The meeting started with a general introduction to the agenda and plan. We are getting ready to go at 13:19. We will try to have two notetakers at all times. Up first, our notetakers are Stephen & Ido.
One person will volunteer as a "gatekeeper" to make sure people speak and speak in sequence. Up first, our volunteer is Jean-Fred.
Why are we here? Lily shared a personal story about getting involved in Wiki Loves Monuments.
The current team has members with a variety of experience. Some of the team members have been around for many years, and others joined during the 2016 competition. Some people people joined in July. There is a need to reflect on what we should be doing moving forward.
Build the team. We are all part of one team, but we don't work as a team at all times. People joined at different points in time, and have different levels of experience. This weekend, we hope to build a team and decide on our direction together, so we can work as a team.
Find our direction. Where do we want to go from this point forward? Where are we going to be in 2-3 years? We need a direction beyond the practical tasks we will work on for the next year.
Question: On the “dream Wiki Loves Monuments International team” [referring to slides], is it permanent or temporary? Answer: We should build a direction for 2017, with the option that another team may continue based on that beyond this year. We will plan for 2017 first.
Define our focus. What do we want to change? We should decide on some specific projects.
Plan for 2017. Part of the reason we invited guests for the next two days was to hear their expertise and incorporate it into our upcoming campaign. Possibly, some of the guests would like to get more involved.
Today, we have two primary goals:
Define the team mission, and
Review the results from the International Team's internal survey.
We'll begin with some simple ground rules. This is a team sport. We all want to work together, so it's helpful to have some rules that we share.
None of us is a genius. We should approach things openly, since we have different levels of knowledge. We may be experts, but there are many things we don't know.
Hiding is harmful. Don't hide things you do for the international team. At least one more person should know what you are doing.
Lose self ego and develop team ego. Try to develop the ego as a team, instead of thinking for yourself.
Criticize without questioning specific people's character. Lots of questions will come up. If you receive criticism, don't take it personally. It's not about you. From the perspective of the person providing criticism. Remember respect and humility. People have feelings.
Be patient. We are an international group, with different backgrounds, cultures, and language mastery. This creates complications. Assume good faith and make time to listen.
Be open to be influenced. You have been doing things, maybe for years. Be open for things to change. If you are influenced by someone, you will have opportunities to influence them later.
If you don't want to remember this long list of rules, please focus on three things:
Humility. You're not the center of the world; be open to input.
Respect. You truly believe that others have something to say
Trust. Trust that other people are qualified to do what they signed up to do.
Why do we need a mission? It may sound corporate, but it's useful in a lot of contexts. Having a clear mission can improve the communication of the team, and ensure we are working in the same direction. Additionally, the process of arriving at a mission is almost as important as the mission itself. People speak differently, but it will be useful to hear each of our perspectives on Wiki Loves Monuments. Creating a mission statement will help us build a shared understanding of the team's goal.
Wiki Loves Monuments previously did not have a written mission. There is a philosophy page, but that is not the same as a mission. Different countries may have described different local missions, too. We don't need to make something that is uniform for every campaign. The goal is to describe a mission for the International Team.
Mission statements should help us define why we are in the team, and what we will work on or not work on. As an example of a good mission, see the page for the Google Web Toolkit. Bad missions say something generally like "We will serve the customer." This leaves some important questions open: How will you serve the customer? What jobs do you need to do? Which customer are you talking about? A good mission will tell you what the team will do (and not do), and what is the outcome.
For the Wiki Loves Monuments International Team, the kind of mission statement we come to today may not be exactly as clear as GWT’s. Because of the nature of Wiki Loves Monuments, we will do a variety of work. The International Team does partnerships, as well as technical development.
To reach a mission for the Wiki Loves Monuments International Team, we will need to have a clear idea of Wiki Loves Monuments itself, beyond the international team. The full competition is largely defined by the local Wiki Loves Monuments organizers in each country, but there are many common ideas to discuss.
The group discussed what Wiki Loves monuments means to them. There are three big parts: heritage, Wikimedia, culture.
Some thoughts on what Wiki Loves Monuments is:
A way of sharing photos from a country, and making sure it gets reused.
An easy entry to the wiki world for newcomers, people who want to join.
A way to contribute to a global database of monuments.
A documentation of heritage, per There is a deadline (the documentation is useful, too).
A focused social formula for encouraging people to preserve cultural heritage: list, competition, prizes etc. People can adapt it to their local context, but it's focused and flexible so it can be used for other related things.
Something to coordinate and leverage a community, with very limited risks. It's often a first project done by communities, and it creates a glue in the community so that a successful project builds a successful community.
A path to onboarding new contributors, enabling them by helping them find something close them.
A project with a global perspective that encourage new countries on Wikipedia.
A cost effective way of preserving heritage.
Providing outreach about Wikimedia projects and cultural heritage; awareness of difficulties documenting cultural heritage; photo competition (it's motivational for people).
As a PR thing, it's good to showcase.
A pipeline for more good contributions (when people submit a picture, it triggers all kinds of things in the background).
Providing multiple forms of impact
An accepted and understood concept to organize an activity (there aren't so many concepts that are understood) that: helps the wikimedia movement understand global heritage, involves more people to become contributors, and allows groups to organize themselves so they can continue collaborating.
Something more the concept than saving the world's heritage.
A way to engage people to contribute to media files and metadata about monuments to the Wikimedia projects. Everything else is a nice to have, but the monument photos and data are the core. Building up communities, all of this is secondary.
It's interesting that only a few people mentioned photos. Some people want it to be about articles or meta-data, too.
The metadata is very valuable. Nobody has this size of database (~1.5 mil unique monument records worldwide).
People used different words. Some people used the term "heritage," and some people used the term "monuments."
Did people use different words because they mean different things? The term "monuments" has a different meaning in different contexts.
There is a lot of flexibility in what the teams can do. On the other hand, if you allow too many things within the campaign, it becomes too difficult.
What about considering non-photos? It would be able to accept video, as well as other types of entries into the competition. It may be possible to The competition itself is seen as low impact, when it's not merged with improving articles.
One main benefit of focusing on monuments, as opposed to Wiki Loves Earth (or other types of competitions) is that monuments are on fairly standard lists. The monument lists are not always simple, but they still provide a concrete resource that you can start with in many countries. In countries where organizers cannot get an official list from the government, they may be able to build a list.
The definition of "monument" has been a debate among Wiki Loves Monuments organizers since 2011. The standard is to use the government's definition of protected built heritage. Some places can include some unexpected heritage objects as monuments, such as shipwrecks. One year, a country wanted to focus only on war memorials. That was not considered in-scope. Wiki Loves Monuments has to allow of a country's officially recognized built heritage.
A fixed list of objects is a very big dimension of Wiki Loves Monuments. In some countries, such lists did not initially exist (like Israel).
Each member of the International Team shared some thoughts on the definition of Wiki Loves Monuments:
It's a competition
There were different perspectives on whether it exclusively a "photo competition," or rather a competition where photos are a central part. There was general agreement that photos are at the core of the competition, even when it includes other kinds of contributions (data uploads, article writing, or other media). There is a desire to include video in Wiki Loves Monuments, at some point.
Currently, there is there is some concern about running it as a competition.
In Switzerland, running the event as a competition allows it to attract participation from competitive photographers.
We showcase the results from the competition.
We want people to create photos, not donate old photos from a collection at an institution. Only self-made photos are allowed.
The photos are not necessarily taken within the same year. People can submit old photos, as long as they are original creations.
It involves enriching Wikipedia articles. Enriching Wikipedia is likely a motivation for competition organizers, but not necessarily for other participants. On the other hand, people may be motivated by a desire to see their photos appear on Wikipedia. Based on a previous survey of participants, we know that some Wiki Loves Monuments participants want to submit photos to Wikipedia.
One idea is that it must help Wikipedia.
In the future, Wiki Loves Monuments may mostly benefit Wikidata.
It's a marketing tool. Of course, Wiki Loves Monuments is not just about marketing. Marketing is not the primary goal, but for some people, it's a very important goal.
Some people see the primary goal of the competition is creating free images of the public.
It's based on fixed lists of monuments.
As discussed previously, sometimes the definitions of "monument" are difficult in a country, or the country may not have a fixed list.
We are building a catalogue of monuments as part of Wiki Loves Monuments.
People have identified a few different goals:
Supporting Wikipedia.
Enriching Wikimedia Commons
If it's not enriching Wikimedia it's not Wiki Loves Monuments.
For example, a campaign that was freely licensed, but operated entirely on Flickr or another platform would not be part of Wiki Loves Monuments. This isn't to say that importing files from another platform wouldn't be welcome, it should just have an organizational connection to Wikimedia Commons.
Free images for the public
Wiki Loves Monuments can play an important role in advocating for openly licensed materials.
A monuments database
A competition where everyone can contribute
The competition should have a low barrier to entry.
The target audience is the general public
It's federated at a country level
What does WLM International team mean to you?[edit]
What does the international team mean to you?
The group discussed the definition of the international team. Based on the common words in the group's response, two important trends are localness and participation.
The International Team should:
Facilitate and structures of the national Wiki Loves Monuments competitions and leverage the outcomes.
Help more national teams to be active in this field, and be more effective with lower overhead.
Grow the program into as many countries as possible.
Design the metrics for the project's goals (impact).
Lower the barrier for participation (from countries).
Ensure local competitions don't diverge to the point that WLM gets ill-defined.
In this sense, the International Team is a gatekeeper to some degree.
Ensure skills and knowledge is not lost from year-to-year.
Design the basic framework for project management to help the local teams.
It's a team of experienced members with different backgrounds.
Project management includes providing metrics.
Be the primary maintainer of an otherwise decentralized project.
It's goal is optimizing the shared resources.
Provide flexibility as to what we can / should do.
provide help to local organizers.
Know what to do based on defined goals.
The team has some defined goal, and we are a coordinated group of people, so there is some backup for local organizers.
Help transfer local skillset to the international team.
Influence the direction for Wiki Loves Monuments
Importantly, we cannot set it the direction of the project by ourselves alone, but we can influence it by defining a direction and sharing it with the wider group of people who are involved.
Have technical and social skills to create a smooth process to facilitate countries who participate in Wiki Loves Monuments.
Each member shared some thoughts on the essential components of the international team:
Team is coordinating, facilitating and supporting local organizers (both reactively and proactively)
Running international-level contest
Ensure the existence of basic technical infrastructure (deciding what infrastructure should exist and supporting it)
Infrastructure may include Montage, the monuments DB, categorization bot, statistics, maps tool, mobile app, etc.
Ensuring transfer of knowledge happens on the global level (make sure best practices are shared)
Setting guidelines and providing some moral authority where it is helpful
Provide leadership (being responsible for fixing problems when they occur, being a central point of contact)
A chapter or organizing team could be a spokesperson to the external world. For example, if UNESCO has a panel about copyright and cultural heritage, and they invited us.
Is the international team the authority on Wiki Loves Monuments? Are we going to "approve" participation to some extent? What about communications on behalf on the international team?
The International Team already some some informal authority. We are encouraging people to do things in a certain way, so there's a de-facto responsibility involved.
The international Team sets the default rules, along with some basic rules that are universal across local campaigns.
Is it part of the International Team's role to police bad behaviour? And where does that stop?
Thankfully, this is not a question that has required much attention among Wiki Loves Monuments organizations.
We may consider getting involved if necessary, by encouraging a code of conduct. We should discuss this further if we see a need.
The International Team discussed various possible mission statements. These are potential proposals submitted by group members:
The WLM international team is responsible for coordinating and supporting local Wiki Loves Monuments competitions, while organizing the international contest. We do that by providing a transparent process, guidelines, resources and technical infrastructure and tools, and ensure best practices are shared between local participants.
+1 to adding technical infrastructure and tools
Question: is the goal to help the competition, or to collect the photos?
To ensure that Wiki Loves Monuments can be efficiently executed in a repeatable manner, by providing coordination, support and basic infrastructure for both the federated and international parts of the competition.
Note: this needs to have something that we are organizing a photo competition, and reflect that it is repeatable at the international level.
Question: what about opportunities that are only available one time?
Most people see Wiki Loves Monuments as a contest, but there are reasons that people stick around. Participants register an account and go through the upload process at least once. We have some data that a certain number of people who participate will come back within the year.
Wiki Loves Monuments is at its core a decentralized international photo competition that engages a broad audience in the Wikimedia ecosystem to bring together freely licensed content on recognized built heritage for use on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The international team's mission is to provide leadership to this effort by coordinating, facilitating and supporting the national Wiki Loves Monuments competition, organizing an international finale, ensuring the availability of a basic infrastructure and ensuring the flow of knowledge.
Someone approves this statement 👍💯 :)
The mission of the Wiki Loves Monuments International Team is to be a proactive maintainer and coordinator of Wiki Loves Monuments by taking care of international level of competition, providing tool/infrastructure and list of "how-to"s for country-level organizers. The final goal of Wiki Loves Monuments: we want to have photos of every monument, freely licensed on Wikimedia.
We would like Wikimedia to have freely licensed media of every monument in the world. To get there, we will facilitate an annual federated organized photo competition in every country.
This is closer to a vision for Wiki Loves Monuments?
👍
Note: There is an issue with separating the goal of the team from that of competition (i.e. defining the Wiki Loves Monuments outcome as the goal for the team)
What is our goal? (1) WLM international contest; Bringing photos to Wikimedia projects. The Wiki Loves Monuments International Team's mission is to: run the Wiki Loves Monuments international contest by (1) providing basic infrastructure and support to national organizers to run successful Wiki Loves Monuments contests, and (2) ensuring an international contest that is fair and open for broad participation.
Based on this conversation, there are generally three goals or pillars to Wiki Loves Monuments from the International Team's perspective:
Focus area
Description
Digital preservation
Documenting and raising awareness of built heritage
Wikimedia projects
Increasing the number of contributions to Wikimedia projects
Communities
Building up local communities by providing them an easy, fun, concrete activity to organize around
The Wiki Loves Monuments International Team's mission is to freely document and raise awareness of built cultural heritage, increase contributions to the Wikimedia projects and bolster local Wikimedia communities by leading and facilitating an annual federated, global, low-barrier photo competition.
The words in italics need rewording (but the concepts are agreed upon)
The mission statement will be followed by a more in-depth description of certain terms
We discussed if there is a better term from the cultural heritage sector to describe Wiki Loves Monuments goal to 'document and raise awareness of cultural heritage.
We discussed if there was a better term than low-barrier to describe the goal of keeping Wiki Loves Monuments open and broadly accessible to the general public.
Low barrier means that we will encourage local campaigns to accept photos from an open and broad audience. It should
We facilitate by providing coordination, support, and infrastructure support.
We discussed what is the difference between building capacity and building communities?
Capacity building: making sure the skills are available, training people, or adding new people.
Building a community: this includes making sure there is a structure.
