Commons talk:Wiki Loves Earth 2016

Expression of interest for participation as orgcom members

Everyone who is eager to participate in Wiki Loves Earth International 2016 as an organization committee member, is invited to put his/her name here. Please also stress what you can and want to do as a WLE orgcom member.

1. Would like to communicate with chapters, primarily. --Olena Zakharian (talk) 21:36, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
2. Happy to help in anyway, can offer the support of WMAu for regions without affiliates in Oceania who want to participate as well. Gnangarra 14:40, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
3. Of course, for the CentralNotice and the UploadWizard infrastructure. Romaine (talk) 12:50, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

   Only in case I am needed in the committee. Kinda a jack of, well, many trades a master of none kind of help. That namely being backup/help (rather than being the primary responsible person) of/with several items of work like, affiliates and participants contacting, onwiki infrastructure (UWC, CN, etcætera) setup, counting some stats, IRL Ukraine based stuff (e.g. sending promotional materials), and perhaps other things. I would rather I do not have to do it all, but I am here if a need arises. --Base (talk) 02:44, 10 January 2016 (UTC)_{--Base (talk) 18:23, 6 September 2016 (UTC)}

4. as usual --Ilya (talk) 22:02, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
5. Would be interested in joining. In previous years I worked on communicating with local chapters or groups, helped searching jury members and supporting international jury, contributed to rules etc., and I intend to work on this this year as well. If I have time, I might also try finding international partners, although I am not sure I will do it — NickK (talk) 22:05, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
6. In any way needed, work on the blog would be fun, "first level support" would be important, I suppose. --Лорд Бъмбъри (talk) 23:07, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
7. Would like to handle social media updates and promotional graphical stuffs for the event.-Nabin K. Sapkota (talk) 08:51, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Different nominations

Let's discuss if it is better to have different nominations for the pictures. Say, 1) wide views; 2) representative biotopes; 3) significant or rare plants; 4) etc. Like it was done for ESPC 2015: Commons:European Science Photo Competition 2015/Image categories --アンタナナ 22:50, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

@Digr, Atsirlin, Poco a poco, and A.Savin:  ? --アンタナナ 22:50, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

It depends on the available funding. I personally am not interested in anything beyond the "wide views", at least in Russia, where we want to achieve better coverage of protected areas all over the country instead of collecting new shots of birds in a park in the middle of Moscow or of flowers on the outskirts of Sochi. That said, I don't mind if plants and animals are included, with the only caveat that it should leave enough funds and prizes for the "wide views", which are way more general and also more important, I think. --Alexander (talk) 23:10, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

+1 --A.Savin 08:55, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

-1 I think you focus too strictly on en:Landscape photography, which is just a subcategory of en:Nature photography. From a a photographers view these may be different disciplines, like sprinting and weight-lifting. From a Wikipedians view we need both of them. In Germany we accepted also animal and flower pictures, but we insisted on protected areas (easy to do, if you have plenty of them). But I have to admit that landscape and animal pictures are difficult to rank in the same category of a contest. --Blech (talk) 23:00, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

One general concern here is that non-landscape photos are not properly tagged during the upload. Each protected area has its unique ID, which is added to the file during the upload. This way, we can easily find all photos taken in a given area. It is very handy for landscape photos, but it does not work for plants, birds, and whatever else other nominations will contain.

Could you tell us how many useful (i.e., currently used in Wikimedia projects) non-landscape photos have you got last year, and which fraction of the photos are they? I mean, the fraction with respect to the photos of the same type. I expect that we will have massive uploads of pigeons and dandelions, and we will have no way to figure out whether they were taken in a protected area or not. In fact, the ESPC 2015 is a perfect illustration to the fact that the more freedom you give, the more rubbish you get. --Alexander (talk) 23:24, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

The solution we used in Ukraine is that non-landscape photos should only illustrate flora and fauna that is typical or protected on a given territory. For example, you could perfectly upload a photo of a dandelion in Category:Valley of Narcissi, as this picture would be useful and in scope, but you should not upload a photo of a dandelion in an ornithological reserve. The side-effect of this is that we gor pretty little non-landscape photos, although they were not explicitly banned — NickK (talk) 00:44, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

It is important that these nominations are properly balanced. Namely, reserve different number of prizes for the more popular "lanscape" nomination and the less popular flora-fauna nomination. --Alexander (talk) 08:06, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

From my experience, non-landscape photos are tagged like landscapes, not better nor worse. If they could not be attributed to a protected area, they were disqualified. In the end they are all categorized into the same protected area-category (like Category:Naturschutzgebiet Wehrholz) and can be used to illustrate the same article.

This year we had 4 animal pictures among our top ten (may be too many), 8 more in the top hundred. On the other hand, not a single plant picture made it to the top 150. I would expect an increase in the number and quality of bird photographies in 2016, since a bird picture won the first prize. --Blech (talk) 22:26, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

That works for very rare species that can be found in a few protected areas only. When we are talking about more common species (and they are more likely to be on the photos), they can be assigned to one particular protected area, but this won't help us to find photos in the future. Such photos should be categorized manually, and we know that manual categorization never happens, at least in our case.

The numbers you quoted suggest that there should be not more than 2 prizes for plants and animals for every ten prizes given for landscape photos. That's something to think about if new nominations are eventually created. --Alexander (talk) 11:09, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

You are right, these pictures need at least two categories, one for the protected area and one for the species. The latter is not the biggest problem, our biologist's identification service is very helpful. I have more problems to identify the correct place, since most uploaders do not answer. We still try to categorize manually, but it is a quite dull job. The 10:2 ratio you proposed would have worked for Germany 2015. --Blech (talk) 19:25, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I suggest to make three equal nominations for quality images on national and international level: 1) Landscapes 2) Animals 3) Plants. Without strictly requiring participants to put names of species into descriptions (if they don't know it, a good and accurate image is still very helpful, and we can ask biologists to identify the species). Nominations can be simply divided by categories (but we have to adjust the uploader a bit, to put some nice buttons there for uploading through categories, to make it more attractive for photographers). The question remaining unsolved is whether we accept images of species from any place – or just from those protected areas with IDs. For this year I suggest not to modify significantly our system with IDs and lists, but to accept images of landscapes, animals and plants as equal nominations from areas with IDs. AND to add categories for three nominations looking like buttons. For example, after choosing a protected area from the list, a photographer sees three buttons: "Upload a landscape", "Upload an animal image", "Upload a plant" (instead of one green button "Upload"/"Choose media files for uploading"). Clicking one of the buttons will mean adding the category to the image. --Olena Zakharian (talk) 21:55, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your proposal. Did you mean, that an equal amount of prizes should be spent on landscapes, animals and plants? I would not go that far. We still get more landscape fotos than animals or plants. Maybe the proportions will change in future years, maybe not. Protected areas were the thing all our pictures had in common, this worked quite good in Germany. But I think I should discuss that topic locally first. --Blech (talk) 14:13, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

One more thought on this topic: if pictures of flowers and animals are part of WLE, we will require support from the international organizers on reviewing images of this type whenever they are potential winners of the national contest. We are unable to decide ourselves whether the picture of a plant or animal is taken within the protected area, and if its caption is meaningful/accurate enough. We won't be able to find enough experts within the country (they obviously exist, but getting them involved is not easy), and I am sure that other countries will face the same problem. Therefore, this "animalistic" aspect of WLE requires international organizers to take additional responsibility and provide additional support to the national teams. Otherwise, you are going to put us in a very difficult situation when we have to evaluate something that we do not understand. Suppose that we choose to award an ineligible photo (like bees in a non-natural habitat last year) and later the international jury turns this photo down. What should we do? Retract the prize? That's going to be weird. --Alexander (talk) 14:05, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I have to agree that pictures are in general more difficult to locate, the smaller the displayed motive is. We would have to believe the photographer. If he or she can tell the protected site where it was taken and no doubts arise, we should assume good faith. You have to assume similar good faith if landscape pictures show, for example only a meadow, some trees and blue sky and no famous landmark in the background. Animals and plants have to be identified at least to the family level. But that is rather a job of the photographer or local teams, if they try to support the identification. I once saw that QI also requires that pictures are well categorized, which means for animals and plants that they are identified. --Blech (talk) 16:41, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, I don't mean reviewing every image, but only those that may win. For landscapes we have a lot of freedom, and we will likely not choose an image of a meadow because it is simply unremarkable. Moreover, we have our own knowledge and we have experts who can tell us whether this particular landscape is typical for this protected area or not. On the other hand, we do not have and we will not have biology experts covering all possible types of animals and plants. Suppose that we are required to select photos animals and plants in the national competition. We will need the scrutiny that only the international jury can provide. Otherwise, we may run into a foolish situation when we give a prize to something that later turns out to be ineligible for WLE. --Alexander (talk) 17:48, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

we could just require all images to be geolocated and accept in good faith the information provided, given that there are enough satellite image sites that could be looked and it be done at the last minute to verify the results before announcing so that the volume is small enough to be manageable rather than early in the process. Gnangarra 05:09, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

No, that can't work. Selected images should be verified at least before the final round of jury evaluation. Checking images only after the final round has put us in a painful situation last year: just days before publishing results we found out that one of top-10 images was not made in a protected natural site but in a private apiary, and we had to come up with an emergency solution. We definitely should make this check earlier this year — NickK (talk) 07:22, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I have thought about this for a while and I can hardly draw the line between a "wide view" and a "representative biotope", as most protected natural areas are representative biotops themselves. Perhaps we should have at most two nominations: one for landscape photography and one for representative species. I am not sure however that this really justifies efforts for maintaining these two nominations (like making sure that photos are uploaded in the right nomination, setting up two separate jury processes etc.) — NickK (talk) 00:59, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Clear rules

We are to have clear rules. Please, see Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2015/Rules & FAQ#Rules and the discussion here (some parts are in Russian): Commons talk:Wiki Loves Earth 2015/Winners --アンタナナ 22:54, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

To take part in Wiki Loves Earth contest, a submission should:

• Be self taken

  All entries must be original photographs uploaded by their authors. Photos uploaded by anyone else than author (even with permission) are not accepted.

• Be self uploaded during the contest period (May 2015/There may be a different contest period);

  You are also welcome to submit photos you may have taken in the past. What matters is that photos must be uploaded during the contest period (1st May — 31st May/There may be a different contest period)

• Be under a free license;
• Contain an identified natural monument / natural park / protected area etc.;

  Lists of eligible sites are published by each participating country.

• Be nominated through a national contest;
• Have at least 2Mpx.
• A participant should have an activated e-mail address via Preferences of his/her account.

deadline / timeline

I suggest setting a more clear timeline. For example, the deadline for the submission of national winners is July 1. If they are not submitted by July 10, the country does not take part in the international competition. The finalists are announced by September 1. Something like that. --Alexander (talk) 23:20, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I do not know if we would still need it this year, but both in 2014 and 2015 we had a number of countries running their contest in June. Some of them where just late, but some had good reasons for this (e.g. Austria where many Alpine regions were hard to access in May). I think we should either completely ban this possibility (effectively setting the deadline per your suggestion) or clearly allow this (by postponing the deadline till 31 July) — NickK (talk) 01:09, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

July 1 was just an example. If you know that some countries cannot provide the results before July 31, it would be natural to give everyone the same deadline, July 31. After all, we could also benefit from the competition in June because of the similar climate issues. --Alexander (talk) 08:03, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't like that strict deadline. I guess discouraging some national teams could do more harm to the project in the long run than missing the deadline. Or, do you have any serious reasons for this proposal? Like, international partnership agreements or so? --Olena Zakharian (talk) 22:04, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

No, but deadline must be deadline. Or there should be no deadline at all. I am not sure how to explain it (should be very obvious, I think), but it's basically the difference between doing the work and running contest simply for fun, without taking any obligations. --Alexander (talk) 16:23, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Deadlines must be an absolute people need to be able to plan, we need to be able to know exactly what is happening and when from submissions to judging to announcements Gnangarra 16:46, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

31 July is perfect! So each country will have time enough to proof the pictures ! --Elisauer (talk) 12:45, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

image resolution

I suggest raising the minimum resolution to at least 4Mpx. A 2Mpx pic is something that even my old phone could produce, while all modern phones are able to produce much bigger photos. It goes without saying that the actual photo cams rather than phones do not have any problems with minimum the resolution proposed either. We have a photo rather than a thumbnail contest so we should discourage low resoution pics at least on international level. --Base (talk) 04:52, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Firstly, please take into account that not all people may have modern phones or modern cameras: WLE is also organised in a number of Global South countries where the notion of "modern" may be different. Thus we may lose some participants (particularly in developing countries) who want to share photos from places that were probably never pictured before but whose cameras are not modern enough, and having only Western tourists participating would be quite unfortunate (Nepal already had only 2 photos out of top-10 taken by Nepalese citizens). Secondly, some people may not be willing to share photos in the highest possible resolution: some WLE participants are professional/commercial photographers who receive significant part of their revenue from selling photos. Thus we may lose some photos if participants will focus on uploading just one or two photos in the 4Mpx+ resolution instead of uploading many photos in exactly 2Mpx resolution. This is very unfortunate, but I do not believe that this change would be feasible at the global level, although countries not affected by these two problems may set higher thresholds — NickK (talk) 15:19, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Just to illustrate, File:Mole water park.jpg was taken with a tablet with 3Mpx camera. I am pretty sure this tablet is modern according to Ghanese standards, but it is perfectly unable to produce 4Mpx photos — NickK (talk) 15:26, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

We are talking about rules of the international part here, please do not forget this fact. Though these are also the rules people will base local rules on, they are free to adjust them accordingly to their realities. E.g. they may allow 3 Mpx photos on local level, but send us only 10 best of over 4Mpx ones if they are running local part in a deep Global South country where it is indeed difficult to afford a good cam. As to specificly the greedy (sorry, this characteristic is harsh, but I believe it fits best) photographers' case I do not think we should be kind to them on international level. I am neutral about need to lure them into participation on local level, but participation in international level means that the person has already won a prize on a local level, thus got a revenue. It is not fair to allow people to lower resolution for photos so that they can sell them, +give them a prize, +give them another, bigger prize for the same shots (and I am pretty sure that in most countries the amount of money spent on their prizes will prove bigger than the amount of money they get when sell the shots). People should either run into the contest for the prizes or sell them. As I said we are running a photo, not a thumbnail contest. Low resolution photos are often failing even our own quality standards like QI nominations, it won't be right to call such pics world's best. --Base (talk) 01:14, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure we can call people greedy because they donate less materials than you would like them to (by the way you can also call me greedy as I am writing you this message on Commons at the moment instead of taking pictures for Commons). I am not sure either that all local contests give a good prize to the 10th place photo: international team does not budget good prizes for them, and then it's entirely up to local organisers to choose prizes. The biggest question is: why do you think that 4Mpx is a better figure? Why not 3, not 7, not 3.72 or 4.46? 2 Mpx is a hard criterion in Commons:Image guidelines, where do 4Mpx come from? — NickK (talk) 16:22, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I do not have some smart formula which wields into 4Mpx if that's what you are asking. Neither I believe that there was such when 2Mpx for Image guidelines were approved. The current practice on e.g. quality image nominations is such that 2 Mpx is often not enough. Besides it's not only our own guidelines we should pay heed to in this case. What you seem to want very much is pro photographers participating. The thing is that the rules must be serious enough so they will want to spend their time on participation, IMHO. I understand that there might be no prize or a bad prize for 10th place in some countries, but it's up to local organizers what prizes to give. There is a difference between donating stuff and submitting stuff into a contest. You are not expecting to be awarded for the former. --Base (talk) 16:11, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

No, what I want very much is not to create unjustified obstacles. Last year someone from German team considered that even 2Mpx is too high, but at least this number can be justified because winners must be eligible for QI nominations. If QI criteria say that 2Mpx photos are OK but in reality they are not, then this is a problem of QI process and not of that of WLE — NickK (talk) 00:01, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Most german jurors were angry, because they had already selected their winners when WLE International told us about that 2 Mpx-rule. I think it was imposed without discussion and not communicated to local teams. Modifying one of your subpages two days before the contest starts does not count as "communication". We do not check them daily. The connection of WLE to QI was by the way a really bad idea, try to get rid of it if you can. --Blech (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

@Blech: Do you mean completely removing 2Mpx requirement? That would be quite bad as number of QI/FP is one of the measures of success of WLE and images under 2Mpx automatically fail there — NickK (talk) 20:48, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Olena Zakharian, Gnan, Romaine, Ilya, Лорд Бъмбъри, Nabin K. Sapkota, any input on this? --Base (talk) 15:13, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@NickK: If local teams know in advance that a 2 MPx minimum is required, they will probably accept it. My personal preference would be "original resolution", but that is difficult or even impossible to verify. With 4 MPx required my own camera would be technically out of the game, if I cut the edges of a photograph a little bit. I do not think that the number of QI is a good measure of success for another photo contest. They have their rules and their process, WLE has its own rules and process. If you tie WLE to QI, we will have to follow every change of rules over there. --Blech (talk) 21:49, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Nope, no input on this. I do not have a position, yet. --Лорд Бъмбъри (talk) 23:58, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

2mpx has been a standard for QI and FP for a few years, personally I think its low compared to the capacity of most cameras(and phones) these days and it does make the image useful across multiple platforms including print. That said an exceptional photo at a smaller resolution should be recognisable but we should be encouraging usable images where every possible. IMHO not really an issue of great importance hence why I'm happy twith what ever the decision Gnangarra 11:22, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

No input on this as well. I don't have a position or arguments. --Olena Zakharian (talk) 22:06, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

• Com:Image guidelines has been in place since 2006 when QI started, it was merged with FP guidelines in 2007 I really dont see why this standard which has been in place for almost 10 years is even being questioned as it the wider communities consensus as to what constitutes an acceptable image... WLE does serve the communities needs and uses the communities resources so its logical WLE at selects its best photos based on them meeting the communities requirements. Gnangarra 15:53, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

If we decide to add nominations on species, animals, plants etc. we should clarify it in the rules as well. --Olena Zakharian (talk) 22:07, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA)

Hi ;

I think we can add Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA), which includes globally important sites for different taxa and realms, such as:

• Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs);
• Important Plant Areas (IPAs);
• Important Sites for Freshwater Biodiversity;
• Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) sites.

--Touzrimounir (talk) 09:51, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Touzrimounir,

Where can we find more information about Key Biodiversity Areas? Especially, where can we find the complete list of these areas?

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 16:30, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

@VIGNERON: I haven't find a list about Key Biodiversity Areas, but you can find here a list of Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) sites Important Plant Areas (IPAs) by country and Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) by country --Touzrimounir (talk) 20:25, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

• looking at whats listed within Australia all of the KBA regions are already within larger locally protected areas some are poorly defined compared to defined regions in which they encompassed. From WLE Australia perspective adding them specifically would not incur any expansion of regions already covered. Gnangarra 06:22, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
• Thank you for the link. I think that we should leave up to each country to define how they would include these sites. I can second Gnangarra in his evaluation of these lists. We cannot impose them to anyone but we should definitely accept them if any country would decide to use this list — NickK (talk) 01:07, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Outcome of the discussions

It's time to start preparations for the WLE, and some basic things should be fixed now:

• What is the timeline? Will it be possible to have the competition in June instead of May? If yes, What will be the deadline for submitting the national winners?
• Which nominations will be considered? This is important because nominations introduced in the international contest require a similar breakdown of the national winners (hence defining the number of prizes, budget, and so on).

--Alexander (talk) 16:41, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

the competition will not be possible for muslim country in June, because it will be during the month of Ramadan,where all muslim world are Fasting, I think it can be from May to June tow month like Wiki lOves Africa, and every country can choose the date of participation --Touzrimounir (talk) 15:10, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, I think that my question about June is not relevant any longer. Russia will seemingly stay in May. Nevertheless, the timeline will be good to know. --Alexander (talk) 16:10, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

@antanana, NickK, Olena Zakharian: So, 10 days after: do we have at least the timeline for the decision about nominations? It's kind of difficult to launch the contest when you don't know which nominations should be there. --Alexander (talk) 10:03, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@Atsirlin: Thank you for pinging, I've written my point of view regarding nominations — NickK (talk) 01:09, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

List of all protected areas on Earth compiled by UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre

Hi all

Not sure if this is information already known but UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre run a website called protectedplanet.net that includes all protected sites on Earth with their locations on a map with a database download available for every country. I think this would form a very good base for any country's list and then if needed supplemented with other sites. Thanks John Cummings (talk) 13:53, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for the information. The protected planet identification number (WDPA) is already taken into account in the templates on WP. One problem with the website protectedplanet is that its update is not done regularly so there are some obsolete sites. Pmau (talk) 14:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Glad to hear the ID numbers are used, they update the site every month (when you download a dataset it is date stamped), perhaps its simply that while new sites are added regularly its hard to find out when sites are taken off a protected register. John Cummings (talk) 08:56, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I can only talk for the french protected areas. As an example of missing update for this country, the Archipel de Riou national nature reserve was unclassified in 2013 after its inclusion in the Calanques national park but it is still visible on the site. Some names are incorrect like the geological nature reserve of Haute-Provence called Digne. And the count of national nature reserve is now 167, not 149. In these conditions, it is difficult to take the list into account. Pmau (talk) 09:59, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@John Cummings: Thank you for the link. This is a useful source of information, although a bit outdated (at least for Ukraine data is as of 2010 or 2011 or something like that). I would like to know however if the data from this website can be used on Wikipedia or Wikidata. Given that the first line in Terms of Use says "No Commercial Use" I assume not, but maybe you know if it is possible to get a permission for this? For instance for Ukraine we cannot use the UNEP database in itself as it contains no human-readable address, but we would like to integrate it with our lists (in Ukrainian) that have all information except coordinates. It would be a pity not to be able to do this, do you know if there is a possibility to do this? Thanks — NickK (talk) 01:45, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

@NickK: Last year I wrote an email to UNEP and asked for permission, but they did not reply. But there is no need to worry, the lists only contain information that has been provided to UNEP by local authorities. They can copyright the lists as a whole, but not selected information from them. Someone with an official wikimedia e-mail adress should try to contact UNEP once again. Maybe they even cooperate with WLE.

For German protected areas, Template:WDPA is used frequently. It provides a link to a database entry and a map at protectedplanet. The site has been relaunched in 2014, database quality also improved then. If new protected areas are declared, it takes years till the information makes the way from local to regional, national and international databases. The database does not contain all kinds of protected areas, only those with an IUCN classification. German Nature Parks once were listed and had a WDPA ID, but suddenly they were gone. In sum: It is not perfect, but quite often useful. --Blech (talk) 21:31, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank for the comment. As far as I know coordinates were never published by Ukrainian authorities. At the same time, our format of lists (a wiki table) allows mass download, thus I am not sure this would be compliant with Terms of Use. I would prefer asking John first as writing from a UNESCO address can be even more efficient — NickK (talk) 02:10, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Is it clear to anyone know who creates the map locations on the map? It seems as though all other data is provided by local and national bodies but I can't work out who creates the shapes of the sites. I'm happy to write to them, just need to define what exactly we are asking for.John Cummings (talk) 09:23, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for responding late. You can download the entire database from protected planet, but as far as I know (I always use the csv-Package) there are no coordinates in it or on the website. In 2014 the downloadable datafile still contained shape data, i.e. coordinates of all points on the protected area's border. I would not publish these shape data, somebody had to work hard to get them. For our lists we only need one coordinate point somewhere in the middle of the area. That coordinate is published in the database of en:Common Database on Designated Areas (for all european countries, not only EU members; server seems to be down today). CDDA and WDPA use the same ID in their databases. The easiest way to use WDPA is to link to a dataset in it, you only need the ID. --Blech (talk) 12:54, 21 February 2016 (UTC) P.S.: Link to download the CDDA-Database

Hi there, for your information, on February, 13, I sent to protectedareas@unep-wcmc.org a list of remarks and corrections for the data concerning France. I just got an answer from unep-wcmc.org saying that the site is updated once a year and the next update is planned for the 1st of March. Pmau (talk) 18:39, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Date of competitions

Hi all

Do all national competitions have to happen in May? I see last year some also ran in June. Is there a final cut off date for national competitions? It says on the rules page that the competition must happen in may but with a note saying the competition may run in another period.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 15:48, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

We (= Bulgarian Wikimedians) would prefer to organise WLE in June. We could organise it in May, but would have a hard time doing it. --Лорд Бъмбъри (talk) 18:19, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@John Cummings: We would strongly recommend to organise it in May and organise it in June only if you have very good reason to do that. No images uploaded after 30 June will be accepted. We hope to approve and publish full rules by the end of February — NickK (talk) 01:48, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Well I have two reasons to want to do it in June:

1. I don't think I can do it in May so its either June or I can't be involved. I want to have enough time to set up the competition and not rush it, also to give potential partner organisations enough notice.
2. The weather in the UK is generally much better in June and there is more daylight.

John Cummings (talk) 15:13, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to propose that contest is "one month long in May or in June", so that local organisers could fit the dates to local needs. That would be fair enough.
Dear organisers, please state your support to this (or another wording) so that it could be clearly stated on the contest main page (ping Gnangarra, Olena Zakharian, Лорд Бъмбъри, Ilya, NickK, Base, Nabin K. Sapkota and Romaine) --ViraMotorko (WMUA) (talk) 12:31, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

I support. --Лорд Бъмбъри (talk) 09:09, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Setting up the categories, templates etc on Commons

Hi all

I'm considering forming a team to run WLE in the UK but the instruction:

5. Create the landing page on Commons for your country (Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in …), and take care for categories, templates etc. (Later on, you might need to ask other users for technical help e.g. for specific campaign adaptions.)

is very vague, are there any more specific instructions? This is the bit I'm least confident about and would really need clear instructions on what to do and how to do them.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 16:10, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@John Cummings: Good point, I do not see any ready guide so we'll probably write a new one. Thanks for pointing this out — NickK (talk) 03:12, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

• • good point WLE Australia also needs to create these look forward to something we can readily replicate, thanks in advance Gnangarra 12:56, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks very much, hopefully step by step instructions will encourage more people to be involved in setting up competitions in their countries. --John Cummings (talk) 15:15, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

International jury

WLE2015 had a certain lack of communication between the organisers and the jury members, and there was no provision for a formal discussion at all between the jury members themselves. We should do this better in 2016. A special talk page might help against the first deficiency. In regard to the second, we might need an expanded jury tool with appropriate talk, chat or board function. Any comments? --Aalfons (talk) 07:53, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

There are enough free possibilities to communicate online, therefore I would not expect the jury tool to receive modules for talk, chat or board functions. --Лорд Бъмбъри (talk) 23:37, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Jury can comment photos in the jury tool. There also was an experimental chat in jury for Ukraine --Ilya (talk) 18:38, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I'd expect a chat tool for the jury. If you leave it up to the jury that's important to know in advance. Ilya, you are right in saying that the comment section of last year's tool was for comment, and it was poorely used. I was asking for a kind of chat thing for dialogues. May be there is a chance to implement the UA chat in the int'l jury tool? --Aalfons (talk) 09:39, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Edit request

{{Edit request}} TA null edit please, an editor wants to translate (update)…

• WLE Deutschland. 1 May 2016 – 31 May 2016

…before WLE starts. Should that get a separate tracking category in {{edit request}}? Background, at the moment we have normal and technical, but no translate requests. –Be..anyone 💩 03:54, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

 Done Awesome! Thank you! Steinsplitter (talk) 10:09, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Central Notice

@Romaine, NickK: I don't see any activity on the Central Notice this year. Is it taken care of? Will Central Notice appear on May 1? --Alexander (talk) 07:31, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I have no CN rights, that's for @Romaine: and @Base: — NickK (talk) 08:18, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

The subpage was created thr day before yesterday, you can fill it for your country. I will finish most the work tonight and tomorrow, and yes, the CN will appear :)

I am running a little bit behind on my schedule. Thank you for creating the subpage. If all countries provide their translations, they will be used in the CentralNotice for each of the countries. Romaine (talk) 11:54, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Pakistan

Please link the Pakistan central notice banner to this page. --Saqib (talk) 11:47, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I have added this link to the subpage at: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016/CentralNotice - Romaine (talk) 11:56, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Upload campaigns

@Base, Romaine: How can I update the banner that is shown in the upload window? When I try to upload a photo, I see that WLE 2015 is over, although I expect to see the message saying "WLE 2016 has not started yet". --Alexander (talk) 12:18, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed. For a future reference, I will note it down that the date should be changed in Template:Wiki Loves Earth is running. --Alexander (talk) 13:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

I was updating it already, during a meeting. Now it has been fixed for all countries. Romaine (talk) 14:02, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@ Romaine, Base: campaign:wle-ru is still showing that the contest has not started, although it was supposed to start two hours ago. I don't understand how this bloody thing works... Would be grateful for your help. --Alexander (talk) 23:08, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

The upload wizard started working around 01:30 CET. I am baffled by this behavior. --Alexander (talk) 23:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

until know we can't upload photos in Tunisia, what is the problem ?--Touzrimounir (talk) 23:38, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Both should work fine now after mine actions, both seem to be the result of caching of the UploadWizard and is complaint about for years. Romaine (talk) 00:16, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Page translations

{{Edit request}} can someone please mark the last version of Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016 for translation (and also do this regularly during the contest, when relevant changes are made)? at the moment we have 18 edits waiting for review, which can not be reflected in translated versions (eg. German) therefore. i asked already on Commons:Village_pump#WLE_2016:_translation_admin_help, but no reaction yet, maybe the wrong place to ask… Holger1959 (talk) 16:19, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

 Done jdx ^Re: 09:28, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

CentralNotice

I have added the centralnotice design and text for Greece at Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016/CentralNotice. We run the contest May 15th- June 15th, so the CN can start from today. Anyone to take care for this (@Romaine: , @Base:  ?) or request for it at Meta? -Geraki ^T_L^G 07:57, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

I accidentally was already working on this notice this morning. I indeed noticed some information missing and wanted to contact you about, but that was still on the list to do. In the mean time this already was solved. So yes, this I will do. :-) Romaine (talk) 08:15, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

@Geraki: The website you mention has a wrong link. In the right column it links to the campaign page instead to the upload link itself. It must link to https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UploadWizard&campaign=wle-gr or https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UploadWizard&campaign=wle-gr&uselang=el . Can you fix that as soon as possible? Thanks! Romaine (talk) 08:51, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

@Romaine: . I fixed it, thanks for noticing it. I have also included upload links in the list of areas with prefilled area code for each area. -Geraki ^T_L^G 08:59, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Romaine: , @Base: , just updated the campaing for Venezuela. Please let us know if everything is correct. Cheers --Oscar_. (talk) 18:10, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Oscar .: , All information seems present, but you need to fix the uploadlink on http://wikimedia.org.ve/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Earth to //commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UploadWizard&campaign=wle-ve . Twice! (I tried to create/request an account on that wiki but that failed.) Please fix it today. Romaine (talk) 12:02, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Fixed it, thanks @Romaine: . --Oscar_. (talk) 15:22, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Romaine: , @Base: can you please update India's central notice banner? Thanks Sankoswal (talk) 07:32, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Translation request for missing languages

Please translate the following templates into the missing languages:

• Template:Upload campaign header Wiki Loves Earth before
• Template:Upload campaign header Wiki Loves Earth during
• Template:Upload campaign header Wiki Loves Earth finished

These templates need to be translated in as many languages as possible, as those are shown by default if someone has his/her preferences in that language.

Fully/partly missing languages are: Azerbaijani (az), Catalan (ca), Greek (el), Spanish (es), Portuguese (pt), Romanian (ro), Serbian (sr).

Please translate them as soon as possible! Romaine (talk) 09:28, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

PS: These are the languages so far I can see are spoken in the participating countries. Other languages are welcome and needed too. Romaine (talk) 09:28, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Greek (el) are ready, only one was missing. --Geraki ^T_L^G 09:44, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Assistance needed at Help Desk

Could someone connected to this project -- ideally a German-speaker -- please help out at Commons:Help desk#Wiki Loves Earth - Einordnen meines Bildes? Thanks. - Jmabel ! talk 03:10, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Renewable Energy at Wiki Loves Earth

In response to growing climate change concerns, can we consider renewable energy deployments under Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in India. Abhinav619 (talk) 06:52, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Abhinav619. Could you elaborate your idea, please? It is not very clear for me what you mean by considering. --Base (talk) 12:49, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Base, For instance, Cochin International Airport is the world's first fully solar energy powered airport but no pictures are available for it under Creative Commons License. Similarly, Wind power in India considering there has been a growth of off-shore wind farms which are located near the sea in India. Similarly, tidal energy etc.

All these renewable energy systems serve the earth by protecting it from carbon and other green house gas emission. Hence, can't we put them.Abhinav619 (talk) 13:03, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Earth is about natural heritage, not about technology. Pictures can participate if the wind farm is in a protected area. WLE pictures do not have to be idyllic or to show nature untouched by human influence. You could give a special price for "Renewable Energy in India", if you want to encourage uploads. --Blech (talk) 19:12, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Yep, I consulted with other orgcom members yesterday night, and it's as per Blech: we've decided that we won't accept such images on international part. But surely we cannot forbid you to have a local special nomination for this kind of images, just those would not go beyond the local contest. If you really go this way and need some help — e.g. would want users to have selector of nominations in the upload wizard — feel free to ask. --Base (talk) 08:48, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Moroccan campaign

Hello @Romaine, Ilya, and NickK:

Is it possible to extend the date of Wiki Loves Earth in Morocco until June 7, such as Switzerland and Tunisia and make the campaign page accessible for another week.

Cordially, --Reda benkhadra (talk) 17:19, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Reda benkhadra! Request implemented! - Romaine (talk) 18:23, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Romaine ! --Reda benkhadra (talk) 19:04, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

WLE Nepal

Hi @Romaine: ,
We have requested earlier for the extension of the WLE 2016 in Nepal campaign via e-mail. pl confirm?--Biplab Anand (Talk) 07:20, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Biplab Anand, Romaine did extend it, do not worry :) --Base (talk) 08:34, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

@Base: Thanks--Biplab Anand (Talk) 08:42, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

WLE India - Picture Statistics

There is some problem with the total picture edit count on Category:Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in India, from 961 it has slipped to 613 which photo's nominated for deletion still persists.115.248.0.117 03:57, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Watermark Category

What category do we use for pictures with water mark? Secondly, some pictures do not fit under WLE but can be used on Commons. What category should be used?Abhinav619 (talk) 04:02, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

@Abhinav619: you could create categories similar to Category:Maintenance for Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in Germany. For images with watermarks please also add {{Watermark}} to the filepage; they should be ok once the watermark is removed. Holger1959 (talk) 05:33, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

@Holger1959: Thank You. Another query please, are pictures edited on Photoshop and Lightroom, Corel, etc allowed.Abhinav619 (talk) 05:38, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

@Abhinav619: i think this depends on local WLE rules. For WLE Germany we have the written recommendation, that we prefer images with a "documentary character" (usable for Wikipedia), and that image editing should not be done "too much". So we do allow image editing (eg. common use cases like white balance or contrast optimization, also including eg. tone-mapped HDR images), but we clearly discourage obvious "unnatural effects" or "graphical alienations". Holger1959 (talk) 05:54, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

For WLE Greece the rules are that we do not allow visible watermarks and signatures. -Geraki ^T_L^G 12:09, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Any way to get list of uploaded pictures to a certain category daywise??

Hi there

Wiki Loves Earth India is seeing a huge response & we are seeing close to almost 1k images uploaded per day ( since we started on 1st June). The organizers are trying their level best to clean up the image category.

The only way we see it now is to start cleaning up the category daywise .. as in images uploaded on 1st June, 2nd June etc... Its easier to break up the work amongst the organizers & easier to keep track We wanted to know how to do this... or is there any better way to do this...

Thanks Yohannvt (talk) 10:27, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

@Yohannvt: for WLE Germany we use a combined presorting system:

1. subcategories per federal state – this is done by Commons:Wiki Loves Earth upload de and respective UploadWizard Campaigns (eg. [1] for one of the German states), so images from one state are eg. in Category:Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2016, DE-NW (a subcategory of the general Category:Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in Germany)
2. gallery pages (per state) per upload day – this is done by the "daily gallery updater" User:OgreBot/gallery, see example User:Holger1959/WLE16/DE/NW and subpages; we use these pages to check every uploaded image manually (main goal: good image descriptions and sorting into "normal" Commons categories, to make the mass of WLE images usable beyond the contest).

It is probably a bit late to change UploadWizard stuff for India in the middle of a running contest, but maybe you can work with the daily gallery updater (request on talk page), or you can use these hints as ideas for the future. Holger1959 (talk) 12:01, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @Holger1959: for the input. We are currently using PetScan to get the images for removing the maintenance category. I think the gallery page on a daily basis will really help us streamline our current filtration category.

Thanks -- Yohannvt (talk) 09:22, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Suggestions wanted for advertising Wiki Loves Earth on Wikimedia other than a Central Notice

Hi all

I'm running \Wiki Loves Earth Biosphere Reserves, because of the spread out nature of the sites (669 sites in 120 countries) it won't be possible to run a central notice in the same way as national competitions are run. Could people suggest ways of encouraging contributions through Wikimedia projects in other ways? I mean across many language projects, not only English. UNESCO is sharing the competition through it's social media but I'm struggling to reach existing Wikipedians who may be interested in the same way that a central notice can.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 22:17, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

The first thing that comes to my mind is to write to wikimedia-l and ask people on smaller wikis put a sitenotice. Advertisement via the Wikipedia social media channels would also be helpful. --Lord Bumbury (talk) 16:06, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

I like the concept of this contest, but you are quite late to inform us. You could use the Wiki Loves Earth mailing list to inform the core organizers of local contests: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesearth

For Germany, I will try to trigger a notice on our Facebook and Web pages and mention the contest on de:Wikipedia:Autorenportal.

You can also advertise the contest on the Commons main page. --Blech (talk) 20:36, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Category:Media with erroneous locations

Hi WLE 2016, it seems that during WLE lots of uploads have wrong parameters in location template, such as File:2016 Hannickelseiche-Gumpersberg-8.jpg or File:Gruta Pratinha 2013.JPG. These files end up in category:Media with erroneous locations. This is strange to me since they were uploaded with the UploadWizard. How can that happen and, even more important, how can that be avoided in future? Best regards, --Arnd (talk) 18:07, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

I just looked at Category:Media with erroneous locations too. The folder is usually empty but there are now 4672 files there with {{Wiki Loves Earth 2016}}. I do not know what went wrong but it sounds like problems with either documentation or the upload form. We need to fix them. How should we do it? --Jarekt (talk) 12:54, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

I am a little bit upset that no one of the project team feels responsible to answer. --Arnd (talk) 18:15, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

We provide geo-locations for some of the objects, but we do not feed them into the upload form. Wrong coordinates are solely the problem of the Upload Wizard. How can we help with that?

(just in case, I do not belong to the international WLE team and do not speak on their behalf) --Alexander (talk) 20:08, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Wrong coordinates are not solely the problem of the Upload Wizard, it is true that upload wizard does not validate the inputs (Please add your voice to phabricator:T123127). But this is a problem of uploaders not using the proper syntax and not checking first few uploads if everything worked correctly. --Jarekt (talk) 02:56, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

No, it is the problem of the Upload Wizard. It does not even specify the format of the coordinates. How would people know which format to use? The only thing we can do is adding a note about the coordinates into the WLE/WLM rules for the next time. But that will not really solve the problem, because few people read the rules carefully. This information must be displayed by the Upload Wizard itself. --Alexander (talk) 07:14, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I wonder why so many people had the idea to add these coordinates. This was not so during last WLEs. Where is the statement, the trigger, the motivator for this behaviour? That can not be a coincidence... --Arnd (talk) 11:03, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Instructions to uploaders for this year's WLE-de urged to add descriptions and coordinates. It looks like lots of WP-newbees followed. They were never told 'Wikipedia' required a specific numbers format. --Tau (talk) 12:30, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I guess that is the problem. What shall we do to make sure that next year instructions will be more clear? Maybe I (and other Commons users) could go and verify that the instructions are following Commons standards. --Jarekt (talk) 16:55, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

WLE Stats Tool

How is the way of adding new countries in this statistical tool http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikiloves/earth/2016, since WLE Albania and WLE Kosovo are new countries to join this competition this year?--Liridon (talk) 08:11, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Thailand is not on the list as well. --Athikhun.suw (talk) 01:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Need help to set up WLX Jury tool for India

Hi there

Need help to set up WLX Jury tool for India.

Thanks Yohannvt (talk) 09:57, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Huge inflow of files with bad names

See COM:VP#Huge inflow of files with bad names. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:20, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Fake image wining 1st prize

I can't believe that this fake picture won the 1st prize in the Bulgarian Wiki Loves Earth 2016, this picture should be disqualified --The Photographer (talk) 20:28, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

And it was. -- Ата ^(talk) 08:23, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Serbia's #2 forged

Serbian WLE #2 winner pic, (eagle above river), looks like forged. A similar problem turned out to exist with a related pic. The eagles seem to have been copypasted into the pics. As a member of the global WLE jury, I asked German WLE activists for forensic advice, and the suspicion was informally confirmed. Please see this discussion, unfortunately in German. Is there a Commons institution which can cross-check and approve the situation?

Because the global WLE organizers have no regular procedure to handle this case, three paths are possible: (1) The global jury is going to delete the pic from the global contest, and that's it. (2) The national orgnaizers withdraw the pic and adjust their winning pics, without nominating another one for the global contest because of the advanced status of the jury procedures. (3) The pics are deleted commons-wide and automatically disappear from all pages. As for the former #1 Bulgarian picture which was a fake, too, it has not been deleted. Advice is appreciated. --Aalfons (talk) 21:32, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Pinging @IvanaMadzarevic: and @Mickey Mystique: who are Serbian local organisers — NickK (talk) 00:10, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Aalfons! I am sorry it took us so long to answer. We have contacted the author, and he confirmed that the birds are added in both photos that he submitted, but were photographed at the same site by the same author. We will not disqualify his photo from the Serbian competition, since it was not specified that the photos are not allowed to be modified. So, we are choosing the first option, simple removal from the global contest.

Thanks for thoroughly inspecting the situation! Cheers! --Mickey Mystique (talk) 12:19, 6 October 2016 (UTC)