Concept edit

Warning: Some things on this page are written as facts, because it is based on the 2011 version. Some things are definitely open for negotiation if it doesn't work out this way in some countries, but this is the default. If you want big things to change, bring it up on the mailing list!

Wiki Loves Monuments is a public photo contest around monuments, organized by Wikimedia chapters and other Wikimedian groups. In September 2012 it will be organized in several countries after a successful organization in 2010 in the Netherlands and in 2011 in 18 European countries. The contest is organized in a federative fashion and the details on a national level may differ from country to country. The basic concept is that people are invited to upload images of monumental objects (from a list) under a free license for usage on Wikipedia. We want to try to get complete lists of these monuments on Wikipedia, including photos - giving a great and unique overview of the cultural heritage in a country or region.

The contest is organized in a federative fashion. That means that each participating group/chapter organizes their own contest, and each of these contests is part of a bigger, international, contest. Each organizing group has quite a lot of freedom in how to organize it exactly in their own territory (to make the contests compatible with each other there are some general rules we would like to keep constant), but there are also some additional recommendations on this page which you might want to consider, mainly based on the experiences of last years in the Netherlands and Europe. But for that most important is: do whatever works best in your country.

This all does not mean you're out there all by yourself! If we can help each other, we should - but it is impossible to organize everything centrally because of the huge workload and the country specificities.

International contest edit

The international contest will be a jury based competition for the best photo of a monument where an international jury will select winners from nominees taken from the national quality contests. Each national contest will be allowed to nominate X photos (2011: 10 pictures per country).

Rules (International) edit

Photo has to be self taken and self uploaded
Upload in September only (to Commons, possibly via other platforms). Exception for Israel.
License defaults to CC-BY-SA 3.0
Monument on the photo should be identified with identifier if available in the country
E-mail address uploader has to be confirmed
Nominations by national contests (10 nominations per country)
The n'th prize winner will be the n'th person allowed to pick a prize

Judging criteria edit

Technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective, color hue, megapixels etc, see Commons:Image guidelines) -> Quality image level
Originality
Usefullness for Wikipedia

This needs a bit more detail as shown by the 2011 jury process. (August 2012)

Jury composition edit

striving for:

2 professional photographers/photo editors
2 heritage specialists
3 Wikimedians
Facilitator (non-voting)

National contest edit

The exact rules for the national contests will have to be laid out by the organization for each country in their local language. There are some basic principles we should all adhere to and there are some recommendations.

Requirements

The contest runs from 1 until 30 September 2012 (exception Israel)
The nominations for the international contest should be made before November 1.
All participating photos should be made by participants and licensed under a free Creative Commons license acceptable on Wikimedia Commons.
There will have to be some kind of structured lists of admissible monuments. These lists will need to contain, at the start of the contest, at least an identifier for each permitted object and a way to locate the object (i.e. address and/or geo-coordinates) - if available in the country. For more information about these lists, see #Object lists.
There will be some kind of awards for the best participating photo in each country.

Recommendations

A lot more detailed recommendations are available through the post-mortem 2010 on Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2010/post mortem

Organize local events if you have the capacity for that.
Organize both a classification around quantity (number of objects submitted) as quality (best photo)
Feel free to have special prizes: per geographical area (city, province), per monument type, etc. Those may be organized with your #Partners. See Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012/Special prizes.

Organizational recommendations edit

As mentioned before, all national contests are expected to run their own organization. Of course some things can be coordinated, but it would be unfair to give the impression that others will take over this from you. There are some basic things that each country has to take care of one way or the other. These are the most important:

Partners edit

See also, the 2010 Post Mortem for more suggestions

See also Partner suggestions for a bit more detail. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Partners will be important to run the contest. Basically three types of partners can be imagined:

Governmental partner for the structured data: you will need to compile lists of monuments, and it is very helpful if the government can provide their official list with as much detail as possible. Their cooperation can make the project extra useful because people will most likely find mistakes in the original lists that can be corrected.
Publicity partners: partners that can help you with getting the word out, reaching specific audiences and media. Their cooperation can give you credibility.
Sponsors: They can provide you with awards and possibly cover some of the costs of the event. Whether this is required probably depends on the specific local situation.

If you have trouble with contacting the partners or the right people, please get in touch with Maarten, he might be able to help you through our international partners!

Object lists edit

Each country should pick one Wikipedia to be leading (easy for the Netherlands, not trivial for countries like Switzerland). Possible fields:

unique id - The unique id of the monument by which it can be identified (required)
name - The name of the monument (highly recommended)
description - A description of the monument (optional)
type - The type of monument (optional)
address - Address of the monument (recommended)
municipality - The municipality in which the monument is located (recommended)
lat - The latitude (highly recommended)
lon - The longitude (highly recommended)
image - Image of the monument (required)

The fields can of course be localized.

The tables are usually built with templates. An explanation using Switzerland as example, can be found here in the 2011 documentation, but is still valid.

Database edit

Commons:Monuments database

Communication edit

All national organizations are expected to set up a local website in the local language(s) with at least the following information:

explanation of the contest concept
explanation of the rules
definition of the classifications (quantity/quality) and awards
contact details (possibly link to wikipage) for both participants and press
explanation of upload details
explanation on how to find local monuments and the unique ID etc.
basic information to participate available in English for non-local participants

Approaching potential participants, make use of existing communities and platforms! Partners can be valuable here too. A lot can be done with free publicity.

Jury edit

Make sure the jury is a bit diverse. For the rest, a lot of freedom. Mix of photographers and wikimedians is advisable. Try to get them in real life together in one room to make the final decisions, but before that, some preperatory work has to be done to get the selection to some 100 images.

Technical edit

Most technical facilities will become available in a centralized fashion. Details will be worked out later, this is just to give you an impression. Work on this will only start later, as there is no need to have this finished in a very early stage. Common theme here is keep it simple. For example, no multiple login layers.

Uploading edit

There are special upload forms (upload wizard) on Wikimedia Commons to make uploading easier. These are both country and language based (i.e. Netherlands-Dutch and Netherlands-English). See Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012/Upload campaigns for more information.
There can be special upload facilities through Flickr etc, depending per country.
Uploader will be sent to their national page first, and can go to other countries from there.
There should be a simplified version of Commonist or a similar mass upload method.

Tools edit

See also for more information: Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012/Tools (not finished), 2011 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

The database will be freely available, so that people can build tools onto it, and re-use the data. That way, you can for example project the monuments on a map, or make other additional work with it.
There will be a central API/mapping tool
Lets try to create a tool to help the jury go through the images and make that scale.

World tour exhibition edit

Please Check out here for details.

Coordination edit

National edit

Please make sure to involve the Wikimedia community heavily in this project. You will need all their help you can get on completing the lists and correcting the mistakes in them. Try to involve them in other aspects too, to increase their continued support. A good approach is to set up a coordination page on the wiki where the lists are located, and to give continuous feedback on completeness and quality, and to show that something is happening with the data.

International edit

Some steps will require international coordination and besides that there is a whole lot to learn from each other. Therefore, please communicate, communicate, communicate! There is an international mailing list you can subscribe to to stay up to date and share your experiences and problems. That is also a great way to get some help. Please make sure that at least one involved person for each country is subscribed to this mailing list.

Lodewijk and Maarten were responsible for the Wiki Loves Monuments organization in 2010 in the Netherlands, and are willing to join in in a brainstorm session (online or in real life) to help you figure out the problems and potential solutions. That might be an effective way to get the community together in one place and exchange some real experiences. The complete organization team is presented here.

At the end of March, we can do some brainstorming perhaps at the Chapters Meeting, but we think it is more important to have a real dedicated meeting in May, where all attending groups can participate and we can coordinate the things that need to be coordinated like the international jury etc. More information to follow.

For online coordination, please all keep the progress page up to date.

We want to join! edit

So... you think this would be a cool event? That is great! A good way to start is to review these pages (this concept page, the timeline linked above and the post mortem of last year), to review the progress table for your country (here) and to subscribe to the mailing list and introduce yourself there. If there is a chapter in your country, definitely approach them too and see if they are interested in running this.

Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012/Documentation

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