't use "undocumented" in the challenge's title, as we are (as far as I've understood) looking for pictures of subjects that already have something like a Wikipedia article or Wikidata item. They are not undocumented at all, they are just missing free pictures. "Undocumented personalities" sounds too much like an invitation to upload pictures of your grandma to me. There must be a better term for this fill-the-gap kind of challenge.
• Filling the gaps can be fun. In fact, that's how I got hooked on Commons in the first place: shooting pictures of semi-obscure general aviation aircraft nobody cared about and searching the botanical gardens for plants the common Commons user would hardly encounter in daily life. Pictures like this one sucked on multiple levels, but it didn't matter because they filled a gap. So I agree that this can be a motivating thing.
• But the above was 10 years ago and gaps like this are becoming much rarer. In many fields, you have to be kind of an expert to find the few remaining gaps (e.g. vintage cars). Other gaps are easier to spot but require expertise to fill adequately (see discussion on species identification) or have subjects that are not easily accessible (Personalities). So what would be needed is a theme where I) most subjects are somehow "notable", II) there are still plenty of gaps, III) the gaps are easily identified and IV) the subjects are accessible. WLM works because those conditions are met (mostly, an in sufficiently large parts of the world). If we can identify another area where those conditions are met: Let's go for it!
• Idea: Wikivoyage uses types of images that are different from what is typically considered useful on Wikipedia or Wikidata. Basically anything in one of their "listings" could benefit from an image: Hotels, attractions, pubs, restaurants, … The templates used for those listings have an image= parameter that is used to display an image on the interactive map of an article when clicking on a marker – but for some reason that's not a well-documented feature (→ might want to ask why that's the case first asked why here). With a tool like wikishootme, this could be the base for a nice WLM-like challenge for generic "places".

--El Grafo (talk) 13:29, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

In my experience they are not so "rare". they are easy to find in an automated way and fix, but since automation of article creation is increasing and few people know how to make good use of image tools, there are really a lot of gaps. Just talking of what is for sure missing on wikiplatforms. If you focus on what could have an article one day, than it is even more, maybe 2 order of magnitude bigger for less (wiki)developped countries. There are differences considering the countries, but gaps are still there. If I remember in italy in a province (1-2 h of driving) we have at least 50-100 sites. And Italy is a good country. Last time I checked it had the same missing number of photos as Belgium, but it is much bigger. Of course if we wait, the number of image on the internet will be so big that statistically it's going to be possible to find one there with the right copyright. It is not like that now. When an earthquake occurred in Italy, only Amatrice had a lot images on line, not the other two villages. The main effort is to be sure that decent group of (new) users start to do this now, because they also start to take care of a lot maintenance (category creation and wikidata and so on) that it is not wise to postpone. A bot can upload thousands of pictures from flickr, but there are many duplicates, wrong categories lasting for years and so on. So if it has to be a manual work, it can be also going personally (and learning something about management). Also, WLM is not a global answer. WLM is not active in some countries, it is very limited in other countries. But basically yes we are copying the WLM idea, and we wouldn't need to do that after many years if WLM were very "efficient".

wikivoyage community was interested, I also contacted users from there. I am expert in the listing of wikipedia articles via wikidata but I can learn in that direction. if you can make a list from voyage, than I personally have no problem at all.

OSM is also interested as a community. For example they can probably make a list of parks or schools that are not associated with a picture on commons. But I have only started to show them wikidata and vice versa. They want to cooperate, but it takes more time. In Italyt the communities are close, but not enough. It is a big achievement that we have a "almost correct" P18 in many areas now for example. It was still a mediocre "coverage" 12 months ago.

So, we can wait more to do things better, I can speed up one idea or two, but we should agree on a target. I still think that the best target is geographical, as it is easier.

In the meantime, I try to contact again some mappers and a sysop on itwikivoyage.--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:55, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Ok, we seem to have two definitions of "undocumented" despite as El Grapho pointing out you mean "unillustrated". One defintion was the presence of a Wikipedia article but no photograph for it. I demonstrate above that for the suggested topics of "town halls" this is not possible in the UK as all the articles on Town Halls have photos and we have lots and lots of photographs of town halls without articles. This is not unique to town halls. Train stations too, though we have good coverage of train station articles. So the tail-wagging-the-dog fact is that the real problem is that we don't have articles for many of the photos we have taken/uploaded. The second definition was that the Wikidata entry lacks the P18 "Image" value. Well, this seems to be a Wikidata issue, not a Commons issue, because it is too easy to find Wikidata entries where (a) the linked Wikipedia article supplies a choice of photos or (b) a quick search on Commons supplies the photos. And to be honest, even when you do add the image link to the Wikidata article, it doesn't display the image, so that's a real disincentive. Add to this the fact that I don't know anybody who uses Wikidata, and I'm really struggingly to get motivated to take photos for it just so a P18 tag has a URL. This seems to be a "Wikidata Challenge" and not a "Photo Challenge". Speaking of my personal motivation: I'm here as a photographer to take great photos that meet Commons' educational scope. I'm not here to supply a "done that" checkmark on a wikidata "to do" checklist. -- Colin (talk) 15:58, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

(Page stalker) That fits a definition of COM:VI, so it would be good way to get recognition. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:21, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I did not say I cannot use another definition of "undocumented". I always put it between quotes because I am flexible. Give me a different one, I adapt to it. Actually for me the goal is "not on commons but we have a article or other item on other platform that needs it". Wikidata is more and more complete so it helps in that direction. I cannot fight a prejudice here. It's not about wikidata. Wikidata is a tool more than a goal for many of us, although I have the feeling the long-term users get this dimension much less than newbies. You are here for something, other people are here for something else, some of us have no issue to adapt to a community need, other ones have much more issues. The difference is in the attitude. I hope that if we find the way to improve the number of monthly challenges, this is not going to be a problem anymore. People have plenty of occasions to find good images, it is strange that a little visibility of the main page for a good cause which is also in our scope once in a while, and it is quite in the zeitgeist, should lead to such opposition. I am not here to provide a lot of things, but would never ask people not to provide them if they want. I will ask people to provide missing/undocumented pictures in any case, and they will learn in few minutes to deal with false negatives and tools as they usually do. In the time I spent here trying to fix this, i could have teached how to do it to another user. But never forget: people are smart, it is the need to fill a role that often make us underestimate them. I copy and paste the same explanation every time, there is no difference that putting in a template. Some people get it, some people are not interested. they could have waited the next month, it is not the end of the world. we don't even give real prizes.--Alexmar983 (talk) 17:33, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Remember, I'm not opposed to the idea of running a challenge where the motivation is to fill in a gap in our content. But we have to make it something that will inspire folk globally and at all skill levels. There are probably countless examples of people who have taken a photo and uploaded it on Commons because of the need to illustrate Wikipedia on a topic they care about. They get the reward that their photo is seen by thousands of others and the satisfaction that their article is improved. But likely much fewer who will have taken a photo to illustrate a Wikipedia article on a topic someone else cares about. Can we find a theme that resonates with many people, or are the vacant spaces just too scattered? And I'm not sure there is anyone on the planet who felt the urge to take and upload a photo simply to provide a URL link on a Wikidata entry. It's missing the necessary motivation IMO.

Yann's point is quite relevant, and worth investigating whether VI is the more appropriate forum. I wonder then if there should be a separate competition with the winner the person who has created the most VI that month? "VI Star of the Month (March) goes to Alexmar983 for uploading 10 VIs"? Ping User:Slaunger who knows more about VI than me. -- Colin (talk) 19:07, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Since I was "summoned" by Colin, I read through the discussion above. It appears to me that the motivation of finding and illustrating new topics or improve existing illustrations of a given topic is really what COM:VIC is about. This something that can be done in parallel with a photo contest and could be encouraged and it is a fun exercise to hunt for new topics It is cool to both win a photo challenge and get a VI out of the same image (and a QI and FP). However, creating such illustrations of the yet to be illustrated topic does not necessarily align well with photo challenge in my opinion, and taking these pictures is often not that challenging if you are on the right spot. Actually, taking a picture of yet another school can be photographically very unchallenging, yet valuable for Commons.

I have not participated here recently, but have done so previously. The way I see this proposal to have a main objective for a challenge to illustrate what has not been illustrated before appears for me to introduce extra barriers, which do not fit well with the target audience for this project. I also think it would be confusing for the COM:VIC project if Photo challenge started to adapt the main idea from VI. It mixes up project identity and makes it harder for users, who visit Commons less frequently to understand what is going on and what distinguish the individual "Image/Picture/Photo" projects.

With regard to the competitive aspect of producing most VIs, we have the eternal (friendly) "competition" at Valued images by user. -- Slaunger (talk) 21:04, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Wow, I was preoccupied for a day and now struggling to catch up with this lengthy discussion. Colin thank you for inviting more people into the discussion. In most discussions in this forum 3 people participating is a crowd. It is a nice change. Some thoughts:

• I totally agree with user:El Grafo that term "undocumented" is a bad fit here. "fill-the-gap" is better, but there might be even better options.
• Colin you mention "undocumented personalities" proposal, which I proposed and got quite positive response. But then I got to think more about it and come to conclusion that it would be very hard to find notable people we do not have photographs of and take their picture. Maybe at some book fairs or some conventions, but I changed my mind on that one.
• That why I was thinking about places. I look at Wiki ShootMe! and there are few dozens locations within 10 min drive from my house or from my work that have articles but no images. But I was trying to come up with even narrower theme, so we come up with "local government buildings". But maybe it is too narrow. Maybe we should call it Wiki ShootMe! challenge and any place that has an article with no image (in none of the languages) would be in scope.
• Good point about COM:VI I never participated in it, but I should look into it again. But VI concentrates on best images per topic and this is for the first one (which hopefully will also be quite good).
• Colin, you also mentioned few times that you are uninspired by filling wikidata gaps. That is a good point. I contribute to and use Wikidata a lot, but few people are inspired by databases. My aim was to avoid making the challenge English wikipedia centric (or any other language), so when discussing all articles about some place in all wikipedias , Wikidata was a natural choice. I also love their querying possibilities. But I am fine with de-emphasizing Wikidata. --Jarekt (talk) 04:57, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

• Jarekt: COM:VI is very much about getting images for new topics. It is meant to encourage getting media of new topics this way, as it is much easier to get a VI of a new, perhaps not very notable, yet usefull topic, as there may be no competition, wheras if you want to get a VI of tour Eiffel it is almost impossible as there are such a vast number of good photos of that topic. It has often been my own driver for taking and uploading photos of ordinary everyday subjects, which are perhaps not so photographically pleasing nor challenging if I could get another VI and fill a small gap in the process. The Wiki ShootMe! tool (which I did not know of previously) is interesting for COM:VI, and I will make a post about it at that project. I also found that within close proximity of my location there were several locations with wikidata missing an image. Many of them i had not even thought of (and they are photographically boring), but interesting for VI. I do not see it fits well into the photo challenge concept though. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:18, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I try to give "information" here so you can get the perspective at a deeper level ok? Sorry it is long, but it is really a lot of different levels crossing.

So wikidata is a tool for us. It is improving but not as fast I or other people hope. That's why I wanted to wait more for these challenges. The reason it is not improving is mainly "sociological". In reality, we have potential users who could be reached with a simple mass message and asked to fix P18. But noone does it or accept to do it. It's easy. If you combine wikishootme (new version) and WDFIST in an area that you know it take you 20-30 minutes to remove all false negatives. And than you can shot what is missing. You can even decide not to fix that specific image for P18 because you are sure that in 2 hours you can get a better one. New users have a cross-integrated platform identity, they are not "uninspired" by wikidata, because for post-SUL, post-data users wikidata is part of continuum as it is commons. The problem are "old users". Simply (and comically) put: on one side you have these proud wikidata nerds that 1) keep saying their "little game" is perfect. (18 months ago I was told by an ubernerd, to use P18 because it was "ok"... if it is not ok now you can imagine at the time...) and 2) sometimes they kinda don't want "muggles". And on the other side you have long-term bittered common users like "2 years ago some asked about an automated edit on wikidata I knew nothing about and now I despise it". Their original lack of communication is the key source of this P18 backlog. So we have a set of tool that takes less than a hour to fix and use in an area if you don't know it or even 30 minutes if you know it, tools that 50% of generic users are willing to fix and use when informed but we don't use them as we should because we are still paying this (now-not-so-terrible) backlog and a generic lack of cooperation of both side. That's so frustrating... you can't imagine.

In any case, if I make a list of all the most frequent and recent uploaders of our challenges, I target their main areas of interest, it takes me few afternoons to clean their main areas of interest before the challenge starts. For example Rosapicci is from Rimini-Bologna-Ferrara area, so just to be sure I update that area very well. I make random user wikimetrics and update P18 all the time so it does not really matter for me if it is one user or area or another. I can also ask for help to some flexible wikidata users. At that point a big share of uploders will have updated maps so we only have to check every 3-4 h, and use every new uploaded picture as soon as I see it to clean a new area if we had not done it yet. it looks complicated but with the current upload rate actually if I know in advance when it starts, and I prepare myself, it is not so much. And I am motivated to do it. And I can find people motivated to help us.

If we don't do it yet, the later it is done, the simpler it gets. We will even have new OSM functionalities in 1 or 2 years. We are discussing about it informally since a while.

And if it destiny that it is happening not here, than I guess the only sane possibility is to have 2 "artistic" challenge + 1 "useful" challenge separated since the beginning. We can reorganize the challenge pages so they are discussed and displayed in the same areas (just to avoid duplicate, be more flexible and have more synergy) but than it is clear that these "undocumented"/"requested"/"missing" challenges require specific skills, and people learn such skills before starting them. And everybody is happy, I hope.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:43, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Alexmar983, I stopped reading when it became clear your post was mostly a bunch of insults about people who are different to you. Jarekt, I shall have a play with Wiki Shoot me. I tried it breifly on a computer and found it wasn't easy to go to a paricular location other than where it thought you were (much zoom out, panning, zoom back in -- Google maps lets me just search for a place). However this is exactlly the sort of visual data integration we've seen with WLM and it greatly helps newbies contribute if they can click click. Any challenge that involves the words "P18 fields" is not going to work :-). A challenge that says "Find a red dot near you and take a great picture of it" is much more accessible. -- Colin (talk) 07:52, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Colin I kinda doubt it was mostly a bunch of insults. Funny thing, that is how these people sound to a lot of other people, standard simple users with whom I talk on mail and offwiki. But you just can't say that, apparently. Even if you are basically trying to express how many people feel. So we can have users that have disproportionate reactions (sometimes because they are sure they're "professional" or "wise", no idea), which on the long term affect a lot of aspects and the work of many users, but we can't say it. it's easy to tell that you are disproportionate when you say it, so people are morally authorized not to listen to you. Will they ever think someone shouldn't have acted this way or should have told other people not to do in the first place? I am not even saying a name, these things really happened sometimes more than once. And that's were the backlog comes from. Really, if you worry about newbies, that's what many of them feel dealing with this issue. On the contrary, no big problems with tools in my surveys. it is because of this experience with them that I am sure that any challenge involving P18 "fields" is going to work for many other people, who are willing to use wikishootme and even WDFIST (see above) to clear before it starts or as part of the challenge. They are real, they exist, they are a lot, they are motivated. So we could create a separate type of challenge, where using these tools before finding the photos is a first step and it is going to work smoothly, I can bet you a drink. But I am fine with a simpler way as long as it gets people accustomed to tools.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:51, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

here is some data, I couldn't upload them all, there are so many in my books. I just put few more today. The grey points are users who didn't reply, but most of time they didn't see the message. Statistically, the yellow points are "old users with many edits". Vice versa, new users and users with limited edits are much more reactive, so are users that organize wikiedit-a-thon and similar (this stuff is useful for outdoor activitites). The green one learned wikishootme, the dark green one learned also WDFIST (more or less). They are very different per age and background. And if they were interested, they all learned the basic stuff in 20-30 minutes. And updated P18 of their area in 2-3 hours work or less. Some of them fixed P18 of their whole region, it took obviously more time. The message for each of them was very similar, it could have been sent as mass message but unfortunately someone thinks that this "stress" them. They didn't look stressed to me. A similar test was done leaving the information at the village pump of svwiki. 3-4 of them fixed thousand of P18 in 2-3 days. It is not a big deal, really.--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:07, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Alex, you appear to not have taken on board anything I've said. I was asked for my opinion and I've given it. You write too much, mostly not relevant. What motivates you and what motivates me are different. I thought Photo Challenge was about inspiring photographers to take great photos and stretch themselves with new ideas and techniques and subjects. If there are schools, hospitals, and government buildings near me for which we lack a photo, then that's quite likely to be because they aren't a photogenic subject. Hence: no enjoyment to take and no enjoyment to review. Some people will be motivated merely as an exercise in filling the gap with any old photo, but that isn't IMO what Photo Challenge is about. There may be an opportunity to combine one of these mapping tools with a challenge theme, but the focus of the challenge always needs to return to "Is this inspiring, photographically speaking". -- Colin (talk) 15:57, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I answered you about that: we can do a totally different challenge in parallel, we can accept whatever compromise it inspires you, we can simply accept that once in awhile you have also a challenge like this. We did have "uninspiring challenges" already, and we survived, so I don't understand why having some of them like this is such a big deal now. Things evolve, it happens. But in any case, I mostly tried to explain to you that there is no real big problem for tools with people who want to take these pictures, they learn fast. And there will always be also photographers that are inspired in nay case. Even now not all photographers take part to both competitions even when they are both "for their inspiration", so why having this type is a problem once in a while, I really don't get it. In any case, I don't get many of other challenges but it don't oppose, it is a good sign of pluralism for me. When I put the overall aspects together, based on data and previous challenge, and the lack of any sign of opposition in the proposal page so far, I don't see the core problem.--Alexmar983 (talk) 16:06, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

In any case, I think the only option is to create a parallel challenge, let's make 2 "artistic challenges" and 1 "pratical challenge" for a month and see how it goes.--Alexmar983 (talk) 16:10, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Alexmar983 & Colin lets stop discussing each other and stick to how to shape this challenge so it is interesting to as wide of an audience as possible. I specifically invited Colin to this discussion because we were discussing a new type of challenge and I wanted to make sure we will not loose users who were supporting photo challenge in last few years when it was run by him. His comments and comments of people invited by him already reshaped such challenges for better. Lets work on this together, not fight about details. Alex I also fail to see the relevance of some of your lengthy writing, like the theme about OSM or your off-wiki interactions with other users. If other users support this or that theme let them come and speak on Commons. I fully support promoting Commons and the challenge as wide as possible, but I do not think it is relevant in this discussion. Colin, I understand your point about uninspiring nature of photographing uninteresting (photography speaking) locations just because we need photographs of them. I just looked around my neighborhood, and I had no idea about all the places that have articles on Wikipedia, some of them I am sure will be boring but some might prove to be interesting. No way to know unless you see them. If I photograph a bunch like that, I am sure some will be photographically interesting. --Jarekt (talk) 18:29, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

different flavours of challenges?

Quick thought (and please note that I'm not just proposing this so that "everyone wins"): Maybe it would really be wise to just split this whole thing into two semi-separate brands.

• Use the Photo challenge for things that work more in the ways of being an inspiration for photographers to improve their skills, try something new, "grow as a photographer". Things where the photography part is the actual challenge.
• Create a classic Photo scavenger hunt for things that focus more on discovering new things to shoot, fill the gaps in your area. Things that focus on the content of the image rather than the process of taking it.

Keep them separate on the outside so each user knows what flavour of challenge awaits them when they pick a challenge or a scavenger hunt. Behind the scenes, they can still be organized by the same people on the same meta pages, share the same rules, interface, theme proposal page and voting systems – or diverge into more separate things over time. That doesn't even have to mean more work for the notoriously understaffed behind-the-scenes team, if each of the two branches runs only one theme per month. --El Grafo (talk) 16:03, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

… Or maybe even a Media scavenger hunt, that could include sounds and video – things we need much more than more images, imho. --El Grafo (talk) 16:06, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

El Grafo, If two branches share the current Photo challenge pages than your proposal is equivalent to having some themes with scavenger hunt flavor (By the way I like this term, it is much better pan previous ones we tried) and some themes concentrating on subject or technique, the way we did until now. I am fine with that. But if we began duplicating pages, than I think it is just easier if some other team run it. My original proposal for extending our challenges in this new direction, was an attempt to test if this third type of challenge (other than subject or technique based) would be interesting to people. Than we could decide if we want to do more scavenger hunt type challenges. --Jarekt (talk) 00:25, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

In my mind, those "undocumented" challenges are just as subject-based as some of the other challenges we've had before, so personally, I'd group them together as scavenger hunts. But anyway, I like the concept of flavours, so why not simply have a set of typical flavours and use them in the challenge title to give the photographers an idea of what awaits them. Some examples with past challenges:

• Technique: Black and White
• Technique: Long exposure photography
• Technique: Underwater photography
• Technique: Drones
• Scavenger hunt: Food and drinks worldwide
• Scavenger hunt: Bridges
• Scavenger hunt: Water Supply Infrastructure
• Scavenger hunt: Undocumented something
• Creative: Coloured light
• Creative: A bunch of stuff
• Creative: Two of something
• Creative: Diagonals

They might have different default rules: "Scavenger hunts" would be focused on content creation, so uploading older photos from your archive could be the norm. "Creative" challenges would probably focus on encouraging you to try something new, so "taken during the challenge month" would usually be more appropriate. There are some themes like "Holidays/Vacations" that don't fit that pattern yet, but let's keep brain storming. --El Grafo (talk) 10:58, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

ok, you asked for it... here are my 2 cents (or 4 kilobytes). My analysis for a future re-styled summary page indicated the following (also overlapping) "areas": nature (mammals, spiders, birds) - objects, stuff and technology (kitchen items, engines) - architecture (obelisks, towers) - cultural (foods, professions, religions, holidays)- technique (drone, long exposure) - creative and meta themes (diagonals, primary colors, symmetry). I was thinking to make a summary where I put different colors on a graph so to see how they evolve over time. I even wrote to a friend about the best code to show a nice chart. I am not saying this is the best classification, just to point out that to me despite this organization, all the first four of such list are potentially "scavenger hunt". I think that we need a challenge "missing species" the same way we need "species mating" or "missing train or metro station" the same way we need "rail technology". For example take multilingualism. It is both a difficult challenge for a photographer AND a scravanger hunt. We need both new good pictures to describe the concept and a lot of simple pictures for many rare language combinations. For the "made in" challenge I've proposed it would be the same: a simple tag "made in Belize" is as important as a perfect picture of common product where I read "made in Germany"... they are just difference type of importance. The first is a scavenger hunt, the second is professional challenge. I cited on purpose two concrete examples that are not even related to specific geo-tools to help people locate what's missing.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect we need a different "scavenger hunt" in parallel to the current challenges. one scravanger hunt, one type of theme, anther type of theme. So for example "undocumented theatres" - "pink" - "traditional professions"... choosing the themes so they don't overlap if possible.

Also, the photo challenges for "skilled photographer" can IMHO remain "small". You don't want 300 pictures of barns or night scenery or meals, we have those already, you want 70-90 perfect pictures of barns, night scenery or meals. The "scavenger hunts" should instead be designed since the start for a high workflow, if possible. That's why as a juror of the tool "montage" (Wiki Loves Monument) I informed WMF I want to know more (in the feedback form they asked me if I could think of other applications). You need a tool that organize a first sorting step and a second voting step. I know generic users like the idea, so this means a lot of potential upload and a lot of "standard" (yet useful) pictures. We need an efficient selection procedure if we want to go in that direction, so we can also rapidly select good winner that compare decently with the other challenges.--Alexmar983 (talk) 12:38, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

March theme

I avoided the previous discussion because I didn't want to add more tension, but if we are not going to do "undocumented X" soon we should discuss again about the next month. Even if we want to do something, i was already contacted for 2 or 3 new projects on wiki and offwiki so I guess I can't do too much now.

One thing I would like to discuss here about next month is the renewal of one of current challenges. Since we have introduced the "1+2 systems" we had very different output so the choice was easy. Now, this month shows similar number of entries on both challenge but they are very different:

• "barns" are all good pictures. They are not always "useful" for our projects... maybe voyage or some local culture article.
• "multilingual" is mainly low-level pictures but they are actually quite useful for wiktionary and wikipedia.

IMHO we would like to have better pictures, so I guess we could keep "multilingualism" open so we can get more images to select for a competitive winner, otherwise the number of good-level picture is going to be limited. And if it is open, we keep receiving quite useful files, as useful as those of the mineral and the drone images. If we keep open the other one we are getting for sure even more nice pictures of barns, but after 80 or 90 of them I think we can have our skilled photographers to focus on something else. In the end we wanted nice pictures to describe the concept of "multilingualism" and that gap is still there a little.

We could also stop both of them, but now that we have this "1+2 pattern" I prefer to follow it as much as we can, I think it is less confusing to summarize and follow, I hope to keep it going for a year. We have so many candidate for the "difficult" challenge in the following months. And if we want more of a certain type of picture, there is no reason not to do it. Personally even if they are not great, I want more of these "multilingualism" pictures, but I would like to hear what do you think.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:38, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I think the normal procedure should be to define the duration of a challenge when it starts and then stick to it. A challenge can be extended by a month when there are very few entries, but that should be an exception. Here, both challenges were scheduled for one month, both of them have a pretty good number of entries, so in my opinion they should end on Feb. 28th as planned. Keep in mind that too many entries kind of take the fun out of voting (almost 150 entries in the train challenge is just too much for me). If anything, I'd extend the drones challenge, which has very few entries so far. --El Grafo (talk) 20:01, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

I also do not think we need to extend either one of the current challenges. I think we should be extending challenges only if there was very few entries. As for the challenge for next month, I will not push for "undocumented X" / "scavenger-hunt" type challenge. I think I learned a lot about how to phrase it and present it, so we should scrap current "undocumented X" proposals and start again with clear theme proposal. As for next month I see:

• Clocks_on_public_buildings (7 supports)
• Numbers (6 supports)
• Street_photography (5 supports)
• Tractors and Agricultural Machines (5 supports)

--Jarekt (talk) 01:08, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

The "stick to it" strategy is IMHO ambiguous. The strategy I would stick to it is the "2+1" because you need continuity. Knowing that one challenge per month can be renewed is better than "sometimes, one challenge can be renewed". You simply select the theme carefully. It is not that "mutlilingualism" is not difficult, getting a nice image of that topic is difficult. We just have to decide what is the real output, the number of images of the number of high-quality images... IMHO it is the second one. About the too many entries that's not the problem of the challenge but the voting system, and I wrote to WMF to know more about the WLM tool at least for future challenge. In any case if the pictures are statistically not great you have more fun if you have more selection. Check the size of multilingualism files, it is lower than usual, many of them come from archives. So it is not a problem of opening the voting page and also you can skip the less good one scrolling at them quickly. Keep it open is going to increase their number but not so much. I spammed the challenge everywhere already, otherwise its output would have been much lower. If it helps to have 1 or 2 better ones, thats's why it's reasonable for me to keep it open.

About the challenges, it is time we do "Numbers" which is a quite easy topic to find around. Another easy and voted ones are "Clocks on public buildings", "Vehicles of public transportation" or "nets". This months in any case we had a "conceptual" theme already but we can do "numbers" trying to stick more to "real stuff" during the next season (especially "nets" in April if possible). In any case, one of those should be paired with a more complex theme. Most voted and old "difficult" themes in the proposal page are "Concert photography", "Street photography", "Mammals in their native habitat" , "Traditional professions", "In action, camera panning" and maybe also "tractors". But we had a "rural theme" this current month so I would avoid "tractors" now. So my main choice would be "numbers" and "concert photography" (which is both not simple to find and technically demanding unless you think there is a better month for concert). But again, who has the time to make the challenge page has the final decision.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:12, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

So the end of the month is close and I prepared Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - March - Numbers. i think we kinda agreed on that one. It has been cited so many times in the last months and it is really old. What is the other one? I keep saying, something "difficult", if possible. I was looking around and concerts are mainly in the late spring or summer, so I am not sure about it. "engines" is also old but we are refining it right now. Considering that the last challenge concerning people was maybe "gardening" in October... I am thinking more now about "Traditional professions". What do you think?--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:58, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe Street_photography It is quite different than numbers, probably not easy and had many votes. --Jarekt (talk) 05:11, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Sure, I cited it before. I just proposed "professions" now because it was older. If you prefer that one, use it.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:13, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Photo challenge/2016 - December - Home appliances/Winners

Home appliances: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
Image
Title	Telephone W48 Interior view	Wandtelefon. Automatische Wandstation Modell PTT 1950. Schweiz. Innenansicht.	Radio Kuba Imperial Adria - Interior view
Author	CatalpaSpirit	Photones	CatalpaSpirit
Score	26	24	7

Congratulations to CatalpaSpirit and Photones. -- Jarekt (talk) 04:45, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - January - Railways/Winners

Railways: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Dampfzug der Preßnitztalbahn bei Forellenhof im Erzgebirgskreis, Sachsen.	Tekniska högskolans metro station, Stockholm.	Bex-Villars-Bretaye train at Col de Bretaye
Author	Kora27	ArildV	KlausFoehl
Score	25	13	12

Congratulations to Kora27, ArildV and KlausFoehl. -- Jarekt (talk) 15:13, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Looking for images about abstract ideas

m:Grants:Evaluation/100 Words Campaign is trying to find images that illustrate concepts, such as "ability" or "expectations". Please boldly add your favorites. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Are you getting money for this campaign (if so, for what precisely?) or it is just part of the framework of the grant programme and you are asking help in a "wiki way"?

In any case of course we can look for images in the archive... we do it to prepare a competition page, so we should be "good" at it. Especially my colleagues.

Here in any case is where you come to discuss how those words could be a theme. You want us to propose this idea as a theme for an abstract challenge? Some of those words are a theme themselves for a challenge, simply alone. It would be strange to ask for them all together in a single competition. We could take a look and select some ideas for the following months, but it is a slow process.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:13, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

"Metrics", "Motion" and "professionalism" have some overlap with some of the proposed theme, for example.--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:26, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing lets do this: wait for people to suggest existing images to meta:Grants:Evaluation/100 Words Campaign. Afterwards evaluate suggestions and identify 20-30 hard to visualize abstract ideas, (Awareness, Concepts, Discover, Engage, Encourage ... come to mind) and lets do an abstract idea challenge. I think it should be a single challenge with limited number of hard concepts that are hard to visualize at the moment with existing images. --Jarekt (talk) 15:58, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Alexmar983, I'm not getting paid for this. I found a couple of images, and then it occurred to me that the people on this page probably had some favorites that they could name offhand.

Jarekt, I like your idea, and I admit that I spent a long while trying to think of something for "Encourage" without getting anywhere. Perhaps someone else will have an easier time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:55, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing we can think about a challenge to fill the void, but be prepared for a long-term and unlucky scenario where some of these themes are selected for... next year. I do hope that the abstract proposals that we have already now could be of some use in any case. If you want, you can leave a vote. We always welcome new feedbacks from users of many platforms, and in the end meta is a platform like wikipedia, so we are welcome to help in that direction too. But it is a balance of factors, in the end. We could propose a challenge specifically to specifically fill the void of that page, but it looks too much generic and wikicentric, I don't think it will be approved. Jarekt you are en-N can you think of a word that describe a good amount of those word to be proposed for a specific challenge? Something like "abstract concepts" but hopefully not so generic. If we have something like that, we can try... in the worst case it is not approved.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:01, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Let's wait, and see what is needed (if anything) first. Thanks for your support and interest. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:48, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alexmar983, Jarekt, thank you for your interest in 100 Words Campaign. We started this campaign to create a picture card deck to use as ice breaker during sessions at Wikimedia events and meet ups. I read through this conversation, and I wonder if a challenge may be a bigger effort than we need at this point. I'm only saying this because, as of today, we are only missing 9 words:

• Best
• Feedback
• Grants
• Improve
• Increase
• Process
• Projects
• Report
• Solutions

When sharing this thread, WhatamIdoing suggested to also look at the words that could be better represented. Reviewing all submissions, I think these 10 words could have better representation:

• Evaluation
• Expand
• Ideas
• Information
• Initiatives
• Overwhelming
• Positive
• Prioritize
• Quality
• Publicity

If you have follow up comments on how to complete the list of missing pictures, please let me know, happy to work together on this! WhatamIdoing, thanks again for sharing this project here and helping to spread the word. María (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

María (WMF), I think it is premature to judge which words need more help, as the more images are added. Lets wait and see, which topics are really hard to visualize. --Jarekt (talk) 13:54, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Comment on January drone photography theme

Hopefully not too much off topic: I have participated in the 2017 - January - Drone photography challenge, and despite the low photo turnout I think it was a good theme. Regarding Germany, I do want to point out that while all my challenge photos are legal, were legal at time of photography, legislation in the pipeline for Germany would/will outlaw reaching the space positions needed for these views in future. -- KlausFoehl (talk) 18:52, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Interesting. Tell us when/if and how they change the law so we make a last competition before that.--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:46, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

KlausFoehl, Here on Commons we are mostly obsessed with the copyrights and are mostly not concerned if roles or laws are broken when taking photograph. For example, A museum might have a rule about no photography. We will not prohibit photographs from that museum , since that is an issue between photographer and the museum and mot commons and the museum. Similarly photographs of some objects like prisons or train stations might not be allowed in some countries, see File:No photography guard tower.jpg for example. But we do not have a problem hosting them. --Jarekt (talk) 12:44, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Photo contest Art and Feminism

Hi, Please see the details here: Commons talk:Illustrating Women and Girls, Filling the Gaps#Photo contest Art and Feminism. Comments and suggestions welcome. Yann (talk) 19:51, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Importance of different themes during the same months

Spray painting numbers on Chinese street Hangzhou Quishi Cun ZJU

Just for your curiosity, here is an image that could have fit both challenges this March. It depicts people painting numbers on a street. In the end, that was not difficult, considering that "numbers" and "stuff on streets" are quite general topic, but I am "proud" that it is not a banal image, like price tags on a vendor cart.

Since I don't care about winning (I am no good photographer) and I mainly want more images that can be useful for commons., I have maximized the number of uploaded files choosing other pictures for the "street photography" challenge and using this to "numbers".

But for the future, I think there is a useful feedback: try to avoid possibly overlapping theme. It is even funnier if we pay attention to select very different targets, because it is still possible to end up with an image that fits both. We could make a special barnstar for people who can fulfill both themes. I might say, I am not against uploading the same picture in both challenge if someone has a possibility. Not all of people vote both challenges and in the end if the theme are quite different, I think it is funny per se.

You tell me. End of the anectode.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:07, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

April Themes

One week to go... we have to think about the next month. I prepate a small dossier.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:55, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

ok we could put more "architecture" although the current challenges have given enough results in that direction. You can take a look of the most voted and old competition yourselves. With more than three votes we have if I remember correclty "Clocks on public buildings" "Sundials", "Nets", "Tractors", "Vehicles of public transportation", "Huts and Sheds", "Concert photography".

Few comments: "Concert photography"we keep for the summer months probably, "Clocks on public buildings" maybe it is still too similar to "numbers", maybe we can wait a little bit more? Do you think "Huts and Sheds" is still too close to "barns"?

Also "Alcoholic beverages" has a lot of positive comments if we consider them merged, but noone commented the merge. Could you please take a look? And maybe for the same reason we could greenlight another "earth science" challenge, it has been a while. if you think one of the proposal is ok, we can approve that.

My network is very slow so I have no clear idea about the global number or quality of current uploads. Please let's decide if we want the final date of one the two March competition to be postponed.--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:31, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Few option with more than 4 votes:

• Clocks_on_public_buildings (7 supports)
• Alcoholic_beverages (6+ supports and some opposes)
• Tractors and Agricultural Machines (5 supports)
• Nets (6 supports)

maybe Nets and Alcoholic_beverages? @CatalpaSpirit, ArildV, Photones, Kora27, and KlausFoehl: As last month winners could you help us decide next month theme? Also could you vote for future themes at Commons talk:Photo challenge/themes ? --Jarekt (talk) 16:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh yes I was also going to suggest to ping those people soon or later. I add also last recent frequent uploaders @Rosapicci, Tequask, Ibex73, Olga1969, and KaiBorgeest:

Just a reminder for those who don't have time to read everything in that long discussion: "Alcoholic beverages" should not include "pictures of bottles" or "ad style images" (if possible, unless you are very proud of your work) but focus on social, commercial, historical and productive aspects.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:57, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I have recently asked myself, how the topic generator looks like. Now I know:-) --KaiBorgeest (talk) 22:52, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Ok we have another supports for "nets", so that's a clear choice for me. It is different than recent ones and also quite old. If I have time to prepare the competition page and noone did both before me, I will probably do that.--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:59, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Also "Tractors" proved to be the most popular of the newly voted. Well, I guess it is going to be "tractors" and "nets". Lots of objects. We should balance next month with at least one more "natural" theme maybe.--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:23, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

I see we have another vote for "clocks on public building". But we are having some of those already this month with "numbers" so I still believe it is not a bad idea to postpone it of a month. Next month if I remember I ping another group of users, I really valued their input. We also have a lot of themes with enough approval, I will try to avoid to propose new one if someone else does, at least for a while, we are close to a funnel here :D

Since I have time, I probably prepare "nets" today.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:42, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

ok this is ready: Commons:Photo_challenge/2017 - April - Nets. If you don't agree with me, we can always keep it and change its title for later...--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:46, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, and I am done with Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - April - Tractors. --Jarekt (talk) 01:57, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Good, I was coming to check if help was needed. I fixed a missing space typo in title.--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:32, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

February results

Barns: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Traditional Norwegian barn for products storing. Norway	Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada	Abandoned barn
Author	Olga1969	Dllu	Star61
Score	22	12	8

Congratulations to Olga1969, Dllu and Star61. -- Jarekt (talk) 14:15, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Multilingualism: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image	[[File:|x240px]]		[[File:|x240px]]
Title	A love message in 12 different languages, written on the shopping bag. (Italy)	Proletаrier aller Länder, vereinigt euch! . Aufgenommen in Chemnitz.	First day of school: Alice draws her family. (Italy)
Author	Rosapicci	Kora27	Rosapicci
Score	24	13	11

Congratulations to Kora27 and Rosapicci. -- Jarekt (talk) 15:52, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Drone photography: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Abbaye de Jumièges	Sunset in Varbla beach. Estonia.	Yulong, China
Author	Elya/Raymond (Co-production)	KristianPikner	Chensiyuan
Score	21	20	16

Congratulations to Elya, KristianPikner and Chensiyuan. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:52, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Color-based challenges

It seems that the new theme "Blue" has some chance to be approved in the future.

There was a phase where the votes for this type of ideas were negative but I always though it was strange... we had red and white and "primary colors" but later "pink" and "black and green" were rejected.

Personally I like these challenges but I have no problem with the "incoherence" of our selection process. My "tolerance" is mainly due to the fact that a specific theme can be proposed later in a different "package"... but colors are just "colors". We should really make a long-term decision if we want them or not as a theme. Otherwise we end up with strange results where people approve "blue" and not "pink" (or purple, or brown...), despite the fact that "pink" is a much rarer color and probably more useful for the "variety" of the files of commons.

Maybe we need a little bit of brainstorming here. What about asking the general village pump advice? I would really appreciate if someone can make some statistics of missing colors. For example we could analyze the categories of files by colors and select the ones with a lower amount of files, that could be a good estimation, right?

What do you think?--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:12, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I do not think Wikimedia projects need images of specific color, as we probably have plenty of each. However it is still a good criteria for narrowing down the constraints of the challenge, and can result in great images useful for articles unrelated to color. --Jarekt (talk) 12:57, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Of course the images are here mostly useful unrelated to color, it is the object and not its color that is the main focus for wikipedia or wikibooks or whatever. Although, there might be a content-related aspect: for example, a flower or a flag with a certain color combination is probably rarer, you have more chance to collect images of less commons species or regions/organizations. Generally speaking, in any case, commons is an archive for whichever use (including commercial reuse)... sometimes I filter the results on google or yahoo for images of a specific nuance, for example. So regarding the use of commons as a general archive, which is usually indexed by main search engines, it is IMHO important that certain colors are not underrepresented. So if we crunch some numbers, that would be not just a trick to narrow down the selection. --Alexmar983 (talk) 13:11, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

May Themes

Let's discuss about the next themes for May 2017.

With 7 supporting votes Clocks_on_public_buildings is probably the most voted candidate so far. We postponed it of at least one month because too similar to "numbers" (February) and we though it was too early, we are not obliged to schedule it now, we can still wait another month... but it is a good candidate.

About the other choice, I think we could go for something more "naturalistic" if there is something ready, we had so many images of objects in the last months. I am thinking to the one about wild mammals. It does not have a lot of votes but it has been here for a while.

I ping some other quite frequent uploaders who were recently active on commons... @Waldemar L, Albarubescens, Palamède, Harshitha Kay, KristianPikner, Nicola Quirico, and Classiccardinal: . This is not an accurate selection, just new names different from those we invited to the discussion of last month, the first ones I could remember. I think if we do not arrive "last minutes" we can every month ask for a group of users to take a look to the proposal and leave some new votes in the Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes pages and some comments here.

So what do you think?--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:59, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I like the idea of an "urban" challenge and "naturalistic" challenge. For urban we could do Clocks_on_public_buildings or Vehicles_of_public_transportation. The "naturalistic" challenges have less support. As you said we have Mammals_in_their_native_habitat - we should probably clarify that those are "wild" mammals. Other animal challenges did not get any votes yet. Others like Animals_interacting_with_plants (this one needs gallery), Insects or Facial_expressions_of_animals did not hardly any support yet. Let me ping last month winners: @Olga1969, Dllu, Star61, Kora27, and Rosapicci: @Elya and Chensiyuan: , could you help us pick next month challenge? --Jarekt (talk) 12:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

It is implicit they are wild... although my Burma cat's natural habitat is probably a human house since centuries :D Sure, let's say "wild" in the title. Now... this is difficult and it is going to be two months. Considering it will require a lot of day light, unless you have some specific equipment for the dark hours, May-June or June-July are probably the best months of the year, those with the longer days in the Northern Emisphere where almost all our uploaders live. Am I right? Other targets like flowers or animal in a zoo don't move so it is not a difficult task if the days are a little bit shorter... of course noone of this challenge is for winter months, so we have to pick some of them before the summer ends.--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:29, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping – the wild mammals sound fairly challenging, but the urban topic on the other hand easier, so why not? --Elya (talk) 19:50, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

For the urban topic we can select the most voted or the most "recently voted" in these last days. So please vote and tell us the most preferred. I have no strong preference between clocks and trams/buses. Maybe if we want something simpler, we could assume public transportation is slightly more universal. I see a bus where I live or where my parents live every 15 minutes with no effort, I have to walk 20 minutes to find the first clock on a public building. So maybe if we go for wild animals, the public transportation could be better.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:22, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

FYI, if it is possible the "wild animals" challenge should be approved (including the creation of the page) asap. Considering it's challenging, it should be in facts shown around to maximize its output, IMHO. The earlier I have it, the better it is, so I can show it on the wikiprojects pages on dewiki/enwiki/frwiki/svwiki etc. Thank you.--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:48, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I created Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - May - Mammals, as a 2 month challenge. --Jarekt (talk) 12:52, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I fixed that page and created Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - May - Vehicles of public transportation. As usual who does it, if it is in the last minute, take a decision. I hope it is fine with you.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:18, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Challenge entry link broken

Entry link for april challenges is broken as of today, adding of new files manually only. Please repair. Please check also file usage for recent entries after comparing to previous entries.--Lkdflsrulx (talk) 12:39, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure what the second part of the sentence mean, but about the first part, new files are always added manually. We could use more modern interface like the one of Wiki Loves monument, where the update is more efficient with a more direct interface, but this will happen in some distant future, probably. So far, it is a very "manual" work. I will cite your comment for future improvement, so thanks for sharing.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:21, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Comparing two examples of the nets challenge last April:

File:Attraverso la zanzariera della finestra.jpg shows two links in the file usage section

as opposed to

File:Poissons panés (2).jpg showing about twenty file usage links.

These links have obviously been created by some kind of automatism.

Going through all files of April challenges you find that the files that entered in the last days are like the first example because that automatism didn't work any more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lkdflsruix (talk • contribs) 14:34, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

March Results

Numbers: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image	[[File:|x240px]]
Title	Nautical chart (Egean sea) and ruler	228 Memorial stone blocks, 228 Memorial Park, Taiwan.	Lane number on a running track
Author	Gozitano	Mk2010	Mk2010
Score	22	18	16

Street photography: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Inhabitants of the blue city, Chefchaouen, Morocco	A lady is checking the timetable in Prague	Herd of cows on the street near Mellau, Austria
Author	Black Sickle	Ermell	CatalpaSpirit
Score	26	11	11

Congratulations to Gozitano, Mk2010, Black Sickle, Ermell and CatalpaSpirit. -- Jarekt (talk) 02:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Scope of May challenge

I've raised a point of clarification at Commons talk:Photo challenge/2017 - May - Mammals. Montanabw (talk) 23:32, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

June themes

In June lets do Clocks_on_public_buildings as we discussed for several months. As for a second one We can do:

• Sailboats (5 votes)
• Vanishing_Point (6 votes)
• Alcoholic_beverages was proposed ages ago and over the years gain quite a support and some opposition.
• Concert_photography has 4 votes

Let me invite march winners: Gozitano, Mk2010, Black Sickle, Ermell and CatalpaSpirit. Can you help narrow down next month theme? --Jarekt (talk) 17:25, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

In July we agreed to have "music instrument" so "concert photography" should probably be scheduled at a bigger distance? Is one month enough or it is better to wait for September? Not really sure, just asking. They are all different from clocks so I guess they are all fine. --Alexmar983 (talk) 22:36, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

OK so let's do Clocks_on_public_buildings and Vanishing_Point. --Jarekt (talk) 12:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

If we are going with "vanishing point", I think we need to be clear if the image must have only one vanishing point, or if multiple vanishing points are permitted. I assume from the examples, the intention "the image must have one clear vanishing point". -- Colin (talk) 13:24, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Good point. I am fine with multiple vanishing points and added some examples to the gallery. --Jarekt (talk) 01:32, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I can't help you Jarekt but I had a lot of wikievents these days, my commons time is dedicated to refine images uplaoded by a class of a school now.--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:02, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

No problem.--Jarekt (talk) 11:33, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Jarekt, I think the 360° photos you added have complicated the challenge. For a start, they are such an unusual form of photography that they require a special viewer and only a handful of people here make them. They deserve their own challenge. Secondly they represent "Four-point perspective, also called infinite-point perspective" according to Perspective. The problem is that if you move away from one-point perspective, you get many views typical in a build-up area. So the challenge loses any special features, and just becomes "urban photos" and any photo of a building from an angle would do. Another problem with the 360 interiors is that there isn't actually a "vanishing point" in the photo, only a theoretical one, since the parallel lines don't actually meet -- the interior view does not contain significant distance to allow that.

So I think it worth restricting to one-point in order for there to be a challenge at all. I suggest we keep it as "Vanishing point: Demonstrating one-point perspective where parallel lines intersect at a distant single point in the photo. -- Colin (talk) 11:56, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Colin I am fine with one-point perspective too. You are also welcome to write up Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - June - Vanishing Point and pick best examples, as your ideas about it are more crystallized than mine. ;) --Jarekt (talk) 12:05, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

April Results

Tractors: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	John Deere tractors - One for all ages.jpg	"Lanz Bulldog" seen at Kröv tractor show	Tractor plowing to the land for cultivation
Author	Nheyob	Palauenc05	Ivan2010
Score	21	13	13

Nets: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Pêcheurs de la plage de Trinquemalay, (Sri Lanka)	Dried Physalis alkekengi	Fishing nets in Port-Vendres, France
Author	PIERRE ANDRE LECLERCQ	Gozitano	Palauenc05
Score	21	10	8

Congratulations to Nheyob, Palauenc05, Ivan2010, PIERRE ANDRE LECLERCQ, Gozitano and Palauenc05. -- Jarekt (talk) 02:37, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Link points to the wrong page

I have just noticed that the link at the bottom of the June/Clocks challenge page ([1]) is actually pointing to the February/Barns challenge. However I did not figure out how to fix it. Py4nf (talk) 20:46, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Problem still persisting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Borgyql2 (talk • contribs) 14:58, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Apparently fixed.

May Results

Mammals: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Zebra 2013 10 06 1274	Elephant mother and calf - chitwan	Wildschwein auf einer Wiese im Nebel im Sonnengegenlicht
Author	Alandmanson	Gozitano	GentsBilder
Score	23	20	20

Congratulations to Alandmanson, Gozitano and GentsBilder. -- Jarekt (talk) 15:56, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to all involved! :-) --Alandmanson (talk) 16:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Vehicles of public transportation: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Pamban Bridge is a railway bridge which connects the town of Rameswaram on Pamban Island to mainland India.	Two Airbuses at San Francisco International Airport	Sölden, Tirol, Österreich. Mit der Gaislachkogelbahn zum Ice Q. Sölden, Tyrol, Austria. With the Gaislachkogelbahn to the Ice Q
Author	Writingwithlight	Pulsarwind	Otto Domes
Score	19	18	17

Congratulations to Writingwithlight, Pulsarwind and Otto Domes. -- Jarekt (talk) 18:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Challenges open for voting

What happened with voting page for Vanishing point? ̴̴ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gitanes232 (talk • contribs) 22:13, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I was already asking in different place here, but maybe no one noticed. Why the page for voting for Vanishing point challenge from June does not exist? Michal Valach (talk) 00:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I've been wondering the same thing. I'm not sure what the structure is as far as who creates the voting pages, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KatSmile (talk • contribs) 20:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

it is User:Jarekt that create such pages nowadays. I though he was busy in RL, when I noticed the red link days ago. I vote few times during the year so I haven't really noticed that until now. I help him with the maintenance of theme pages and creating the submission page, but not the voting pages.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:56, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

We could ping the people in this talk, the uploaders of the photo challenge and the voters at the other challenge when the page it's ready, this should provide enough statistically unbiased votes quickly.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Opps, I forgot about it. There was some issue with the entries and I left messages on talk pages of people that had too many images, but forgot to check back and finish the job. I will work on that this evening. --Jarekt (talk) 11:38, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Jarekt good, thank you. User:KatSmile, User:Gitanes232 I ping you, you have the answer now. We can keep the voting open for some more days to fix that. I wasn't thinking to vote but I will just to be sure we have enough votes.--Alexmar983 (talk) 12:44, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Fixed --Jarekt (talk) 02:38, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

August Themes

The German users, despite being informed, did not upload the pictures of instruments as we expected. As a result, the current challenge will be postponed. Before we pick the next theme, do we agree on that? In the end we have to postpone also the final voting for one of June challenge, so it is not a big deal.--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:39, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

If we agree on this, "Concert photography" will be definitely scheduled in September, still good for the summer season and avoid any superposition. But I am sad, I would have preferred "Concert photography" in July to be honest, we basically made an effort to please other users, so bad it did not turn out well.--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:51, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Just 5 days... no comments? Well i would like to add, besides the usual lists of most voted challenge, that it has been a while since we haven't done a competition about "earth science". The one about "Caves, mines and sinkholes" got another vote right now and it looks nice for people on holiday, visiting many of such places here and there around the world. We usually don't select the "earth science" competitions based on the vote for the single theme, because they are many votes that support the generic idea too, so 3 votes for a single theme is not bad. What do you think?--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Alexmar983, Sorry, my watch list was not working right lately (I think it got too big and I am getting database errors when trying to use it), so I did not noticed your comments. I am fine with caves theme. I do not see much need to extend instruments theme as we have plenty of uploads, but I am also not strongly opposed to it. What should be the second theme? --Jarekt (talk) 01:58, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I also sent some mail and left some messages, so it has improved enough... but since we are voting after the 31st of July the old theme of June, maybe we can give few more days and don't vote immediately this one. it's up to you, whatever is less complicated for your organization.--Alexmar983 (talk) 02:17, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

About the second theme Jarekt , with some musicians this month and those next month when we select "concert photography", I would avoid anything with people. "fishing" is too close to boat so it must be postponed of some months... so it is "blue" (too many pictures of sea) "Huts and Sheds" is nice and has many votes, but we have already a possible theme for nature with caves and sinkholes, so i would say later, it is a nice autumn theme when people walk in the countryside (and "tractors was also scheduled not far away), "Aircraft" could be nice for the summer, "corroded objects" can be ok even in the autumn ? What about "sundials" (before the long days end, but it is still too close to "clocks" of June) or "in action, camera panning" (too many people?). I am not checking the list of themes, I am very busy, just using my memory. Whatever a photographer on holiday might enjoy is the best choice, I am not a photograph so I can't really say.--Alexmar983 (talk) 02:31, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe Camera panning. It is waiting for a while and it has some support. --Jarekt (talk) 03:36, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

If noone opposes, I will prepare "caves and sinkholes" as soon as I have time and if there is no negative comment, fine with me for "Camera panning" as second theme. My golden rule is still that whoever has time to do the challenge page, takes the final decision :D--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:09, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

For our tourists Jarekt here it comes: Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - August - Caves, Mines and Sinkholes. they should have fun going around, they are a lot of nice sites underground to visit almost everywhere.--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:55, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I assume videos are not eligible for the panning challenge? --ThePenultimateOne (talk) 8:22, 06 August 2017 (UTC)

July Themes

Ok, so in one week July begins.

The comments in the theme pages are slowing down, maybe we can ping someone. I ping the last winners User:Nheyob, User:Palauenc05 User: Ivan2010, User:PIERRE ANDRE LECLERCQ and User:Gozitano, if you want to leave some votes or comments.

So, first of all, musical instruments should be selected because of an event in Hamburg, as requested by User:Gnom. Are we still ok with that? I think so. User:Uwe Rohwedder and User:Mich.kramer, I saw also your names on those pages of dewiki, can you also inform your dewiki friends? Thanks!

About the second choice, I notice that besides "Street photography" in March, the last challenge showing some people occurred in December ("Holidays"). And in that case people enjoyed more the photos with people that those without them, as you can see looking at the winners, so maybe it's time we try something in that direction. I mean, we can do this also next month... "concert photography" will show a lot of performers and public, but we should avoid it now because it overlaps too much with "musical instrument".

Personally, since it is summer I'm a little bit tempted also by "sailbots", if not this month maybe the next one.

Let's cast the last votes and crunch the number.-Alexmar983 (talk) 06:27, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

I am fine with musical instruments and sailboats, but more votes on Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes would be nice. --Jarekt (talk) 03:22, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

maybe it's the season... people have better things to do than voting for themes. There are two or three proposals that I wanted to remove. I wait few days and if they get no positive comments at this round, I put them in the archive.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:37, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

musical instruments and sailboats than?--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:42, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Sure, I see no objections. --Jarekt (talk) 16:16, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - July - Sailboats. Sorry i gotta go. Not sure when I am back today!--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:50, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Link to submit files for musical instruments challenge is broken since a few days. This may hinder file distribution to foreign languages--Wihomy04 (talk) 16:37, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

June results

Clocks: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Horloge intérieure, entrée de l'ancienne filature de la Schappe, Saint-Rambert-en-Bugey, France		Gate clock of the Nordwolle works, Delmenhorst, Germany
Author	Classiccardinal	Musicaline	Jacek79
Score	23	17	16

Congratulations to Classiccardinal, Musicaline and Jacek79. (The Vanishing Point voting closes 10th August). -- Colin (talk) 16:04, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Vanishing Point: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Malostranská station on line A, Prague Metro	Capuchin friars arcades: sequence of 143 arches built in Comacchio in 1647-Ferrara (Italy)	D Paderborn Dom P8075590
Author	Ввласенко	Rosapicci	Nobvonriedern
Score	13	11	11

Congratulations to Ввласенко, Rosapicci and Nobvonriedern. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:27, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Strip Photography in the Panning Contest

Image captured using digital strip photography, which I would like to submit

Is strip photography allowed in this contest? To quote Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Andrew Davidhazy:

A common way to photograph subjects which are in motion when we wish to blur the background but not the subject, is to pan while the shutter makes the exposure. The effect of panning, or following the movement of the subject, is that it's [sic] image is relatively stationary with respect to the film while the image is recorded on the film and thus a sharp image is recorded even with a relatively long exposure time.

Another way to accomplish a similar effect is to keep the camera stationary but move the film while the exposure is being made. If the film is moved so that the image is stationary with respect to the film, a sharp image can be recorded which looks very much like it had been made with a "panned" camera.

It is on this latter principle that photofinish "strip" cameras operate. Specialized panoramic and aerial mapping cameras also depend on the same principle. Many technical and scientific cameras also record subjects in motion by moving the film to record sharp images during a relatively long exposure.

I would like to submit File:Strip photo of San Francisco Cable Car 10.jpg, shown above, which is not panned but captured using an industrial line scan camera. The effect is similar to panning in that the background is composed of abstract horizontal lines, while the subject remains sharp. dllu (t,c) 06:03, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

dllu, I would accept it. The vehicle/people are panning. While technically the background isn't motion blurred and the camera doesn't move, there is some similarity in an inverted kind of way. -- Colin (talk) 19:18, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I would be fine with it as well. --Jarekt (talk) 11:43, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

September Themes

What should we do in September? Anything We promised we will do? Otherwise maybe

• Traditional professions
• Corroded objects
• Blue

--Jarekt (talk) 02:34, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I still think that we should do "concert photography" before autumn starts. About "sundials", no point is proposing it during the autumn-winter. So keep in mind what if not selected now that also would wait for months. About traditional professions, maybe we can wait for the nativity scenes in December (that was a proposal last year, we just forgot). Plus in December some people might go on holiday in places in the southern hemisphere where it is warm and old professions are still common. "corroded objects" is more appropriate for the autumn, in few months, IMHO.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:37, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I am very busy in these weeks and rarely on line, so whoever make the pages, as usual, pick the final choice.--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:38, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

"Concert photography" is too close to last month's Musical instruments which was largely Concert photography. "Sundials" is similar to recent clocks but maybe not that similar. I am fine with "Traditional professions" in December and Corroded objects in the fall. I am tempted to maybe start a yearly tradition of vacation pictures in the end of summer. Any objections to that? --Jarekt (talk) 11:59, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Basically, neutral. In any case sundials if now would be already three months from June and the number of images of sundials was limited, we had more superposition with "water supply infrastructure" and "towers" in the end... so I think it can already be selected. I know "concert photography" is close to "musical instruments", but the second one was asked for that month right in the middle of the summer... and than they ignored it :( I hope we don't wait too much for "concert photography" again.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:09, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - September - Sundials is done. Alexmar983 I am considering doing redo of vacations theme or Blue challenge as a second one. --Jarekt (talk) 13:24, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Whatever you prefer Jarekt, you have all the input to decide. In any case "sundials" is not super-easy, so both are ok in a general balance, we kinda all have summer vacations and blue is a very common color. The current themes of August were not particularly common (caves and mines are not everywhere, panning is not an easy technique), so we should have a more simple one --Alexmar983 (talk) 13:47, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

August challenge confusion

The text for August says "The challenge will remain open for submissions throughout August UTC". But at the bottom, it says "There are 28 days 8 hours left before this challenge ends". Was it intended that this challenge will stay open during September? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:29, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Michael, Thank you for pointing it out. I think it is fixed. Can you check? --Jarekt (talk) 01:13, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Looks good now. Thanks. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:15, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

July results

Musical instruments: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	A small music box playing ... music! ‎	Pipe organ, Igrejas dos Carmelitas e do Carmo, Porto	Mandolin-banjo
Author	Annatsach	Jsamwrites	Sally V
Score	13	11	9

Congratulations to Annatsach, Jsamwrites and Sally V. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:24, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Sailboats: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	S/V Rembrandt van Rijn in Disco Bay, Greenland	Le 7 septembre 2014, la réplique de l'Hermione, construite à Rochefort, débouche de la Charente pour prendre la mer.	Sailboat heeling when sailing close hauled
Author	Vaido Otsar	Jp.sembely	TheJerboa
Score	15	13	13

Congratulations to Vaido Otsar, Jp.sembely and TheJerboa. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:40, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

New faces, that's good.--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:39, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

"at the top of the gallery"

We may have to improve the instructions for submitting images to the challenge. Currently there's a HTML comment saying "Please paste the File names of your entries at the top of the gallery." in multiple languages, followed by "NEW ENTRIES BELOW THIS LINE PLEASE" in English only. However, both of these comments are below the "<⁠gallery>" tag. Two editors, each of which might not speak English, have mistakenly tried to put their entries between the gallery tag and the comment. They also put it in the wrong format, but then that makes sense, because there were no examples to follow there. This totally make sense from their perspective, because the instructions say "at the top of the gallery", and the top of the gallery is right below the opening "<⁠gallery>" tag.

Should we improve the instructions? If so, how? Should we put the gallery tag below the multi-lingual comments and remove the other comment? Something else? @Jarekt?

(The two submits for reference: one of them also put the submission in the wrong challenge out of the two this month, and one used a nonexistant filename instead of the name of the file he uploaded.)

– b_jonas 20:46, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

b_jonas, The page Commons:Photo challenge/yyyy - Month - Title is my template page which I clone and modify each month to create new Contest page. The tags and comments seem fine in this page. --Jarekt (talk) 12:18, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I think I got confused by the samples gallery close tag above, or something. Sorry. – b_jonas 13:20, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

maybe since I sometimes copy and a paste an old page, we could add some instrcution citing Commons:Photo challenge/yyyy - Month - Title.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:31, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Alexmar983, go to the top of [Commons:Photo challenge]] and click "camera" icon. --Jarekt (talk) 14:22, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

October 2017 themes

First of all, maybe to be less ambiguous in the archive we can start to name this section "month YEAR themes" in the future.

I am not a lot online, I am busy with this photo wiki competition. Please consider that due the strong scientific theme of this additional event, competitions focus on technology and science should be avoided in October, November and December. Some themes about engines are still good for the very cold winter month, but given the circumstances, we could schedule them starting from January.

For October, "buts and sheds" was IMHO promising (I also like to enjoy last sunny days walking outside) and it is also the month of eye care, but someone is suggesting to "go Halloween". I have second doubts on the merge of "blood" and "bones" which in any case got no real support. Plus, all this choice are very close to be also science-related, and that's a pity.

We can't have anything, so let's find a compromise. I haven't scrolled down the most recent vote in any case.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:38, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Alexmar983: could it be one theme from the next month "October Celebrations" or "October Activities"? The point is that not just Halloween to allow be as topic, but also even the Hungarian 56 commemorations or the Oktoberfest... What do you think about? Fauvirt (talk) 13:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

it is not just me, Fauvirt, I prefer to act as a notary of the most voted challenges and use the one with more chance based on the season, not to create new ones close to the 1st day of the month, although technically this is possible if people agree, as happened this month with "summer vacation"). In any case you can create a theme like "celebration" and we can brainstorm about the best month to schedule it, I guess. I don't dislike it. "October something" is very specific, although we did have "January" once. Maybe we propose some "month challenge" as we do sometimes "color challenges", sort of a cycle. I never though about that because we have so many themes. --Alexmar983 (talk) 14:32, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I did not say that the photography or video recording could be only from this year... ;o) What, when it would be "Celebrations and Activities in the 21st Century"?... but you have right, so from me can this topic can roll over (maybe to the beginning of winter with autumn Celebrations and Activities) or not. Its not important. I just did not want Halloween to be so pronounced.

An other tipp from an friend from me is "Schools (primary, secondary school and higher education)" - the photo theme may be school buildings, uniforms etc., maybe notability teachers too -;

or "Catch a cold" - the latter is not serious! ;o) Fauvirt (talk) 19:48, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Fauvirt, I also wanted to do something about schools, just propose it in Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes. In any case I don't think that selecting "bones" or "blood" Halloween would be pronounced. We still have no Halloween in many countries (thank God...) but we are getting used to throw something in that direction if possible. In any case who has the time to make the submission, got the final decision. It is not going to be me--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:41, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Alexmar983: can you see on itCommons talk:Photo challenge/themes#Schools (primary, secondary school and higher education), is it so okay? Thanx! Fauvirt (talk) 10:53, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Fauvirt it's ok. I'll add few comments when I am back full time. Wait for the support. proposals are also subject to a workflow of ideas to improve and refine them.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:49, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I created Data:Photo challenge/statistics.tab in hopes I will be able to create some graph based on this. I was also thinking about using it to add future themes. As I recall we were talking about "Traditional professions" in December and something gory in November (Bones, cemeteries, blood, etc.) . But what should we do in October? Here are most voted themes:

• Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Cables_and_wires (6: yes, 0: no)
• Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Renewable_energy (6: yes, 0: no)
• Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Theatre_buildings (6: yes, 0: no)
• Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Corroded_objects (5: yes, 0: no)
• Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Huts_and_Sheds (5: yes, 0: no)
• Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Trash_and_waste_management (5: yes, 0: no)
• Commons_talk:Photo_challenge/themes#Tunnels_and_Underpasses (5: yes, 0: no)

Corroded_objects or Huts_and_Sheds sounds like a autumn theme. How about "Cables_and_wires" as a second one? --Jarekt (talk) 14:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

They also look like "winter themes" :D I mean of course we are doing both soon but is it ok to do the very same month? Just doing the devil advocate, nothing more.--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:40, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Do you have a counter-proposal? I am flexible. --Jarekt (talk) 18:32, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Corroded objects & Tunnels and Underpasses? Fauvirt (talk) 23:47, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

We have Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - October - Corroded objects. About the second one I would prefer one of the first 3 as they have more votes. --Jarekt (talk) 03:03, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

The small problem with "Renewable energy", "trash management" "cables and wires" is that they are also a little bit scientific and again the Photo science Competition is in November... so let's do "huts and sheds" fine with me. Also, I don't dislike "Tunnels_and_Underpasses". It is a waste for the nice seasons, and not good for the cold winter, but it is appropriate for the fall, IMHO.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with Huts and Sheds or Theatre buildings too. :o) + Tunnels and Underpasses have a vote+1 by me on the other page. Fauvirt (talk) 06:46, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I am always tempted to listen to the new faces... but again I have no time to make the challenge pages in this period... I will probably make a lot of mistakes with all the thing I am following, so who prepares it (probably Jarekt) will take the final decision.--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:56, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Fauvirt if you want to pick one of the 3 you mentioned and create project page for it (based on this page), go ahead. Otherwise I will pick one tomorrow. --Jarekt (talk) 15:00, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Jarekt and b_jonas please see on it, is it okay (in English and in Hungarian too): Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - October - Huts and sheds... I hope so! 0;o) Fauvirt (talk) 10:43, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

seems fine to me...--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:09, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

August Results

Caves, Mines and Sinkholes: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Crepuscular rays in Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona	Phong Nha cave in Phong Nha-Ke Bang national park, Vietnam	The cave Riesenburg in Frankonian Switzerland in Germany
Author	Jarekt	Shansov.net	Ermell
Score	13	12	9

Congratulations to Jarekt, Shansov.net and Ermell. -- Jarekt (talk) 04:06, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Panning: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	What a flight!	San Francisco Cable Car 10	Southern ground hornbill in flight
Author	Sally V	Dllu	Alandmanson
Score	50	14	13

Congratulations to Sally V, Dllu and Alandmanson. -- Jarekt (talk) 01:55, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Submissions that aren't newly uploaded

The Sundials challenge has submissions that aren't uploaded in the submission month, namely at least File:Valencia relojsolar.jpg, File:Secret Gardens of Villa Borghese, the sundial with the four winds. Rome.jpg, File:Skulptur mit Sonnenuhr..IMG 8856WI.jpg (and these are just the good ones, I checked the date before voting on them). While I'd personally prefer if we allowed photos uploaded in a longer period, like the entire last year, our current rule says just one month, so we should stick to it for this challenge, and anyway, that last one was uploaded in 2012. How do we filter old submissions? Should I try to automate this? – b_jonas 12:24, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

b_jonas, those images were taken earlier, but were uploaded last month. The script that creates the voting page actually checks if the file was uploaded within the contest period and does not include any entries outside that window. --Jarekt (talk) 18:44, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Ah right, so I'm just looking at the first published date, not the upload date. I should have known that, because I know the Upload Wizard dumbly tries to set the first published date to the date the image was taken, whenever that's available in the image file metadata. – b_jonas 19:16, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

November 2017 themes

What should we pick for the next theme? I was thinking about combining Blood and Bones into "Blood and Bone", to have a little November theme. For the second challenge, maybe Blue or Cables_and_wires. --Jarekt (talk) 12:29, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I was kinda against that merge but in the end with Photo science competition starting in November (on the 15th) I have other things to think about. Technically, the theme is also very scientific, so I would come to put a warning that suggest to upload science-theme image after the 15th so we can put evaluate in the competition. Also, with "cables and wires" you can have this issue. I should put the warning. But if I put such warning, than at least in "blood" and "bones" it is less ambiguous when something is scientific or not.

About the other ones, I want to see more color themes too (and I hope we can recover "pink" form the reject ones) but "blue" is a summer color IMHO.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:25, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Also, some microscope images can be blue... it is not as bad, because few people have powerful microscopes :D I still can put a warning just in case.

Can we pick at least one of the theme that are totally not scientific? For example closed shops or obelisks? Considering the first might have structures a little bit similar to huts and shedss, I am tempted to say obelisks. There are usually in towns, where temperature are higher so you can make a last autumn walk.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:35, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I do not think Commons:Photo challenge themes have to coordinate with European Science Photo Competition. If a photo meets requirements of both than we can add them to both, but I do not think we need any warnings. The merge of "Blood and Bone" was mostly due low number of votes for those themes and few people mentioned the merger. Cemeteries would also be good, but it had even less support. "Cables and wires" would had even less overlap with Science Photo Competition. I restored the "Pink" challenge, but also do not associate "blue" with summer. I think we can have good blue images any time of year. --Jarekt (talk) 19:55, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Good that you put pink back, I was waiting for a structured discussion, but if nobody has anything to say, fine.

Technically, those few people discussing the merge included me who started to have second thoughs. But I don't care if you want to merge them.

BTW, I am not asking you not to do whatever, I am telling you not that is quite bizarre that you have scientific themes and you pick them right when there is a scientific competition without any coordination at all. Come on, reminding you to upload a picture after the 15th so it goes also to the competition, I call it good sense. Tell me that a user who has spent time to take a good picture wouldn't like to know that.

I was a juror of WLM and in September I would have pointed out if themes had limited overlap, for example. In any case this is something we should start also for future WLM and Wiki Loves Earth. We can decide when to avoid superposition and when to improve coordination. As soon as the photo is on commons it can go on both, I see no issue with improving that aspect.

In any case, we selected themes with less support based on the circumstances, we even "invented" a theme in September, if someone else prefer cemeteries, i could go for that.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:54, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

I am still confused about Wiki Science Competition (WSC). According to central page, and most pages in Category:Wiki Science Competition 2017 it goes through the whole November 2017 (see here, here), not 15 November to 15 December (those dates I only found on Thai page). So it would overlap nicely time wise with Photo_challenge. I do not understand the role of different countries (chapters?) in the competition. Is it just to get the word out? Originally I thought that it was restricted to those countries, so there would be minimal overlap with Photo_challenge. But that does not seem to be the case and even word "European" was dropped from the name.

I agree that "We can decide when to avoid superposition and when to improve coordination". Maybe we could do one theme with maximum overlap and one with minimal one:

• For maximum overlap theme we could do Fires flames and sparks in science and technology, or Insects or invent theme like "People in Science" (if there is more support). Ideally, all images from such Photo_challenge should meet the rules of WSC. Maybe give a bit of more publicity to the WSC event. For example, I never heard of it until you mentioned it.
• For minimum overlap theme we could do the Cemeteries. The discussion (with @Z28scrambler and MichaelMaggs: ) was trying to decide if we emphasize whole cemeteries or individual graves. I think we could keep it broad enough to do both, so maybe "Cemeteries and Graves" could be the title.

--Jarekt (talk) 12:56, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

the countries are a structure created by the fact that it was originally a national competition (Estonia, before 2015). I am discussing right now to put a explanation that says that their role is basically for promotion, to get more prizes etc. personally, I am also pushing for an "international" category too. We'll see how it evolves.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:49, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

"Cemeteries and Graves" sounds good. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:42, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

It was postopone of two weeks because some countries were late. gotta go to bed, I'll read carefully and tell you later. But, WSC will be promoted by a banner and in 2015 it was occupying the main page of commons, I don't know if you remember. In any case I don't know If I want really to overlap, I just think it is wise to handle it if it happens. That's it. It is just a sentence...--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:53, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Just received an email. In some countries it start the 1st, in other one on the 15th. Very confusing... no idea why it was changed this way. It is around November and December in any case.

And I think "Cemeteries and Graves" is fine. But for graves of famous scientists... ;)--Alexmar983 (talk) 16:03, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Does Renewable energy also count as having an overlap? – b_jonas 14:07, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

yes, definitely. Seriously, if you want a big overlap, than just let me inform thw uploaders.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:01, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Since I had time now I have created a theme with enough support, no overlap with WSC, no overlap with previous themes and good for autumn months (it is mainly in urban areas) Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - November - Tunnels and Underpasses. please you can ignore this idea, it is just the first I saw scrolling the page and I just put it as an emergency option because it is the first of the month now. We can recycle it later, it is just a "Move" action.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:17, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

And also Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - November - Cemeteries and Graves.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:32, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

If you still think something else like "cables and wires" is better, create it but let me put a warning, just that.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:57, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

here a query of wikidata that shows on a map items of dead people with burial places but no images of tombs. it is far from being precise, some places are very generic (just the town) and some photos are simply not uploaded on wikidata yet (but a new one, with better resolution and quality is always welcome). But if anyone wants to try, one or two good ideas can be obtained.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:56, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Someone made them later, so I merged one and we can keep the other one about tunnels for later.--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:52, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I did not noticed that discussion continued. I went with 2 minimal overlap themes Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - November - Cemeteries and Graves and Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - November - Cables and Wires . I do not think we need a overlap warning box in case of the first one and it is very unlikely. --Jarekt (talk) 17:49, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Template for international competitions

In my sandbox I made a test. What do you think?

During the months of November and December Wiki Science Competition 2017 will take place in the whole world. You can win a prize! If your image is suitable, please upload it there first and only later in this page.

This is for WLM:

During the month of September Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 will take place in the whole world. You can win a prize! If your image is suitable, please upload it there first and only later in this page.

And Wiki Loves Earth:

During the months of May and June Wiki Loves Earth 2017 will take place in many countries. You can win a prize! If your image is suitable, please upload it there first and only later in this page.

Maybe we can introduce them, what is the problem in informing people?--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:09, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Alexmar983, I would change it to:

International Wiki Science Competition 2017 will take place during the months of November and December. You can win a prize! Your images might meet the requirements of that competition, if so please consider entering.

and similar for the other ones. --Jarekt (talk) 13:05, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

ok Jarekt.--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:13, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

September results

Sundials: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Skulptur mit Sonnenuhr im Kurpark Bad Schlema in Sachsen.	Sundial at the Luitpold school in Bamberg	Ivory Portable Sundial dated 1524 - Poldi Pezzoli Museum (Milan)
Author	Kora27	Ermell	Prelvini
Score	14	13	12

Congratulations to Kora27, Ermell and Prelvini. -- Jarekt (talk) 02:18, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Vacations: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Light and shadows during a camel ride in Sahara Desert (Erg Chebbi dunes, Morocco)	Fishing by lighthouse at sunset (Adriatic Sea)	Surf at Tenerife
Author	Fbrandao.1963	PetarM	Buiobuione
Score	21	14	12

Congratulations to Fbrandao.1963, PetarM and Buiobuione. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:01, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

December 2017 themes

As we discussed earlier we will do "traditional professions" this December, but What should be the second one? I am fine with "Renewable energy" or with "tunnels" mentioned in November theme discussion. Any preferences? --Jarekt (talk) 17:53, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

If you want to use "tunnels" later it is ok with me in any case. But I am not into "Renewable energy" in these cold months. Let's do it it April with "Earth day". If you want something ecological in this season, I kinda prefer trash. Actually, I prefer people to go closer to that stuff in winter when there is less smell. Plus, there is so much waste in the holiday season... but maybe January is more appropriate for that?--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:34, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

That's a good point. So let's do waste management in January when they chip up all the disposed Christmas trees in noisy machines. – b_jonas 14:39, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

 Support --Jarekt (talk) 15:31, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

And what is with "Theatre buildings" (with opera houses and music halls?) for the second theme? It has a season... what do you think? Fauvirt (talk) 01:20, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Let's Chess!... ;o) Fauvirt (talk) 22:07, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

2017

Month	themes		themes are not decided in which months
December	"traditional professions"	"theatre buildings"		"measurements and unit of measures" "traditional Games" "balconies" "architectural Iron" "blue" "aircraft"
January	"trash and waste management"
February	"closed or closing commercial activities"
March	"tunnels and underpasses"→or in April
April	"renewable energy"

     → based on discussions

     → optional

Jarekt, Fauvirt, b_jonas when I was in charge with the "quality festivals" on itwiki, in the we settled to schedule them at group of three (Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, Jul-Sep, Oct-Dec). We could do something similar also here in the end, maybe at group of two month instead of one, so deciding four themes together. It's a possibility, it actually happens often that we decide also the theme for the next month so...--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:22, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

But if you want to plan everything up to April... I am fine either way. But what to do with proposals? Maybe we can show them the page which is ready and that they're open for suggestions more than support votes. --Alexmar983 (talk) 13:27, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

I am fine with planning ahead. And fine with proposed themes. --Jarekt (talk) 13:58, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Sure but ler's agree on a clear calender. it has to be regular, like now once a month. We write on the header of this page that we discuss them every X (4?) month and that's the standard. And the competition page must me linked on the theme discussion page once created.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:28, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, I don't think we want to decide about themes that much in advance. It's fine to plan ahead with the trash management, but let's leave most of the themes open for the next months and decide according to newer inputs.

Secondly, while I myself love making photos of buildings and other objects, I think some contributors enjoy making photos of people too, and that's underrepresented in that table. I don't think we should do closed commercial activities and balconies in the same month, because both are building-themed.

I am fine with traditional professions and theatre buildings for December though.

Oh by the way, delaying tunnels to march or april is actually a good idea. We Hungarians usually go skiing in march or earlier, and we have to pass through lots of tunnels in the if we go to the French Alps.

– b_jonas 18:39, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

I just gathered what we've talked about so far and I represented them in the above table with themes which were supported on the site Commons talk:Photo challenge/themes }

Based on the above I little changed the Table...

What would is be with themes from Archive: "dressing up" or "Time for sports"/"sports activities" - for making photos of people too? Fauvirt (talk) 16:46, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree that we could use a bit more "people" themes, but in most cases we just pick the themes people are proposing and voting on at Commons talk:Photo challenge/themes. The archive has themes we already used. We could propose something similar again, but we generally try not to reuse them without good reason why. "Traditional professions" seems like a people challenge. We can also do Concert photography or wait for some more votes for Emotions, Street Performers, Video: verbs, or other people themes. --Jarekt (talk) 02:30, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I understand, I didn't know that. I have now supported some of these. Fauvirt (talk) 12:33, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Challenge infobox on main page

Hi! WLM usually "takes" the infobox without asking, so did European Science Photo Competition in 2015 (if I remember). I was much more gradual in Talk:Main_Page and I did mainly because with no sitenotices in many countries, that was our only hope to get some images in certain areas. the commons page has a lot of visit.

If you prefer now we can also remove the mini-template in the November competition pages. I think that in any case they have received enough visits and the "damage" for the monthyl challenge is limited (many uploaders are constant). My request is to leave the current WSC notice also the first 7-10 days of December for the African and Asian upload phase.

I pinged you there User:Jarekt, maybe you did not see it.

For the future, I have discovered there is also "Wiki loves food". One day it will be global too and we'll have "Wiki loves music" probably, at this point I think we have to find a better balance between global and local challenges in the main page infobox. We can discuss it at the village pump. Also the decisional process should be less fragmented. it's nice that this time we have someone who worked on both side, that is me, I really want to improve it.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:52, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes maybe we could create a template that takes the same space, and which is either for Photo challenge or for Photo challenge and "Wiki loves ..." competition.--Jarekt (talk) 14:02, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Jarekt I wish I had the time for this December. I probably don't...--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:26, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Jarekt when the new challenge pages are ready tell me, I will ask to remove the code for few days to give them kickstart and than we can put it back the WSC banner for Africa at least another week. --Alexmar983 (talk) 12:19, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I swapped challenge pages yesterday--Jarekt (talk) 12:37, 1 December 2017 (UTC).

October results

Huts and sheds: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Hut for hay storage. Tux, Zillertal, Tyrol, Austria.	Vineyard sheds in Burgundy.	Beach huts in Swanage, England
Author	Wald1siedel	Roumpf	Sun2Shine
Score	27	13	8

Congratulations to Wald1siedel, Roumpf and Sun2Shine. -- Jarekt (talk) 04:23, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Corroded objects: Entries • Votes • Scores

Rank	1	2	3
image
Title	Three champions on the steps of a podium, Laos	A wrecked ship in Conception Harbour, Newfoundland.	Varigotti (Liguria), Rusty Anchor
Author	Basile Morin	JoannaPoe	Prelvini
Score	22	19	18

Congratulations to Basile Morin, JoannaPoe and Prelvini. -- Jarekt (talk) 03:36, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

January themes

How about "trash management" and color blue for the January themes? --Jarekt (talk) 17:04, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

@Jarekt: not easy, but for me is it ok. Fauvirt (talk) 11:01, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

See, is this okay: Commons:Photo challenge/2018 - January - Trash and waste management ? Fauvirt (talk) 11:25, 2 January 2018 (UTC)