Commons talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2011

Reverts & al

This is getting tiring. Folks, please grow up, stop revoking each other and reach a consensus by discussing. Otherwise, if this keeps going on, I would have no problem protecting the page (and to avoid the Wrong Version, in the one of a few days ago). Sincerely, Jean-Fred (talk) 00:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Timeline

Hi there,

A quick concern about the timeline, and specially the choice of September for the contest:

1. for us, in Switzerland, September is quite often a rainy/cloudy period, not really ideal to take nice pictures
2. one month seems to be really a short period

We where planning to launch the contest in June-July and to let it run till September in order to let more time. What do you think on this idea ? Manoillon (talk) 13:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Photos can be taken before September and then submit them during the contest month. But I think the essential information should be ready in June to allow participants to take their photos during their summer holidays. At least this works for Spain. --V.Riullop (talk) 10:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Glad this point has come up. On reading the description of this project it was not clear to me if the pictures had to be taken in September, uploaded in September or simply just judged in September. A good point about the weather and lighting too, I take and submit pictures all year round but there is a preference from other users to keep image on pages that have blue skies. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:08, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Heritage registers

There is a Global list of Heritage sites on the English wiki here: en:List of heritage registers. I think the complete national registers are now all on national wikipedia sites. Wouldn't it be better for them to reside here on Commons, where the pictures for the contest will be uploaded? It seems like that would be easiest for linking pictures on all wikipedias in the long run, since you could keep a standard register template here in one place. Jane023 (talk) 21:27, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

As for Germany, for many areas we are still in the process of acquiring lists and registers. So do you propose creating those lists on Commons as well? And by a standard register template, you mean something like Template:Kulturdenkmal or Template:Kulturdenkmal Hessen, which links pictures to monuments? I believe that if all the monument pictures have a correct template and are within the right monuments categories, there is no need to have actual lists on Commons. But maybe that's what you meant anyway ;-) --Cirdan (talk) 22:33, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for those templates! I was wondering how Germany would go about labelling the pictures without any numbers. Now I see you can label without numbers, I also understand the problem a bit better. How do you propose instructing the participants in Hessen as to which denkmals they need to take pictures of for the competition? My suggestion is coming from my experience last year as a photo contest participant with " Wiki Takes Haarlem". Enthusiastic members of the Dutch Wikipedia went to great lengths to create lists of the Haarlem buildings per street needing photo's and these were all numbered (we took pictures of many of them, an example is nl:Lijst van rijksmonumenten in Haarlem/Gedempte Oude Gracht). For this year's contest, similar lists showing the entries with blanks that are still needed should be exported to other language wikis for Europe-wide participants to work from. These lists are also useful as a quick reference for articles about buildings or locations, so I feel they have a place on other wikipedias, not just the Dutch one. Of course you could say that maybe only only a tenth of these deserve a place on the English Wikipedia right now, but that may change in the future. Therefore I propose to put ALL of these lists on commons, where they can be auto-translated (I was busy trying to figure out how to do this for Haarlem, which is how I got this idea). Jane023 (talk) 09:15, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, luckily my home-state Hessen does have numbers, at least for the areas covered by the local government's monument web service (which is just about 20%, but it's something). They only work for that particular state, so I made that special Hessen-template. Creating the lists is not that big of a problem, data and lists are available for most regions, so we can create lists just like in the netherlands. For areas without numbers the biggest problem will be to figure out which monument's pictures we have on Commons that are not in the lists and vice versa.

But to get back to your proposal: For all template based lists (many are just plain wiki tables, though, we're mainly focusing on getting the lists done) it shouldn't be a problem to automatically copy them to Commons, but I don't really see a need for it. I believe that the lists are quite similar for every country and thus you can read them if you're not capable of the language. To take a picture, everything you really need is the adress. I agree that it would be nice to have lists with the monument's names and descriptions in multiple languages, but that's a lot of work compared to their very limited use. What we should do, however, is to have a list with links to all monuments that are "taking part" in the contest. It would be impressing (and most likely initimidating ;-) ) to see how big the contest is. And how many pictures there are to take... --Cirdan (talk) 20:23, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

That list is very cool for me to see, thanks. Like you, I am also convinced that the total list of monuments taking part would be potentially intimidatingly long, but highly useful on commons. If you consider that the main purpose of such lists are to show the address, geo coordinates, and pictures of objects, then doesn't it make better sense that these lists reside on commons where everyone can get to them (like Europe-wide contest participants or Open Street Maps, for example)? When I said auto-translate, I really only mean the table header labels "Bezeichnung", "Adresse", "Beschreibung", "Bild", "Koordinate", "Objekt-Nr.". Presumably if you are familiar with the area enough to have stood with your camera (or iPhone) in a particular neighborhood, you will be also be able to figure out what the object description is in that particular local language, so those don't really need translation. Since these lists qualify as Commons galleries, I think they would be very useful on Commons, and that way on all language wikipedias, a global heritage list can just point to one global heritage list here, rather than repeating these in 100+ wikis. Jane023 (talk) 08:51, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I really like the idea of having all those lists on Commons as well, but I see some obstacles and difficulties. Firstly, the lists will always be linking to monument articles on the local Wikipedias and vice versa. On the very list I linked to above, there are at least 30 to 40 monuments for which I'm planning to write seperate articles this year. If the list would just reside on Commons, I'd need to link from the german Wikipedia to Commons in every article (as far as i know, interwiki links in the article text aren't even allowed) and the list on Commons would include many links that are only interesting for people able to understand german. Therefore, just having lists on Commons doesn't seem to be a good idea to me, it might also confuse non-Wikipedian readers if they're constantly switching between their local Wikipedia and Commons. So we should probably have both.

This raises a second difficulty: How would we keep those lists synchronized? Without manually repeating every change on Commons and on the local Wikipedia? I don't see an easy way to do this. Maybe we could think about just having lists of the monument's names with coordinates/location information and pictures on Commons. Pictures could be synchronized by Bots and everything else shouldn't change that often. But I'm not sure if that's worth the effort?

What I believe would be a good place to start from, is to have some kind of a meta list on Commons, just like a european monument's register. We could have well structured links to every single list that exists on the local Wikipedias, favoring the language spoken in the area where the monuments are from. This also leads to repeated switching between Commons and the local Wikipedias, but if you're browsing the european monument's register on Commons this is a lot less confusing (since you see how it's structured) then reading your local Wikipedia, clicking a link that looks like all the other Wikipedia links and suddenly finding yourself on a website you've never seen before. This way around, we can also have navbars that are used in both regular Wikipedia articles and monument lists. Otherwise we would either have to relinquish those navbars or maintain and synchronize copies between Commons and the local Wikipedias.

Would you take the lead in creating such a register? I'd volunteer to add the german lists bit by bit.--Cirdan (talk) 14:26, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

OK I have thought about this. A central register on Commons would be great except there is a rule on commons that empty galleries get deleted. Most of these lists for lesser populated areas (even in the Netherlands) still have no pictures. Your point about the linking back and forth took me a while to understand. If I make an article about the heritage site X, then I most probably will include a picture of X, without bothering to link to the monument list. In the English wiki, there is a Rijksmonument template, so I may use that if I know it is there. That template also doesn't link to the monuments list, but to the national heritage register directly (like the numbers in your monuments list). As I see it, the linking in the monumentslist itself is only one way, namely from the list to the article, or from the list to coordinates, or from the list to a national heritage site. The only thing linking back to the monuments list is a higher level monuments list. Even this is not consistent however, and will probably never be really up to date. The best way to find articles on a heritage site is to click on the picture itself to see where it is used. So I don't think the linking back and forth from the lists is a big issue. The main issue is how to set up the lists centrally without having them get deleted on commons. The only way I can think of now to do this is through the wikiproject pages on commons, which is a bit strange. Maybe we need to start out with the lists on the Commons WLM wikiproject pages here? As the pages are filled with pictures they will become valid galleries and can be moved to the main namespace. For some cities I suppose these can be set up already with enough pictures on main streets and so forth. I will try to find the time to set this up for Haarlem, since we took 1000 pictures there last year and I could probably get all the lists on Commons. If that works, then it's just a question of communication. Jane023 (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

• I have seen that lists of monuments for Russia are on the website of the Russian chapter. This is clearly not an appropriate place for them to be; they should be moved either on Commons or to Russian Wikipedia.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:18, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Template:Building address

Usually all the monument descriptions or file names have the address of the monument, too. I propose to use the template {{Building address}} to collect this data in a structured way. This way this data can be extracted later by bots and used in various new and interesting ways. The template can also be translated in different languages. English, French, German and Spanish are already available. This could be used to place the pictures in a map, even without the location template (provided the address is available in OSM already). For an example of the template use, see File:Hans-Böheim-Straße 4 Dresden 2011.jpg. Longbow4u (talk) 19:59, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Nice idea! This is a great idea for translation issues when looking up monuments. I wouldn't make it a requirement however, since the contest participants are already required to offer the monument number. That said, I know some countries have problems with their lists and don't have monument numbers, so maybe a derivative form of this template can be used with that country's "national heritage marker" as a logo? Jane023 (talk) 11:45, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Localisation

I didn't find any translation link for the Wiki Loves Monuments central notice, nor found any link anywhere. In Esperanto vikipedio we don't want notices in English. Please provide such a Esperanto version of the notice  :

'eo' => "Wiki ŝatas monumentojn: fotu monumenton, helpu Vikipedion kaj gajnu!"

Thanks --Arno Lagrange ✉ 04:56, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Arno. If you want to translate more to esperanto, please create Template:Wiki Loves Monuments upload header/eo with a translation of Template:Wiki Loves Monuments upload header/en. Thanks again. Béria Lima ^msg 16:22, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Why is it advertised here, at all?

With all due respect, "contest between chapters" is the chapters' own business. Not even wikipedias' (plural) business, and even less related to commons. NVO (talk) 06:32, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi,

This is no contest between chapters. It is a contest where much of the organization is being performed by chapters, but also a lot by Wikimedia volunteers. The use for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons is that it a) generates a lot of free material which can be used there and b) it makes people more aware of the fact they can edit Wikimedia/Wikipedia and therefore is potentially helpful in finding more editors. This besides many other reasons. So I'd say definitely relevant for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons! Effeietsanders (talk) 08:06, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Worldwide?

Is an expansion beyond Europe something that could be considered for 2012? --Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

As long as there are registered heritage monuments in the country in question: Yes. It's europe-centered right now because we have millions of those objects here, that might be different elsewhere.--Cirdan (talk) 13:43, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

As long as someone is willing to organize it etc - yes. However, we focused for this year on Europe because 1) there's plenty to do here, 2) there is a high concentration of chapters, 3) it was just too much work to organize a truely world wide contest. We went from 1 to 16 countries - that was a huge step. Please do realize things become quickly more expensive as you make it world wide (travel costs for workshops etc) so budgets need adaption too, and we couldn't rely any more on our great contacts with the Council of Europe and the European Commission. Effeietsanders (talk) 16:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm from Spain and I'm helping this year in Wiki Loves Monuments. Some days ago, I asked why this contest is focused only in Europe, and I got replies similar to Effeietsanders one, althought I don't fully agree. 1) There is plenty to do everywhere, not only in Europe, 2) chapters concentration is not an issue for an Internet project like Wikipedia, 3) Wikipedia 10 was a global event, more countries = more volunteers. Finally, some people think that "There is no deadline". I think there is, for example, last year earthquake in Chile destroyed many monuments. The same for w:2010 Haiti earthquake. There is a deadline, this is a battle against time. emijrp (talk) 19:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 - Global? GoEThe (talk) 20:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Global. Just give us a few days to prepare a better landing page and start the preparations :-)odder (talk) 08:59, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the comments. I just want to be clear: my original question was not intended to imply that Wiki Loves Monuments ought to have been done on a global basis, nor was it a criticism of the 2011 event. I completely understand the limitations of a volunteer-run effort, and appreciate that these initiatives evolve over time. I just think this is a great idea, and one I would like to help expand to Canada in the future. We do have heritage registers here (although Europeans are often surprised at how "young" our historic sites are). I'm not sure how much travel is required as long as one has committed volunteers on the ground in the countries in question, but maybe I am being naive on that point. If the assistance received from the Council of Europe and the European Commission would be at risk if this event were at some point expanded outside Europe, then maybe other countries could organize similar initiatives, but under a different rubric. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:07, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

This year Effeietsanders and me took the lead in organizing this project. If you want to do this next year we need people willing to organize this. Multichill (talk) 07:30, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

emijrp, I cannot agree with point 2. I come from a country without a chapter and I found it very difficult to find people to help with the organization. Even if I had the support of an NGO, I was still the only one that kept the contact with Wikipedia. A chapter is mostly made of wikimedians, which greatly helps things.--Strainu (talk) 08:29, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify: I don't say we shouldn't do it world wide. I just explained why we chose for Europe in 2011 - and not for a random sample of countries all over the world. That /is/ because Europe is just most likely to be successful in 2011. For 2012 it could indeed be considered to go further, but it will need additional resources and volunteers. We still have to see if Multichill and me will have the energy to do it another year :)

I do think that travelling is required to some extent. The most useful communication happens in real life, and the workshop in Berlin I found very very productive. We could never have accomplished that online. We also see that the communication goes much more smoothly with the countries that were present than with the countries that were unfortunately not. Besides that we have given a few workshops (Poland, Germany, Belgium, Portugal) to explain the concept in some more detail to the local volunteers, and to motivate them. I believe that worked very well and is worth the investment. That would just become a bit more tough in the case of countries outside Europe, just because of the costs and physical distance. It is not impossible.

Anyway, I suggest we discuss this a bit more in detail after WLM 2011 is finished, when we have a good overview how it actually scaled from 1 to 16 countries, and what lessons we could learn. Also I do suggest to put it on the agenda of a chapters meeting, but we should perhaps discuss it before that time online. Effeietsanders (talk) 09:20, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

None of those problems seem insurmountable. I would certainly be willing to get this effort organized on the Canadian end. Please notify me of any online discussions on this point. This input has been extremely helpful. Best regards, --Skeezix1000 (talk) 17:09, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm QUITE disappointed in the Euro-centric nature of this contest. We have millions of cultural monuments over here in Asia too you know. Sigh. --Nesnad (talk) 07:47, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Read the comments above, mainly because 1 up to 20 is a big step, and the logistics. When the countries are close to eachother this is still do-able, but imagine the problems with this going from one country to say 50 countries spread all over the world. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 08:27, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that efforts like these often expand gradually - it's not a case of being euro-centric, but rather a case of being prudent. However, I think what we are hearing is that the effort should continue to take gradual steps and expand outside of Europe next year. Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:38, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Probably it's simply a matter of fine-tuning in PR campaigning inside commons. Some folks, including yours truly, were pissed off by what happened - it could have been avoided. WLM, like any other short-term campaing, does not change anything in operation of the site (other than adding categorization and deletion backlogs). Regulars who like collecting hats still have their quality-value-featured contests. Regulars who prefer deleting other people's stuff still have a sea of copyvios in front of them. Perhaps next year PR must have a subtle note - hey folks, stay cool, the big red banner won't change anything in your lives, whether it's twenty countries or just two. Oh yes, time runs out and there is a deadline, but you (the average uploader) don't really need special invitation to fix it, do you? NVO (talk) 09:20, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Let's make it do-able for the whole world, I think then we need a core team of people who are coördinating, and local teams who are coördinating it in a specific country. The first step is to find a group of people who are willing to organize it in a specific coutnry. Second step will be getting lists of registered monuments on Wikipedia, example: nl:Lijst van onroerend erfgoed in Hasselt. Make sure the lists have good descriptions, location descriptions, coordinates, and space for a picture each. Make sure there is also an identifier which uniquely identifies a monument. For all of this you perhaps need the information by the governemnt who has registered the heritage. So get in contact with them and ask if you can use their material 1 to 1, or even better, ask if you can work together. With WLM NL in 2010 there was een agreement signed with the national heritage organisation in the Nederlands. All of this takes at least half the time of the whole organization. And then the organization of the picturecontest itself, with all the work done before: a good preparation makes the contest only half the work. But consider, doing the first half, takes much more time than just one month, so it would be advisible to start early enough: start for example now! Find people to work with, talk to the national organisation and create lists of these monuments on the relevant language Wikipedia. Need advice? Having questions? Just ask! Greetings - Romaine (talk) 21:15, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

It does not always work so easily. In Russia, the list with coordinates just does not exist - the coordinates need to be recreated manually with the help of Google Earth. Addresses only exist in urban localities, not in rural localities. The government database is helpful but only to a limited extent. Still, I believe in 2012 the lists for the whole country will be usable enough to hold the contest. I can imagine that in most countries similar problems appear, which is a barrier, but not an unsurmountable obstacle.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:37, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

For example in Hungary, we didn't get permission to publish the monuments database, and we should shut down our search engine now (after the contest). The National Office has accurate coordinates for every monument but didn't give us, so we also had to generate manually with the help of Google Earth. It is just two examples, not every problem. We hope it will be easier next time :) Samat (talk) 21:57, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Quality

A similar concern to that raised above by NVO I also raised at the English Wikipedia, only to be dismissed by an organizer. But looking to the results now, out of the thousands I looked at I haven't found many usable images, and even worse many cause extra work for correcting categorization, description, removing watermarks, DRs etc. There have been 17,000 images uploaded from Spain alone, but no visible improvement to our Antoni Gaudí collection. The relevant stats for me are not how many images have been uploaded but how many are really used in Wiki articles, and how many are QI/FP. If we don't manage to shift the focus from quantity to quality, Commons will become a useless chaotic dumping ground for trashy images, and will be abandoned by serious users. --ELEKHH^T 20:33, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

• Although I agree in principle, I must add that almost all of 900 images I uploaded are used in the articles (admittedly, most of them in the lists of cultural heritage monuments). I am sure the lists for Spain also got more populated, and many of the monuments will eventually have articles created abouth them.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:54, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Much appreciated! So would you have been scared away if you would have found on the Wiki Loves Monuments 2011 also a link to a resource like COM:IG ?--ELEKHH^T 00:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

The age old discussion of quality vs quantity....... Multichill (talk) 21:02, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not "vs", we would all prefer large quantity of quality images. But this aversion of the organisers against encouraging quality because it might affect quantity in some way I can't comprehend. --ELEKHH^T 21:48, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, the question is: if we had put something like "Please pay attention to the quality of the images", would have we had more quality images? I believe not. Would have we had less correct images? I believe so.

So yeah, we have ten more crappy images of the Eiffel Tower than we had before. If that is the price to pay to have five more obscure monuments illustrated, to me it’s a deal.

(And I should mention that at least in France we are doing our homework and checking every damn file uploaded by newbies, categorising & deleting because of FoP, etc.)

As for the "serious users" thing: this sounds so much like users saying we should restrict WP articles creation, or refuse stubs, etc. As for me, this is not the Wikimedia I believe in.

To me, this contest was almost as much about getting new users than about getting pictures, even less FPs.

Oh, and +1 to Ymblanter comment.

Jean-Fred (talk) 23:16, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the assumption that any hint to ways to improve quality would deter useful participation, and I'm somewhat baffled by this fear to provide photographic educational guidance. I must have misunderstood what Commons is for. In any case thanks for your responses, is all much clearer now. --ELEKHH^T 00:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

No, I think you’re right too. As a friend put it once, Commons also serves as a "graphical art school", meaning the system should make it so that people upload better pics over time. But I don’t believe that in this contest we could have people to read the 18 pages of Image guidelines. In France, we already had to teach them about copyright and Freedom of Panorama, asking them to understand unintuitive copyright laws (poor users). That was our priority over technical advice. Jean-Fred (talk) 08:47, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the further explanation. IMO if the participants are interested in photography they might find the image guidelines interesting to look at. And the FOP for France can be explained in one short sentence "don't upload any image of a building designed by an architect alive after 1940" - easy (and they still did it anyway). --ELEKHH^T 09:24, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, we did try to make it short, but that’s what we got. Jean-Fred (talk) 19:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

If I just speak for my part of the organization, I organized WLM BE/LUX, each monument that has pictures uploaded for it has now a picture on Wikipedia. Perhaps this is a discussion too about quality/quantity, but this is perhaps also a matter of understanding (or not) what is happening on Wikipedia's who are covered by this contest. One of our goals is to get all the registered monuments there are covered by a picture so that the public can really see what their government is protecting. We prefer also an article for a monument, so people can read more about it as well. A photo for a monument, that is our main goal, that worked great in 2010, and did work great again in 2011. Romaine (talk) 00:19, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Excellent scope, and I fully support it. But once one is with a camera in front of a monument, I find it a pity not to pay a tiny little bit more attention and take a really good image. My point is simply that this great effort could be better focussed and much more effective, if a few tiny hints would be provided on how to take a quality image which will have a sustainable use, not just a place-holder following the "better than nothing" motto. --ELEKHH^T 00:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Elekhh, "aversion of the organisers against encouraging quality....."? Are we talking about the same thing here? We do value quality, otherwise we wouldn't be handing out dozens of prizes for the best photos! We just don't connect quality to quantity because than we end up in an discussion that has happened countless of times without any clear result.

I think in the Netherlands we provided some help on how to take good photos. I'm not sure if other countries did that too, but they should have. Multichill (talk) 05:22, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed the significantly higher quality of the NL images compared to the ES ones. But that's exactly why quality assessment of the uploaded images is important, so that we can identify success not only in terms of level of mobilisation/advertisement and "highlights" but also as added encyclopaedic value, and successful process.--ELEKHH^T 09:24, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

• Basically, I think there is some confusion on what the WLM actually is, or may be not confusion but two conflicting views. On one hand, it is a contest, and for a photo contest we indeed normally expect only the high-quality photos to be submitted (which is definitely not the case with WLM, and which indeed invites some criticism, not only here). On the other hand, this is not just a photo contest (and pure photo contest would be I believe out of scope here), it is a contest of photos potentially useful for WMF projects. And for me personally (I am not a great photographer and do not realistically expect to win any quality prizes) it is more important that WLM is a way to get images of the objects which would not be there without WLM, or would only come in a dozen of years. And this is why a wide participation, of not only good photographers, but also of ordinary photographers taking pictures of obscure places is very important. As someone very well expressed it in the mailing list, it gives a chance people to realize that cultural heritage is just round the corner - it is not just Eiffel Tower and Machu Picchu, but these are houses we see every day. We would never be able to achieve this by restricting the quality of the photographs, and sadly, we need the contest component just to get these pictures (I would definitely prefer that the pictures would come by themselves without any contests, just on a regular basis, but they do not). There is a side effect as noted - that we get a number of mediocre quality pictures for the monuments which are already illustrated by high quality images - but in my opinion this is minor and can be taken care of next year by explicitly stating that certain monuments do not participate in the contest, or their exteriors do not participate. (I am not sure though we need such limitation)--Ymblanter (talk) 09:12, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Yesterday I've watched (almost) all dutch pictures, most pictures are from a few mass uploaders (like me and Ymblanter), who try to cover every monument in the netherlands, that means the pictures wont have the highest quality (just because I'm not anything of a good photographer, only a person with a camera). Those pictures wont win, and most of the time wont become QI's, the thing is I'm only able to make pictures worth an 6-8 out of 10, that's the skills part, if i go a bit faster I can make 10x more images, but they will be 6 out of 10, but on the other hand it gives us a 10x higher coverage for that city. This year and last year we got around 8k unique monuments photographed, thats like 12%, those contests and the pictures made in between give the dutch monuments a coverage of 60%. As we are closing in to the 100% indeed it would be a good step to focus more on improving quality on each monument. But beside just getting pictures WLM also is a way to show to people that everybody (with a normal camera) can easily contribute to Wikipedia, and by putting their images the next day in the monument lists we show them that they've really helped us (instant result). Ok now the quality part. So I've watched all images yesterday, and made selections of the 1000, 250 and 100 best. I think between those last 2 there is a high percentage able to become a QI or even FP, but then people have to start nominating, I can't publish my selections yet, I will do that in a few days. ([1], [2] to give a little preview), I think it's all about nominating now. So take a look at the pictures who won in Portugal, Sweden, Germany and Poland and start nominating the ones that are suitable. Or take a look at my selections from last year: User:Basvb/500, and start nominating. Another question is what should win a photo contest, last years the pictures with something special, where something happend won in the Netherlands, and not the straight forward technical quality pictures you would expect in an estate selling agency. Which of the two you pick, or how you balance them is an important question. But I would say look at the countries top 100's or top 10's to search for quality, and from there pick the photographers you like and watch their other pictures, that's most of the time a good way to find a lot of quality pictures. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 10:34, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

btw I believe last year 1 picture got FP, and this year allready 4. But you shouldn't expect only FP's to be uploaded. QI's are normally around 10x that amount, I know even 5-10 of my pictures became QI, so I think that should be reachable for 1000 or even more of the WLM pictures, and as most uploaders just don't nominate their pictures it's mainly a problem of: who nominates them? I will probably nominate parts of the dutch pictures, but wont be able to nominate everything able to become QI, and I guess they wont like me flooding their nominations with 200 pictures. It's just a lot. So if you could help on that part it would be very welcome. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 10:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Frankly speaking, I do not understand what QIs are good for, except for some users can satisfy their sense of importance. This is actually the same with FAs and GAs - in the past, I had so much trouble with them that on the second thought I would never nominate anything for a FA. For the rest, I fully agree with you. I personally was not so much worried about taking excellent quality images but about taking acceptable quality images which would be suitable to illustrate the articles.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:15, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

If we do WLM again in the Netherlands next year we should organize a photography workshop. That sounds like a fun thing to do :-)

Sounds like a good idea--Ymblanter (talk) 18:39, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Do we have good guides on taking better images here at Commons? Couldn't find it I'm afraid. Multichill (talk) 18:02, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

You mean a dumbed down version of COM:IG with examples relevant to buildings, something like below (just a sample)? --ELEKHH^T 20:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Before I even go into responding the issues you raised, I want to refer you to what NVO said above: "hey folks, stay cool, the big red banner won't change anything in your live".

So, let's get going:

• WLM creates a backlog of work - yes it does. So what? We have 11 months to sort it out (8 more to go, btw). And the images are not wholly without categories, many where automatically included in some categories.
• Quantity vs. quality - this debate is present on almost every Wiki project. I, for one, am clearly on the side of quantity. Statistically, from 1 million pictures you are bound to find at least 100.000 usable ones. If you only have 10.000 pictures, they can all be great, you will still be unable to illustrate 100.000 articles.
• Pictures should be required to follow some or other Wikipedia-centric requirements (size, lack of manipulation etc.) -just wroooooooooong. Really, have you read Commons:Welcome lately? It says there that Commons provides freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone. Not all of our pictures' users need 2MP photos and some actually need HDR pictures.

That being said, I think that any suggestion that improves the overall quality of the submissions without imposing limits to the people participating for the sake of the monuments is welcomed.--Strainu (talk) 21:27, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure who you are responding to, but if you've read what I wrote, you would see that I was only gently inviting a bit more attention to quality, only to be each time vehemently opposed. Never proposed any more stringent upload criteria, only was asking to stop creating the false impression that any image is a positive addition, as if there wouldn't be any scope and as if spamming wouldn't be a problem. --ELEKHH^T 21:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Were you "gently inviting" to something? Cause to me, it looked like you were talking about "a useless chaotic dumping ground for trashy images", which sounds more like a desperate warning against "the big bad wave" of images that WLM or other similar contests would bring. But my answer was not only directed to you, but to all the people who think Commons is Wikipedia's back yard.

I reckon even the lowest-quality images can be used, either in articles without other pictures or in tutorials about common mistakes in photography (much like the gallery below!) or on websites dedicated to a certain monument. However, you have to understand this will take time. Look for instance at this change. It shows the images from WLM still unused on ro.wp. The number has gone down by about 20% in 2 months. And we did this without having this list available. With it, I expect the pace to pick-up a little.

I think you are rushing to (wrong) conclusions without giving us the time to actually process the backlog created by WLM.--Strainu (talk) 06:41, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

• 
  Don't chop the top of the monument if not necessary
• 
  Don't chop the bottom of the monument if not necessary
• 
  Don't chop the side of the monument if not necessary
• 
  Try to keep the camera straight
• 
  If the image is badly overexposured try a second time with auto-exposure.
• 
  Try using a camera.
• 
  If white is blue, than your white balance settings are wrong. Try a second time.
• 
  Try to avoid objects obstructing the view of your subject
• 
  Avoid directing the camera directly into the sun
• 
  Flash and reflecting surface don't go well together
• 
  Don't watermark

Tips 4,5,8 and 9 should be broken sometimes, if done so on the right time it gives a nice effect sometimes. All others should never be broken. The ones I mentioned:4,5, 8 and 9 should indeed most of the time not been broken (I'll try to illustrate my point later on). Mvg, Basvb (talk) 22:29, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point here though, in a few of these:

Do not tell people "avoid cutting off the top/bottom of the monument if not necessary". Instead explain to them the existence of Hugin and other image stitching programs, and tell them that, particularly if they use a tripod, a large monument can be taken as a series of photographs and stitched together afterwards. Explain to them that they should remember framing, which may mean they'll need some photographs of sky and ground around the monument, and to make sure they get enough photographs. This gives them a way of avoiding cutting off bits of the monument even if their camera zoom would otherwise make it necessary.

Do encourage them to use a tripod.

Do encourage them to try exposure bracketing, if they're not sure about the exposure

Do mention that, if flash is necessary on a two-dimensional work, taking a photograph from an oblique angle, as well as one straight-on, means you can take the dimensions from the straight-on image, and the reflection-free one from the oblique angle, and perspective shift the oblique angle photo into the straight-on picture's dimensions.

That would do far more to get better photos than a set of rules they likely know already, just can't act on. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:02, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Positive stimuli

I think the most important thing is that we should use positive stimuli, and not negative ("thou shall not...", punishments etc). I can put some ideas here, but I would like to emphasize that we shouldn't take the full discussion here right now, but rather at a later stage, when we know a bit better how the 2012 organization will look like and everyone interested in that can actually participate.

Some ideas:

• Improve jury criteria & process (timeline: ~March/April 2012)
• Organize photo workshops as local events (timeline: ~July/August)
• Create good tips & tricks pages (timeline: be bold and start now)
• Compliment people for their great pictures (timeline: you can start with the attendees of 2011 - no need to wait for someone else to do it)
• Invite more quality photographers as well from other communities (timeline: August/September)

Effeietsanders (talk) 10:55, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Online exhibition of 50 pictures from WLM

At Europeana the online exhibition with the best art-nouveau pictures from WLM can be found. It looks very nice in the way presented.

see here.

Mvg, Basvb (talk) 16:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)