Talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 winners

Countries[edit]

1. I included the following 10 images which had been judged by adjudicators from Wales:

They have now been taken down. I'd like to know on what grounds, please? Also, does Wiki Loves Earth use the same criteria? The only requirement I can find is that the country has been added onto Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2017/Participating countries, which it has.

2. The number of images uploaded on this year's WLM from the nations of Britain were:

Wales - 6,823
England - 5,417
Scotland - 2,099

By comparison, Australia had 1,253, Austria 3,447, Croatia 824, Dutch Caribbean 82 and Latvia 449.

3. In my opinion, all groups of people who have their own language wikis, their own Government, or are a Wikimedia User Group should be allowed to take part FULLY in WLM and other projects. That would encourage more to participate, not less. WLM should not be political; if Women in Red or Sicily or the Isle of Man or any User Groups want to compete - then so be it! Why should we ban them from taking part? We are not the United Nations (politically financed and motivated) or the winner-takes-all bully - but are a group of people who believe that knowledge should be open and free. End of! The problem stems from Wikimedia Foundation's geo criteria, which confirms the status quo, the political borders, and 'recognised' states. Wicipedia (or Commons) isn't a state, and is not an authoritarian majority-enforced democracy. It is the free wind that blows without frontiers, or should be.

4. It seems one user this morning moved the above images from Wales to the bottom of the page - under the heading Others with the following explanation: From time to time, national competitions run sub-competitions with separate awards at the national level. Below, you can find the winners of such sub-competitions. Do you think such statements encourages participation by the community? I remember an old 1910 history book at school on the countries of Britain which had in its index, under 'Wales: see England'. I thought this rubbish had died out long long ago!

A few facts about Wales

Wales has a National Government (not Regional)
Wales has a National football team, a National rugby team...
Wales has had more or less the same borders for the last 1,600 years, and the same same language spoken here for even longer.
Wales lost it's independence in December 1282 when our King was beheaded by the English army at Cilmeri, and again when they annihilated Owain Glyn Dŵr's uprising in 1415
Wales has never agreed to be in any form of 'United' alliance / kingdom (!) or any other partnership with England.

I never thought I'd have to spell something as simple as this on Commons, which should be unpolitical, open, inclusive.

5. Wikimedia 2030 stresses the importance of respecting diversity and minorities and "healthy, inclusive communities". Commons must now discuss how to open doors, rather than shut them, and how to welcome and nourish all groups of people whatever the colour of their language, or gender. And so does WLM 2018. - Llywelyn2000 (talk) 14:00, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The same is true for many other regions in Europe, with the exception of sports (which, seriously, can not be the sole criteria for something like WLM). Braveheart (talk) 14:27, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Llywelyn2000: Let me expand a bit more what's happening here.

Wales: I don't see Wales in the list of definitely participating countries. We usually keep an eye on that page and in cases like this, would reach out to the point of contact for Wales and the UK to figure out a solution. One issue from the international competition's perspective regarding the nominations for Wales (beside the fact that they are not officially nominated) is that those photos have been competing in 2 contests: the UK and Wales. Each photo can compete in only one national competition (and we need to be clearer about this in our documentation). Otherwise, I can submit my photos to many competitions (if eligible ones exist) and that increases the chance that my photo makes it to the top 10 and for it to compete at the international level.

Basque country: Basque country signed up as a campaign in the definitely participating countries page. We have clearly communicated with them, and they have communicated back with us that their photos will have to go through other national competitions jury process. This case is agreed upon by the international team and the point of contact of the campaign. We are grateful for the work that team has put together to increase participation and awareness about monuments. I will move Basque country's top 10 under Other soon.

Richard Nevell (WMUK), Effeietsanders, Nevborg and Theklan: FYI.

--LilyOfTheWest (talk) 14:50, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments. Wales is in the list: Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments upload/Participate therefore is participating. Personally, I don't want to win a sausage! My interest in this competition is getting images from Wales onto Commons so that they can be used in Wikipedia and so on. Wales has not been competing in two competitions; I should hope that England will judge photos from England and Scotland will judge images same from Scotland. It may well be to late for them to do this, and my comments were offered as a record of what happened, and a suggested way forward, so that we can move on to a much more open, inclusive way of doing things rather than labelling some nations under 'Other' as a sub-group! If you put Wales in that category I (and the Welsh community) will be very offended. If they are judge under the UK baner, then all 3 nations should clearly be visible. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 15:16, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Llywelyn2000: Wales is listed in the page you linked under the list of monuments, because the UK campaign seems to have 3 different monument lists. Richard will be able to expand on this better than I. We can always discuss other ways for including more campaigns in the competition but this discussion cannot happen at the time of nominating results. This needs to happen ideally months before the start of the contest, and for sure not after the contest starts. Regarding "Other", I'm happy to use some other section title. The reason I put it there is that I know, for example, Italy has more than 10 campaigns and they may wan to showcase their results their, too. I did not mean to be offensive in any way, and I apologize if it came across as such. We just need a way to clearly state on that page which photos are competing as part of the international competition and I'm open to suggestions. --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 15:28, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Accepted. @Theklan: Re 'Other' - I suggest you don't section, and just include the Basque Country as any other nation. To end - this is a wonderful competition and I hope that next year some of my suggestions on diversity, inclusion etc will be taken aboard. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 15:46, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Other would be quite strange for us, indeed. The competition was completely different and we had our own jury and results. -Theklan (talk) 15:53, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Theklan: Just to be clear: we do need to separate finalists from non-finalists so people landing on the page can clearly identify which photos are competing for the international contest. How about "finalists" and "non-finalist winners" with some explanation about what goes under non-finalist winners section? --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 16:08, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Either you're making things complicated or I haven't read something! The title of the page is 'Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 winners' where every group of people / country present their winning 10 images. The Basque Country is a country and have 10 images. Why categorise further? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 16:19, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We need to somehow say in that page which photos are nominated and sent to the international team. This helps, for example, the participants from different countries to learn more about which photos their photos are competing with. --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 17:01, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LilyOfTheWest: What? Our winners are not competing for the international contest? We have been promoting this competition on the basis of the further participation on it... -Theklan (talk) 16:28, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Theklan: Please check this conversation. --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 16:58, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LilyOfTheWest: checked and no mention about this topic there after we talked about the jury in the Basque Country. That was what we agreed with WM-ES, for instance. It's a nonsense to have an User Group making a big effort (by far bigger than the WM-ES in percentual quantity of photos) and not taking it at the same level of the others. Edit: For the record. You have "Andorra and Catalan Areas" as a category, and what international organization mentiones was "the same approach as for catalans". Well, that's it. -Theklan (talk) 17:01, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Theklan: do you actually measure the effort and success of a contest in the amount of pictures? I thought like this 5 years ago but in the meanwhile definitely not anymore. I consider much more important 1) quality over quantity and 2) images of monuments without a free-license over images from buildings we have 100 pictures of. High quality images of monuments so far not documented in Commons would be to my eyes the biggest effort and valuable contribution to the contest. Poc o² 18:12, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @LilyOfTheWest: , I am also considering preparing for next year a similar contest in the Region of Aragón and count on sending the top 10 images to the international jury. To be fair from the very beginning, though, I would exclude those images from the contest in Spain, as otherwise those images would participate in 2 contests in parallel and haven double the odds to reach the international jury. I hope this approach is fine to everybody here. Poc o² 18:07, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Poco a poco: I agree with you that they cannot compete in more than one local campaign. I'm also happy for us to talk with you about this case after we close this year's contest. I created a Phabricator task with a 2018 tag that we will move to the new board once that's created and subscribed you to it. Let's follow up on that in January 2018. --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 21:56, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, LilyOfTheWest, I'll support where I can. Poc o² 22:16, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LilyOfTheWest - You say 'We need to somehow say in that page which photos are nominated... so that the participants from different countries to learn more about which photos their photos are competing with.' Is that important? Not in my opinion. What is important here is that all wiki countries are treated equally.

@Poco_a_poco - that is a sideline, in brackets. Theklan's main point is that Basque Country should be on the same level as other countries, and certainly they have been led astray, fooled. The discussion in the above link given by LilyOfTheWest does not mention in any way that they will not be 'competing for the international contest'.

@Poco_a_poco says Aaragon wants to keep the status quo. Fine - do it under Spain, but others want to be equal in this world and will not accept an unequal status. @Poco_a_poco - has there been a discussion by an-wiki (Aragonese language) on this? If there is fine, but please do not try and stop others from being open and inclusive. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:52, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(after some edit conflicts)

Just to quickly respond to the remark about Andorra/Catalan area: while the campaign focused on both, the submissions to the international finale were solely for Andorra. The Catalan images would participate through the national campaigns of France, Spain and Italy.

My two cents on the general discussion: Because Basque (or Catalan, or Aragonian, or Welsh, or Frysian, or Sud-Tyrolian) juries don't submit their own top-10 directly to the finale, does not mean that the images participate in any less way than an image from Madrid, Oxford, Milan or Yekaterinenburg: each image that participates in WLM could be nominated through one national competition. I know there has been precedent that national juries carved out one or two places in their nominees for dedicated categories (be it topical or geographical) - which is their good right. For that, I would recommend to coordinate with the national jury coordinators of those respective juries.

Dedicated campaigns are a great way to emphasize the heritage of a focus area (be it topical or geographical), and valuable in their own right. If high quality photos are submitted through those dedicated campaigns, I do expect them to surface through the national process or France, UK, England and Italy. We have been quite consistent in encouraging diversity through campaigns, while reserving the nominations right to national juries.

I would welcome you to engage in a discussion on how we structure our nomination process for next year. Effeietsanders (talk) 18:57, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Effeietsanders: - A link please to the Sud-Tyrolian wiki you mention or is that a very, very bad joke? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 19:02, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry @LilyOfTheWest: but that is not how things work. By "national" competition you mean "state" competition, and the difference is not banal. Wikimedia Movements is not organized in states anymore, is organized in chapters (some of them doesn't even represent an state), a thematic organization and different user groups. Our User Group is from the Basque Country. Period. We have done a great effor for this campaign (with more thatn 20 press interviews, something that WMES didn't make) in order to make people participate. We had a pro jury make a revision of more than 700 photographs in order to get the 10 best to the international competition, as we discussed before, and agreed upon with WM-ES. If the result would be: great, you did it great, BUT you are a second-level movement for us, then we wouldn't spend days of work with this competition because, as you say, WM-ES and WM-FR are participating here. This is not about Italy having different regional competitions, is about a fully independent group holding a fully independent competition and co-ordinating it both with others (WM-ES and WM-FR) and international organizers.

And sorry, again, if this sounds rude, but we can't assume a Wikimedia Movement that takes appart a user group "only" because in your mind states are nations and nations are nothing. If this is the final decission, our participation in WLM for next years will be seriously damaged, as we can't tell people that this is an international competition, but a competition of people represented by states. Not as Wikipedia. Not as Wikimedia. Not as commons.

Finally, by the way, as not as a side effect. If a photo is "so good" that it wins in the Basque Country national competition and in the spanish statal competition... there's no problem. Montage will delete duplicates from the final decission. The argument about "having two opportunities" is a nonsense as the jury will vote each photo once, not as they receive them randomly. -Theklan (talk) 19:28, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Theklan: I understand if you are frustrated, but this has been communicated with you clearly by effeietsanders from the international team and you had agreed to it. I find your tone very disrespectful to the work that I/we as a volunteer do and I'm not interested in continuing this line of conversation with you until this tone changes and we can discuss things in a polite and logical way. sorry! --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 19:57, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Theklan: I have no big problem with submitting images from any corner of the world as long as it all remains fair and those images have not parallel channels and therefore more odds to pass to the next round. That is just not fair to anybody and would be indeed a motivation to create overlapping contest to the existing ones. Images from EU-ES have been treated equally by Spain's national jury as those from Castille, Galicia, Andalusia or Catalonia. Expecting that you have in addition the possibility to submit the images directly is just not fair to all other contest participants. If the same image is passed from 2 juries to the international one only one remains, clear, but if those are different images that's not ok, is that hard to understand?. In addition, and if this topic had been clear stated from the very beginning, then those images would have not been reviewed by the jury in Spain (that looks to me now just like wasted time). Something went definitely wrong here. And btw this comes from a very open-minded person who grew up in the Basque Country, went to an ikastola but considers himself a world citizen.
Llywelyn2000: My comment was not sarcastic. I see benefits of organizing the constest in Aragon if things are like it seems to be. Why are you fine with the Basque Country treated as "country" but at the same time Aragon should keep the status quo and participate under Spain's umbrella? That sounds to me like discrimination to the historic region of Aragon. And what does all this have to do with languages? photographs are not speaking any language. Again, I've no problem with regions, countries, nations, continents or whatever taking part in the contest as long as those images are not participating in multiple contests and drawn by different juries that submit their preferences to the international jury. --Poc o² 20:11, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Poco a poco: : I have no big problem with submitting images from any corner of the world as long as it all remains fair and those images have not parallel channels and therefore more odds to pass to the next round. That is just not fair to anybody and would be indeed a motivation to create overlapping contest to the existin ones. Images from EU-ES have been treated equally by Basque national jury as those from EU-FR. Expecting that you have in addition the possibility to submit the images directly is just not fair to all other contest participants. If the same image is passed from 2 juries to the international one only one remains, but if those are different images that's INDEED ok, having more quality images in the contest is better, is that hard to understand? In addition, and if this topic had been clear stated from the very beginning, then those images from Spain would have not be reviewed by the jury in the Basque Country (that looks to me now just like wasted time). Something went definitley wrong here. And btw this comes from a very open-minded person who grew up in Navarre, went to a spanish state-owned public-school AND consideres himself a world citizen. Because all of us are citizens in the world. But this is not a world contest, but a WM affiliated groups' contest.

Aragonese Wikimedians doesn't have an User Group. User Groups are officially affiliated to the Wikimedia Movement. If you organize yourself and make the effort to build a contest, with all the work it has below, it would be great for you and for the Wikimedia Movement and for the WLM contest. Again, YOU have a problem with nations, and you are trying to use it here politically. Wikimedia Movement is about users and affiliates, not about states. -Theklan (talk) 20:49, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Theklan copy-pasting my former meassage and changing some wording doesn't really look respectful to me. I'll ignore that part of your comment. Just one thing. You submit 500 to 2 contests, jury 1 chooses 2 images out of them (and 8 out of other 2000 images), jury 2 chooses 10 of them (as all 10 belong to that group). 12 images from those 500 pass to the next round, but those 2 should never had, as they had the possibility to be chosen by 2 juries. That is a problem. Maybe those 2 images are better than all other in the 2000+500 setbut that's not the point. The point is that those 500 images had 2 ways to pass. I can tell you that e.g. in Germany quality is pretty high, should then Antarctica render 5 spots to images from Germany because then we have more quality in the final round? does that make sense to you? That would be a complete different approach if all images from all countries are judged together. In that scenario small countries would have a hard time to have visibility in the final round. Btw, I belong among others to the Commons Photographers User Group and an international contest in the frame of WLM over multiple countries would not be a crazy idea (as long as the images are only evaluated by one jury and have only with path to pass to the final). Poc o² 22:15, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Copy-pasting your former message and changing some working makes full sense if you only change your perspective. What you are saying is that an effort made by Basque WUG, promoted in Basque language, reaching more press than any other around, using social media in an extensive way (you can see the numbers on #WikiLovesMonuments hashtag)... doesn't make sense because we have to work inside states. Change your perspective, look it from our side, and you'll that your wording can be used exactly in the opposite way to make my point. And by the way, talking about each ones education background is not a valid point unless you want to address that schools spread political views... what I do agree, but is not an argument in this discussion. -Theklan (talk) 22:27, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Llywelyn2000: Why would my remark about Sudtirol be a joke? I'm never sure how to spell it in English, but it was the first instance I recall besides the Catalans where there was a discussion about which juries can submit nominations to the international process. See their project page here (of course, in German): w:de:Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012/Südtirol. It was the first instance I can recall where the campaign was not directly feeding into a set of separate nominees. Effeietsanders (talk) 20:20, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Poco - I have misunderstood (or misread) your 18:07 message. I apologise. I read that you wanted to exclude the separation of images! If I understand you correctly, Aragon will also want to list their images seperately. That's good and you should have the right to do that. I suggested asking at the anwiki as I'm sure they also would like to encourage more images of their country.

LilyOfTheWest - regarding your comments that you find Theklan's tone 'tone very disrespectful': he is voicing his concern that not all countries are treated equal on Commons and other Wikimedia projects, but he is certainly not disrespectful to your work. I agree totally with what he says. Let's all remember that English is our second language (yes - and mine! Hence my misreading of Poco's comments!) Your help here, LilyOfTheWest, in moving to a more open competition would be greatfully welcomed! Let's try and find a way to allow all countries to be equal in this competition. Wikimedia UK ran an official English only campaign, geared mostly to England but encouraged both Wales and Scotland also to run their own campaigns, geared to their own nations; the Wales campaign was mostly through the Welsh language. Next year, there's nothing to stop each nation from adjudicating their own images. And this could be done in other countries. It means looking at 'nations' in a slightly different way. If it means that some larger nations will have fewer images - well does that matter? From a Wikipedian's point of view - not at all! Overall, we would have more images, not less.

Effeietsanders - Thanks for coming back to me, so it was a mistake; we all do them! Your earlier comment ' I would welcome you to engage in a discussion on how we structure our nomination process for next year' is also a push in the right direction - thanks for this! Regarding your earlier comment stateless countries which ' don't submit their own top-10 directly to the finale' and (regarding high quality images) 'I do expect them to surface through the national process.' To rephrase: 'All the good stuff come from the officially recognised Nations, and not the stateless Nations (Wales, Scotland, Basque Country, Asturia...) That is unequal; please try and see it from a stateless country's point of view. It can easily be changed if there's a will.

The way forward, as I see it, is to allow all countries to present a number of images to the final adjudicators, depending on how many they took eg 1 image goes forward for every 1,000 taken in that country. This ensures that images are only counted once. Secondly, after a couple of years, let's open up further so that any groups wishing to participate - as a group - can do so as long as they meet certain criteria such as have a visible campaigns / website, more than 10 users etc. For example, Women in Red or an user Group could join in, not as a country but as a group. Third, we need to find out how many other countries would be interested in joining us if they were recognised by us as nations, not merely counted as 'Others' or 'sub-campaigns'.

Can we form a group / page to look at next year? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 22:13, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Llywelyn2000: We created a Phabricator task to come back to this topic for 2018. Please subscribe to stay tuned with the next steps and/or when there is activity there, and if you're interested. --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 22:56, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LilyOfTheWest: - Can you explain 'but you know what I mean. :)' in your second point on Phabricator, please? ['How do we accommodate other types of campaigns? Yes, I get it that this is too general, but you know what I mean. :) '] To what are you referring here? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 04:56, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I meant: "all the other ways we can consider expanding the definition of a campaign". That's a placeholder for everything else that we don't have bandwidth to think about and spell out carefully now as we are under a lot of work for the 2017 contest. I'd rather leave it as general as it is now and expand later. That's it. :) --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 09:08, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, I am writing in my role as WLM 2017 international jury coordinator, in reference to the discussion that arose in this thread regarding the Basque Country competition. For the purposes of the international finale, we are unable to accept additional nominations from the Basque Country competition. As laid out before the start of the competition, these images are eligible through the competitions for Spain and France. From the point of view of a fair jury process, we can not provide such unfair advantage to photos from an area compared to other national competitions. The decision to judge the Basque Country entries through the Spanish jury was agreed upon mutually by the international team and the Basque Wikimedia team prior to the competition's commencement. Any arrangements deviating from the standard/status quo will have to be agreed upon before the start of the competition. --Nevborg (talk) 17:43, 31 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LilyOfTheWest and Theklan: The discussion to change this (ie the acceptance of countries or Wikimedia Community User Groups rather than UN recognised states) through Phabricator task has still not taken place, even though it was promised to be held in April. @Nevborg: - Do you have a link to WLM policy that only UN recognised states are accepted in this competition, please (for 2018), or any other links which may be useful such as who is represented on the 'international jury coordinating group'; where are the minutes of the group etc. Thanks. Robin Owain (WMUK) (talk) 16:42, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Robin Owain (WMUK): Thank you for keeping an eye out. As you undoubtedly noted, we sent out an announcement yesterday (I only saw your message afterwards) announcing an inventory for ways to improve Wiki Loves Monuments. This took much longer than we wanted, apologies for that. We want to consider all issues in the broader context. We're using significant amounts of our energy this year to have conversations, both privately and in public, to get feedback on how WLM works out for different parts of the world, and what improvements would be the most impactful. I hope you'll participate in this exercise (or perhaps already did so). Thanks! Effeietsanders (talk) 22:05, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Effeietsanders and MichaelMaggs: Thanks and congrats for a great competition! I think the announcement you mention refers to WLM-Announce at lists.wikimedia.org? If so, I've only just come accross it, but have now subscribed. You mention an inventory / feedback form (?), which I haven't seen. On my Talk page you mention that the above is a little confusing; can I suggest that it should be read in conjunction with the above discussion. My request (on behalf of users and volunteers from Wales) is that, should Wikimedia UK (WMUK) agree in submitting the 3 nations of Wales (rather than at an UK level), then would WLM follow suit and enter three countries rather than the UK, at the International level. I bring in the UN definition into the equation as that is the status quo (states rather than countries). Including all 3 separately (Scotland, England, Wales) would mean that users would empathise more with their country, thus resulting in more photographs being taken and uploaded. This is in line with WMUK's objectives (aligned with the purpose, mission and strategic aims), namely:

1. To increase the quality and quantity of coverage of subjects that are currently under-represented on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects
2. To support the development of open knowledge in the UK, by increasing the understanding and recognition of the value of open knowledge and advocating for change at an organisational, sectoral and public policy level.

At WMUK staff level, there are now coordinators / managers for each of the countries; I for example am the WMUK Manager for Wales.

@Smirkybec: I understand that Wikimedia Ireland is happy to coordinate at an all-Ireland level in this competition. Thanks again, and best regards. Please let me know if any of this is still confusing. Robin Owain (WMUK) (talk) 10:20, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, intended to add links but then forgot. This is the announcement email that I referred to, with a little more information about the survey and a link. WLM-announce is indeed a very low-traffic mailing list where we want to post our most important announcements. There's also the broader discussion mailing list of course (everything sent to the announcement list also goes there). Effeietsanders (talk) 14:40, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have asked for information (21 June 2018, above): Do you have a link to WLM policy that only UN recognised states are accepted in this competition, please (for 2018), or any other links which may be useful such as who is represented on the 'international jury coordinating group'; where are the minutes of the group etc. I still await this information, please. Robin Owain (WMUK) (talk) 05:20, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Effeietsanders: 3rd request for information. If this information is confidential then please let me know. WMUK do not have a representative on the international committee/group/level/team, therefore I ask here. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 14:16, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Llywelyn2000 and LilyOfTheWest: Sorry that this took so long. After the inventory/survey, we decided to make an interim decision for this year. We have not seen sufficient reason in the survey to change our practices, but rather feel that there are bigger problems to face internationally - and this would distract from those. We may or may not end up revising our approach in the coming year. The international team arrived at the following interim working definition:

We use the UN(ESCO) membership as the basis from which we work. We can optionally derive from that on a case by case basis 1) if it is de facto a separate country, including international diplomacy and heritage policy, and could be UN-memberstate if not for international conflicts etc (examples: Taiwan, Kosovo, etc) 2) if there is a significant 'distance' with a component of the country that makes it for traveling purposes a different country. Examples: overseas territories, Hong Kong etc. If there is minor overlap between two participating countries, the photo can participate in any country where it is registered as such (border conflicts etc). A country will not be considered with separate submissions to the finale if there is (near) full overlap with another participating national competition, if it fits exception 2). This to avoid double participation of images. In the case of exception 1), it will be considered on a case by case basis. The international jury coordinator (as representative for the international team and the jury) makes this decision.

I recognize that this is probably not what you were hoping for, but I hope this clarifies the status quo at least. Effeietsanders (talk) 05:21, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Jimbo Wales and DafyddTudur: The following comments are by myself as a Wikimedian editor for over 10 years:

It is my belief that your decision is offensive and contradicts everything Wikimedia stands for: inclusion, diversity, openness and free spirit. For the sake of clarity, truthfulness and honesty, please amend all your descriptions of WLM on https://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/contest/ and similar marketing, press releases etc from the present wording (In more than 40 countries all over the world...) to: In more than 40 UN(ESCO) recognised countries all over the world.... and add: Wiki Loves Monuments does not recognise the 1,000s of neutral, solid, reliable, academic sources, over a period of over 1,500 years, which acknowledge that Scotland and Wales are countries. Your decision to ignore these sources contravenes the most fundamental of all our principals. Can you cite one (yes, just 1) source which states that Wales or Scotland is not a country? No! You say that my request is a distraction from bigger, international problems: how ridiculous! The beauty is in the detail! I have also asked for everything you do to be placed publicly, so that we can all see the reasoning behind your thinking, and so that WLM becomes transparent and open, rather than hidden, closed and political. Please publish the survey results and full minutes of the meeting. I'm also very concerned that it has taken you from 24 October 2017 (for my original request, see above) to come to a decision; 10 months. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 08:27, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(oudent) I'm sad to see yet another person (see below wrt Australia) failing to get perspective on WLM and making political or social issues. There are practical issues too and issues of fairness. I have some concern that some "nation" groups are hugely larger than others in terms of participation and variety of monuments, yet only get the same 10 entries to pass up to international level. I think it would be fairer to weight that and perhaps range from top 3 to top 12 depending on the size of the group. There appear to be problems when countries have low participation or don't attract quality judges.

I see above the claim that Wales got 6823 photos. But WLM Stats shows that Llywelyn2000 alone uploaded 6283 photos. I have no idea if those were all in Wales, but if they were, that leaves only 540 photos uploaded by anyone else to Wales. Considering Ireland had 851 and yet is troubled by low participation and problems recruiting quality judges. As a reviewer, it is not much fun to have to review from a small set of monuments repeated, or where a small handful of users have flooded the competition with meh photos that all have to be discarded in search of any gold. It is particularly tedious if photographers appear to have uploaded their memory card without first selecting their best photos to enter to the competition (weaker photos may still have value to don't need to be uploaded to the competition). While it is nice to boast about the number of photos uploaded, from a reviewer's POV, we'd prefer to have a huge number of people upload a smaller number of photos each. Most photo competitions restrict participation, with 6 entries per person being a more practical number than 6000. If, as the above stats possibly show, WLM Wales would have a 10:1 ratio of Llywelyn2000 photos vs other photos, then I for one would not volunteer to trudge through that, nor would I consider such a competition to be particularly fair or healthy in terms of participation. The WLM Stats shows the number of uploaders per country, with some as few as 4. How many uploaders did Wales get out of the UK's 469? Ireland had only 50. -- Colin (talk) 11:21, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Totally off the point! PS - I, and many others, take photos for use in Wikipedia, not for prize or show! And your stats are also way out! Have a good day! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:57, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You can upload for Wikipedia any time and no need to tag them as being for the WLM competition. Care to tell us what the real stats are then? Right now, it looks like you have over-inflated where Wales sits wrt competition size. It looks very much like WLM Wales is 90% Llywelyn2000. -- Colin (talk) 19:02, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin: I have always encouraged people to uploading generously to Wiki Loves Monuments. I'm grateful for Llywelyn2000's contributions - even if I do agree that it would probably be fair to mention the disparity when making an argument like this. The metric I prefer to use, is 'unique uploaders' (if any) because it shows the reach. But in the end, it is about encouraging people to be proud of their heritage. The '10 images per country' (both the number 10 and the definition of 'country') are indeed just practical definitions - not ideological ones. I can relate to your concern that some countries should perhaps contribute more images to the finale than others - and willing to explore simple solutions - as long as it doesn't go at the cost of other things.

@Llywelyn2000: I'm aware that you won't agree with this interim decision - and doubt we will see much eye to eye on what is a 'good outcome' here. Our main objective is to enable as many people as possible to contribute to Wiki Loves Monuments. And in that sense, yes - I do believe there are bigger fish to fry. I want to focus my energy first and foremost on increasing that access - for example with regards to African countries where volunteers are struggling to get their competition off the ground. That does not mean I don't take your feelings on the issue seriously. I'm sorry that you consider our pragmatic approach as offensive. Effeietsanders (talk) 01:43, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Effeietsanders: You haven't answered my points; seems therefore that you are unable to do so. My main objective here is to increase the number of photographs being taken in Wales. Last year, I did that by going out on weekends and trying to set an example, which, I hoped could be continued this year. Uploading the images under the banner of Wales rather than the 'UK' is the only way to do so; not many people in Wales want to participate under the UK banner, hence the low number of photographs. That is the reason we have Arriva Trains Wales, Arriva Buses Wales, NHS Wales, the Government of Wales, the National Library of Wales, the National Museum of Wales, the 'Bank of Wales, BBC Cymru Wales, ITV Cymru Wales, a Wales national football team (NOT UK!), Stagecoach South Wales, Trade Centre Wales, Welsh Water... No marketeer would sell anything in Wales if they would use the 'UK' and that is why they opt for Wales. The same is true in Scotland. If increasing the number of photographs is your main objective, (and that is what you state) then you should rethink your policy, otherwise you are hypocritical. Nothing stops you from frying your 'big fish' ('access to... African countries where volunteers are struggling') as well as recognising that sources are the keystone to the Wikimedia projects. It should not be one or the other, but both juxtaposition. I believe that your decision contravenes overriding, fundamental policies, and therefore will raise this matter on Meta. The other points I made, and my request for information remains unanswered by you, which tells me either you are unable to do so or don't want to do so. As a volunteer, I therefore will not participate this year. To do so would be to snub everything I have attempted to do in the last 10 years; to take part in a competition which does not recognise the importance of reliable sources and diversity would be wrong. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 06:17, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I'm being clear. I'm not here to debate how the competition should be marketed and organized most effectively in the UK. The above definition is all about how national competitions are defined from the point of view of the international jury. However, that leaves plenty of space to brand the competition the way that works best in the United Kingdom - it leaves space for a focus in the announcements at any level, it leaves space to institute national prizes with the focus you desire and it allows options to organize and showcase heritage. It even allows space to form local teams for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England if that is the most effective way of organizing yourselves. The matter that is relevant here, is whether a separate set of 10 images should be submitted for England Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, or jointly as the United Kingdom. You can even have discussions on how to get to that set of 10 images. This has been the case, and is still the case. Effeietsanders (talk) 06:31, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can you honestly imagine Gareth Bale and his team-mates winning the first round of the FIFA World Cup, and the second round, the quarter-finals and the semi-final, only to be told "You can't play in the final, we have bigger fish to fry!" Insulting. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:13, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Llywelyn2000, organisers have to come up with rules that work for most people and are practical and in the end are sometimes arbitrary. You can't please everyone all the time. We have a scope that is monuments, and below that is upsetting one chap in Australia. We have a definition of eligible countries and that is upsetting one chap in Wales. I have a concern that the national groups don't always select the strongest images and, in the past, often selected tiny JPGs. There probably aren't enough good volunteer judges, and sometimes using external judges has been a bad idea. WLM is not the only way to recruit photos for Wikipedia and has some drawbacks: we get lots of photos of monuments that already have photos and most of the people entering the competition don't stick around: the retention rate is dire. And although clearly some like to upload and to receive thousands of images from one photographer, from a reviewer/judge point of view that sucks. Personally I'd rather see six Welsh FP-class photographers recruited for Commons, nominating and participating at FP, and covering the Welsh monuments, mountains, people and culture with top class photos. They could be motivated by a WikiProject that had a team spirit, rather than a global competition where no participant even talks to any other participant. I really don't see how you talking 6000 pictures of Wales was going to encourage a random photographer, who isn't already a Wikipedian/Commoner, to take part in WLM. In your sport analogy, while there are sports where Wales plays separately, Team GB at the Olympics seem pretty motivated. Perhaps some wish there was a Team Scotland, but there isn't and they just get on with being great. Sometimes people are not motivated by national pride. Many of England's cathedrals have fantastic illustrations thanks to the dedication and talent of Diliff, who is Australian. If I enter any photos this year, they are likely to be English. I have one week holiday "back home" to Scotland this year, and it is to a part of the country without many monuments but with plenty sheep, goats and deer. And midges. -- Colin (talk) 09:48, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Meta

As this is much too important an issue for WLM alone, I've raised the it on Meta. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 19:38, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Llywelyn, I'm still confused as to why you can't solve this internally and come up with a process to select the Top10 of the UK (still a united country, yes?). It's a bit unfair to dump this on the international team and expect them to solve a problem that you can't even solve internally. Braveheart (talk) 13:24, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Loves Monuments overlap with Wiki Loves Earth[edit]

WLM is "The Wikipedia photo contest around cultural heritage" whereas WLE is "International photocontest of nature protected areas". The key aspect of WLM is that the subject is of historical importance and is so because mankind altered or built something important that we can see. While many countries restrict this to structures of recorded history, some also include prehistoric man-made structures such as standing stones. Although nature areas and features can have cultural and spiritual importance they aren't really "monuments" in any sense. The Scottish Highlands may look the way they do because we cut down trees and farmed sheep, but nobody would claim our mountain glens are monuments.

So why does WLM Australia's winning collection contain three photos of natural scenes. They are part of national parks, which very much is the remit of Wiki Loves Earth, and would include such a variety of imagery that looks out-of-place compared to the others in this contest.

"Cultural heritage" is about what we as a people/nation/group have deliberately made. I think the national teams should agree a better definition, otherwise the contest becomes random and ceases to have a meaningful scope. @Gnangarra: who added the Australia images, though I don't know who are involved in that contest. -- Colin (talk) 14:52, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Colin,

Thanks for your input/feedback. This is something we should look into while preparing for next year. A few quick initial thoughts from my end (personal): Wiki Loves Monuments was of course not designed with Wiki Loves Earth in mind, so there may indeed be some overlap. I don't think that is bad per se, as long as there is no confusion.

Because of the inherently local nature of built heritage, each country has to work with the definitions that are available to them. In some countries, natural heritage is registered in the same lists as built heritage, as seems to be the case with Australia (but, for example, also in Antarctica we encountered this). Especially in the context of Australia, natural reserves could sometimes have significant cultural value - so I'm typically very careful to make these determinations on an international level. A definition that works well in Scotland may simply not work in Australia.

The range of culture around the world is also inherently diverse, and 'looking out of place' doesn't strike me as especially concerning. What we could look into, however, is whether the spirit of the competition is still on the same theme. I suspect it is, but couldn't say for sure without looking into the way the competition was advertized and the whole corpus of photos. Winning photos are typically a poor ground for evaluation of such topics, as they are biased by definition.

That being said, we did struggle with finding helpful international definitions, and never succeeded - each country is different, and has different challenges. Effeietsanders (talk) 17:02, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think the point I'm making is that WLM is "built heritage" and not "natural heritage". All countries, whether Scotland or Australia, consider their natural features to be part of their culture and history but they are natural. Looking the Australian Heritage Database that seems to have been used, I see the natural images are clearly classified as "Natural" and the buildings as "Historic". See this with Class Natural and this with Class Historic. So I don't think there is a good reason why WM Australia chose to effectively combine WLE into WLM. The jungle path is a nice image, but it isn't a monument and IMO doesn't belong. There are lots of examples, not just in the winning selection. Here's just a few, which are clearly WLE:

Daintree cycad
Green tree frog
Kakadu buffallo
Bounty in nature
Balls Pyramid near Lord Howe Island
Lizard Island Reef
The Beech Forest

I know there's nothing can be done about it now, but don't agree that there's something inherently Australian nor practically difficult about the Australian competition choosing the same criteria as the other countries (unless you are implying our upside-down friends have less culture than we do :-). -- Colin (talk) 17:49, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

All three are on the Commonwealth National Heritage list, ignorance of Indigenous Australian cultures doesnt make these sights any less significant. WLM committee approve the lisst which include Indigenous sites, yes they could also be eligible for WLE and both Kata Tjuṯa and the bungle bungles have had images submitted there previously. As for the Australian section it would be racist and extremely offensive to exclude Indigenous cultural monuments only favour those of the Colonial invader monuments only. Gnangarra 12:05, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- They are on the heritage list as "Natural". A monument is by definition not natural. If your Heritage list does not celebrate the heritage of monuments created by indigenous Australian cultures, and include them in Australia's "history", then that is a problem you can take up with them. The stuff build by God/nature is not a monument, and we have Wiki Loves Earth to celbrate that. I am not at all happy at you using language like "ignorance" or "racist" to describe a complaint about Australia's Wiki Loves Monuments including images that are very clearly not monuments by any stretch of the imagination. -- Colin (talk) 18:25, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We need to retain a clear distinction between the rules of the national contests – which can effectively be anything that the local community wishes – and the rules applicable to international judging. Several national contests, including the UK, have right from the start awarded special local prizes and have judging or eligibility rules that may differ from those at the international level. That can be useful in encouraging local participation, and in trying to ensure that local photographers take the images that are locally most needed. But there is no reason why any local prizewinners should be eligible to win an international prize if they do not comply with the rules that have published by the international organisers. If any local contest forwards to the international team images that do not comply with the international rules, then no doubt those images will automatically be disqualified by the international judges. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:36, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

MichaelMaggs I agree national contests may wish to have their own scopes and prizes, within the overall scope of "monument". Fundamentally this is about monuments, not rainforests, frogs, buffallos or tropical islands. If not, then lets just have "Wiki Loves Photos" and not bother with a scope at all. -- Colin (talk) 18:25, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

According to the 2017 page of the International contest website, "Wiki Loves Monuments is an annual photo competition celebrating built cultural heritage. It is organized by volunteers around the world, and top ten photographs from each country are selected for an international finale." MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:02, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Rainforests and mountains are not "built". -- Colin (talk) 19:56, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin: Thanks for starting this conversation. It's an important one, and it refers to some of the gaps in documentation and process that, at least, we in the international team have. I don't fully understand this space, yet, but here is what I've gathered so far:

Monuments are built cultural heritage. The "built" component is important, and creates distinction with the other types of items one can take a photo of.
I don't think I fully understand possible complexities around capturing indigenous people's built cultural monuments but I think as long as we stick with "built" some of the examples you brought up are relatively clearly not in-line with the definitions of what constitutes a monument for Wiki Loves Monuments contest.
We have accepted the nominations from Australia this year, and the correct thing to do at this point is to allow the international jury make the call about whether the photo is relevant to the contest or not. Neville from the international team will do some checks and balances on the photos and he will bring it to the attention of the jury, prior to the start of the second round I believe, any case that needs to be more carefully looked into.
For the future years, we can consider a scenario where the campaigns nominate their (up to) 10 photos to the international team and we only accept the nominations that are built cultural heritage. We should be much more clearer about the cases under which we may not accept certain nominations, and emphasizing on "built" is within scope, imo.
While we're at it and for my personal understanding: In WLM-IR's lists, we have a series of hills that are registered as part of the monuments lists of Iran. I looked into a few of them a while back and at least for those few, there used to be a made made monument in that spot that is now either covered or almost entirely removed. I'm not super sure, for example, what we should do with these? Talk to the government to remove them from the lists or create a separate category for them? I'm basically not sure if they count as built cultural heritage really! :)
And one last note on the use of language: As someone who is responsible for Wiki Loves Monuments at the international level, I'd like to put some effort to make sure this space is free of hostile conversations and loaded words as much as possible. I appreciate you flagging the issue in the conversation above and I support that. I hope that we all can create a space that is not only not aggressive towards each-other, but also perhaps friendly. I really want to look forward to the hours that I volunteer in this space. :) --LilyOfTheWest (talk) 03:01, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

12 months on where do the Cultural monuments of Australias Indigenous people stand, are to specifically exclude 60,000 years of cultural heritage and decide that only European(Colonial) culture will be the only acceptable cultural entries from Australia. Sorry Lily yes this is a loaded questions, yes its hostile language because the distinctions between Indigenous Culture and European culture is an absolutely loaded issue we can no more disconnect the issue from the impact of colonisation on Australia. By limiting the scope to "built" WLM is very specifically drawing a distinction between Australias Indigenous Heritage and our Colonial Heritage. Gnan garra 06:59, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Gnangarra why do you persist with this crap and being, as you say, deliberately hostile? This isn't "Wiki loves heritage". If it was, I could argue that the treeless mountains in Scotland are part of my heritage of chopping down trees and sheep farming. The monuments in the UK are overwhelmingly biased towards Christian worship and the family homes of those with immense historical inherited wealth. Perhaps I should be upset that there are no listed mosques or that the homes of the 99% of the population are being suppressed by society's wealthy elite? Or perhaps I should realise that Commons does not exist to solve great injustices in society and this is just a bloody photo competition with an arbitrary scope. The scope is built monuments. Deal with it. -- Colin (talk) 08:52, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly this isnt crap, this Wiki Loves Monuments not what we using english call monuments but rather what is defined as heritage sites according the Dutch version of monuments, we are required to define them as places on the heritage register like it or not these places are on the heritage register as defined by WLM. This has been the reason why Australia took so long getting on board in the first place. The line being drawn is very specifically racial in the Australian context there is no avoiding that. Gnan garra 12:42, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

fairer comparison would be to draw a line at the A69 and exclude everything north of that point. Gnan garra 13:32, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think you got an absolutely clear response last time, that WLM is for built heritage. Additionally, the Australian Heritage Database makes it trivial to distinguish between Natural heritage and Historic (man-made) heritage. So I don't see any excuse for WLM Australia accepting and awarding prizes to pictures of paths in forests, mountains, cycads, water buffalo, tree frogs and islands. It is you who are making this a race issue. There is apparently, only one Grade I listed mosque in the UK. In comparison there are many hundreds of grade I churches. So I could say "The line being drawn is very specifically religious bias in the UK context here and there is no avoiding that". Perhaps the 2.6 million Muslims in the UK feel a bit neglected by UK WLM? Or perhaps they accept these biases are part of our historic culture, won't change overnight, and enjoy taking a photo of St Paul's Cathedral as much as the next person. Should I get upset that St Pauls was designed by a rich white man, like most other listed monuments in the UK? There's so much one could get upset about if one chose to. How about we just enjoy taking pictures and agree that this competition is for historic monuments that were built by humans. -- Colin (talk) 14:13, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

this line "monuments that were built by humans" means that those sites items you mention are part of the Indigenous Australian culture and were created by humans. The distinction is uniquely in the Australian context a racial divide because those mountains, islands, places are built by people. Where as the definition you suggest is the colonial/european divide cultural divide, as such I con not in good conscience ignore that bias and enjoy taking taking pictures. This is an international competition we should not be removing/preventing cultures from participation because it does fit the concepts of another culture. Gnan garra 01:42, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What you wrote doesn't make sense. "those mountains, islands, places are built by people"? Did you mean to type that? As I said before, it you who have chosen to make an arbitrary selection of scope into a race issue. I have tried to explain that I could also make that selection into a class issue, or a gender issue, if I wanted to cause trouble and appear irrational online. This is not the behaviour I expect from an administrator. I don't see any other Australian editor making this request, so suspect this is your own personal pet peeve, and ask you go please get some perspective. I suspect your complaint here isn't being noticed by those who run WLM, or they are choosing to ignore it. Is WLM Australia planning to repeat their practice last year? If so, I think you need to ping those involved at international level, and/or take this to a forum on more people's watchlists. Honestly, I think if you keep up with this hostile language and irrational making the scope of a photo competition into a racial issue, then your adminship could be called into question. -- Colin (talk) 10:41, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

When winning images are weaker than our existing content[edit]

What does it mean, for a competition with nearly quarter of a million uploads, when it selects winning images that are not nearly as good as images Commons already hosts?

Wiki Loves Monuments Ireland 2017 -- winner
Wiki Loves Monuments Ireland 2015 -- loser

The former is a tourist snap typical of those taken by pretty much anyone who visits Dublin with a camera. It is soft because the shutter speed of 0.8s was too slow to be hand-held for a sharp image. The verticals converge because the camera was tilted upwards. The other tourists in the room form a blurry mess. The highlights in the room are blown because a single exposure cannot capture the dynamic range here. Although the image size is 18 megapixels, which is what this camera produces in a single frame, it would look blurry if printed on a page of a glossy photo magazine.

The latter is a world-class image. It is sharp because it was taken on a tripod. It is high resolution because it is composed of many frames stitched together, which is only possible for interiors if using a panoramic head on the tripod. It handles the dynamic range because each frame consists of multiple exposures that are combined and tone mapped using techniques designed for interior photography like this. There are no blurry tourists because the photographer waited till the end of the day when they had gone. It is a featured picture on Commons and two other Wikipedias, and came #4 in Picture of the Year. It is used in many Wikipedia articles. At 61 megapixels, it could easily be printed as a double-page spread in a glossy magazine, or printed to fine art quality in a very large sized frame.

That the second image was overlooked in the 2015 competition, only for a inferior image of exactly the same view to win in 2017, is rather discouraging. This isn't the only example of images selected that are just tourist snaps of well known and well photographed subjects. The Long Room in Trinity College Dublin is an outstanding subject, but that doesn't imply a photo of it is an outstanding photo.

I urge the national competitions to reconsider the criteria they have for selecting winners (do they even have one), and to consider including a guideline that the image should improve on our existing content. Either because we lack a photo of this subject, or that the image is shot in a original artistic manner, or that it is superior in quality. Further, I would suggest that a minimum quality criteria would be that an editor of a glossy magazine would have no problems printing the winning image A4. I don't think that's too much to expect of a competition that attracts so many entries. Serious photographers will not be attracted to enter if it appears that the qualities that make a fine image are not actually being considered when selecting winners. -- Colin (talk) 10:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

some things are too impractical, comparing against existing images is one those. Judges select what they consider to be the best available of the submitted images and yes occasionally they will not be as good as an existing image. We should be encouraging activities that draw in new images and new contributors to Commons not putting more barriers to participation. Gnan garra 12:17, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Gnangarra I'm not talking about a barrier to participation. You mention "new images and new contributors". Well, this isn't a "new image", so we failed there. And actually that photographer isn't a "new contributor" either -- they've been here since 2013 and only participate by entering competitions rather than regularly uploading images. So we don't seem to have achieved either of your goals. I'm talking about criteria for selecting winners, not about putting off participants. Having poor quality winning images, like here, is a strong discouragement. There's absolutely nothing encouraging about seeing a winning photo like that. Actually, the practicalities of choosing images that improve our content is quite easy. Having a basic quality criteria (as I suggest above) would go a long way towards selecting images that stand a very high chance of being an improvement on what we have, because most of what we have is weak. Local juries already know what are popular photographic subjects for a country. Once you have a short list, it is quite easy to discover if we already have any QI or FP or similar quality images. The above Long Room photo is so so weak technically, that I consider this quite an embarrassment (and WLM has a record of selecting embarrassing winners). If nominated at FPC, it would be FPX'd and chucked out in minutes. So, Commons is quite capable of selecting better than this. I'd be interested to know how local juries intend to improve their selection so that we see FP-quality winners, rather than excuses that it is too hard.

Wrt "best available", there is also a second concern that perhaps some countries are not attracting sufficient high quality photos to warrant equal footing with 10 winners going onto the International stage, as countries with many times the number of entries. Maybe countries should having a winning list sized in proportion to the number of entries for that country. Still, we know that in 2015, WLM Ireland seemed to miss a special photo from its finalists, so it didn't manage to successfully choose from the "best available" either. -- Colin (talk) 12:58, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Image quality, should be a criteria in the judging the tool provided does do some basic pre judging including removal of small pictures below the QI/FP size guide.. Maybe we should raise the overall standard guide for QI/FP first 2mpx was good when it started it could easily progress now to 5mpx given even most phone are capable of that. Gnan garra 13:30, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The official FP minimum size is only retained at 2MP because (a) there are some historical images that may still be valuable at that size (b) some kinds of photography are hard to make sharp images full size (long telephoto wildlife, for example) and (c) nobody can agree what the new value should be. In practice, for static subjects like monuments, the standard for FP is well over 5MP, and it is not uncommon to see very very high resolution images. But even having a minimum 5MP standard (which would help, as that's what's usable for A4 printing, and I believe WLM UK have this as a guideline for their selection) doesn't excuse a blurred 18MP image being selected. I mean, slow-shutter camera shake, converging verticals, blurred fellow tourists, other than for some artistic effect, are just beginner mistakes. Once again, I wonder if the reviewers actually looked at the image full size, or just reviewed the low-resolution preview thumb. Were there competent photographers on the jury? WLM costs quite a lot of volunteer time to run. Plus many photographers on Commons invest a considerable amount of time and money taking photos for the competition, not to mention donating their photos for free use. If the results are like this, then I question the point. You'd be better of, frankly, just paying a decent photographer a few hundred quid to go and take some photos.

I think it worth looking at the 2016 Jury Report page 4. The criteria used by the judges are IMO those that should be adopted by all the national juries. I'm sure that among the selections offered here by each national jury, the international team will find images we can be proud to show off, its just that as always there are many images that really have no excuse to be here, either because they are technically weak, or because they aren't really an educationally useful image of that monument, or they are just rather unexceptional. At FP, we frequently see images that failed to make any WLM final, yet are great photos. The 2015 Long Room photo is just one example. -- Colin (talk) 14:29, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

+1 to Colin. I also wonder how an image like File:County Kildare - Punchestown Longstone - 20090601212403.jpg can be among the winning entries where nothing of the object itself or its environment can be seen. --AFBorchert (talk) 12:28, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok: just to put the record straight (or "por alusiones" as we said in spanish...). The Diliff image is simply a stunning world-class photograph, as you said. It's way better than mine, and I agree that it should have won (not only top 10, but 1st place). I too would have loved to have the time to do some bracketing and some stitching, to use a tripod (I remember a sign forbidding it...anyway, I didn't have it with me), and to have the place closed for me. But yes: I was a tourist...

So, as any tourist, I changed my lens to put my widest-angle one. As any tourist, I looked for a place to rest my camera, as I couldn't use a tripod and I knew hand-helding it was going to be hard. As any tourist, I tried different ISO speeds, trying to get a decent enough shutter speed. I even tried some under-exposure, to compensate for those harsh highlights coming from the windows (a sunny morning in Ireland...go figure!). As any tourist too, I even have it printed in a 20x30cm size in glossy paper and it doesn't look bad (obviously not the best, but good enough...).

And yes, the shot has blurry people: I've chosen to have them in the shot and I selected the best looking ones. And yes, the camera is tilted upwards: I tilted it myself because that was the shot I wanted to do. I couldn't do the Diliff shot, but I didn't wanted the same kind of shot, either.

This "tirade" (slightly tongue-in-cheek) is because, though maybe the result is not far from a typical tourist shot (certainly is not in the same league that the other shot), I remember most of the tourists simply snapping selfies with their smartphones, not trying to do their best with what they had. ;) --Rafesmar (talk) 23:10, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rafesmar, it is hard to discuss images & judging without hitting some nerves, so thank you for your restrained reply! I agree as you say you did the best in the circumstances, as a tourist. I believe Diliff asked permission to use a tripod and quickly shot as the room was being closed so as to avoid tourists -- this isn't something any tourist can do, with family dragged along also perhaps -- but is I think what separates outstanding from average. Yours is the sort of photo a good amateur on holiday will get, better than an iphone, but not as good as someone who goes out of their way to achieve the best. What is odd, and hasn't really been addressed, is how WLM Ireland totally ignored the Diliff image in their awards in 2015. It is clear now that it can't be the choice of subject or viewpoint, since yours is much the same. This tells me WLM Ireland have a problem with their reviewing, and they are not alone, with many groups it seems doing well wrt the community-review rounds and then totally wrecking things when they bring in external judges to decide on the winning images, or in the case of US last year, when the judges can't be bothered to look closer than the preview images and so spot that the photo is a Photoshop fake. WLM Ireland do seem to suffer from insufficient participation, and perhaps they are under-resourced in reviewing also. Maybe it is time to reconsider the national-grouping approach to running/reviewing and to run this as an international competition, with local teams helping to decide on eligibility but not judging the images. -- Colin (talk)

Thank you Colin: sometimes the written word can seem too harsh, but between reasonable people there shouldn't be real problems. I totally agree: it's really disappointing that the Diliff photograph was ignored (I'd said seeing that picture in commons was one that the things that inspired me to think "I have to go there"). In the end, that's many times the nature of jury decissions: there's always space to disagree, but also to improve the process, as you said. Besides, this discussion has raised very interesting points. --Rafesmar (talk) 08:59, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Colin, the only thing I would take issue with is your inferences relating to our judges and our process. In 2015 the quality and critically quantity of images submitted was very high (much higher than 2016 or this year), so it is not necessarily fair to directly compare 2015 with 2017 as the nature of both years has been strikingly different. We have found that many members involved in other WLMs tend to be vocal in their critique of the results or process of the smaller groups after the fact, but no one has ever offered to help us in the run up to WLM. I have often posted questions to WLM mailing lists which touch off some of the problems we have encountered and never receive advice from anyone bar the core WLM international team. If some of you feel this strongly, perhaps you would offer your services as a judge next year? --Smirkybec (talk) 11:30, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Smirkybec, I'll address both your arguments. Firstly I have been involved in previous years in judging (at community stages) for the UK twice and Balgladesh. I'm not on any WLM mailing lists nor involved with a local chapter. My criticism isn't all specific to Ireland -- there is a general problem perhaps with countries participating where the quantity and quality of entries is insufficient to warrant a top 10. Perhaps a more sensible approach then would be to simply have a top 3 if that is all that makes the grade, and perhaps the number of winning images generally could be more in proportion to the size of each nation's uploads. Alternatively perhaps the concept of judging on a per nation basis is flawed if some nations are too small. There is also a problem I see where the final judging per country doesn't reflect the community's perception of what makes an outstanding educational photo. Sometimes this is because external judges are used, are not given guidance, and so bring their own values (e.g. picking something arty but over-processed, too small and educationally dubious). Other times it is because Wikpedians are judging and some have in the past expressed confusion that one needs any greater quality in an image than can be displayed in a thumbnail on a Wikipedia article. The international jury are clearing expecting feature picture level of quality, originality and educational usefulness. Why are those values also not maintained when selecting our national finalists, even if it means not achieving 10 winners.

Secondly, you claim that 2015 had very high quality and quantity of images. It had 2x the quantity of this year, though from far more participants. This really doesn't explain the anomaly that Diliff's image did not make the top 10. The top 10 included File:Kilcrea Abbey.jpg, which has a seriously posterised and strangely coloured sky (due to over processing), File:Milky Way Photo of Poulnabrone Dolmen, The Burren, Co Clare,3, Pic By Frank Chandler (2).jpg which has all the quality of a GIF from 1999, File:Baldunngan.jpg which at 0.99MP does not fill a standard HD monitor screen, and File:Poulnabrone Portal Tomb.jpg which is has too much noise-reduction applied (losing any fine detail) and has a signature watermark which seriously lowers its utility on Commons. Two of the photos are of the same tomb, and neither do a good job of depicting the tomb -- the milky way photo is notable only really for the milky way, not the quality of the image of the monument which we are supposed to be judging, and the other is a very ordinary sunny day photo taken from a bad angle, educationally speaking. The Wikipedia article uses a different image for the lead, that better depicts the stones. Those are just the most obvious examples that fail to even approach QI level, never mind FP. And yet not the above Long Room, or this and this, two photos of Chapel Royal Interior, Dublin Castle (both FPs) -- there may be other QI/FPs but those are the easiest to find.

So I think there remain serious questions about the judging or judging criteria in 2015 along with a more general question about why national contests do not require FP quality as a starting point. If we had that as a minimum, then all we'd be worried about was that subjective tastes of one judge vs another. -- Colin (talk) 12:55, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We have never been able to get the Commons community to engage with us constructively with regarding to running the competition, and no one has ever given us an offer of their time or on Commons expertise to address these perceived issues. I would suggest that if you wish to have an impact on how competitions fare you do need to be engaged in the mailing list and elsewhere, as otherwise all small countries receive is demoralising criticism from the Commons community after the fact. I have no issue with people offering constructive criticism, but nothing here really seems to offer much we can implement as a lot of it seems to be based on inferences and suppositions about what the reality of WLM organisation rather than deep understanding. The criteria for FP are and have been circulated to our judging panels each year since 2014, and every year we have a different judging panel. We have never been successful to recruiting someone from Commons to be a judge, and this was not from lack of trying. In short, we have tried to address concerns as they have been raised year on year, and those voicing the concerns have offered no help or even strategies of how to tackle them in a concrete manner. I am continuing to reply as you claim that this is a general issue with WLM, but you have pointedly used Ireland as an example. If your issue is with WLM more generally then it would be much fairer to frame the discussion in that way. --Smirkybec (talk) 13:39, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is not my experience or of those I know, who have been willing to help with judging when asked. I did a huge amount of behind-the-scenes work for WLM UK when it started, as we didn't have the online judging tools. I was also happy to help with Bangladesh when asked and know several others Commons photographers who are involved in judging. Obviously we can't each judge every country, there are fewer photographers on Commons than there are users (most folk are here just to curate images), there are an awful lot of countries, some of whom have few active Commons photographers. I'm reluctant to judge on UK any more since I enter pictures there (and took care to avoid judging my images on the years that I did). You are right that there isn't much interaction between Commons and WLM -- I even remember one year where the international winners were announced and Commons was not even informed! I know several Commons photographers who do not enter images to WLM because they are so disappointed in the winning images chosen that they do not see any point. Additionally, I hear rumours that some countries give weight to newbies' images, further discouraging any regular from entering or hoping to get anywhere. Commons has its own image forums and competitions that attract high quality images week in week out, and for all its size, WLM actually generates relatively few high quality images, and a fair proportion of those are by regulars who would have taken and uploaded them anyway. So there's a perception that WLM is more a tool for trying to attract newbies and for missing images on Wikipedia rather than a serious photo competition. If you want serious photographers to take part, both in uploading images, and reviewing images, then the competition needs to take quality seriously at a national level. If small individual countries can't manage to judge at a quality level, then maybe that's the wrong approach for judging.

The image that caught my eye was the Long Room, because I know that is one of our better interior photographs, and know it was very strange it did not win anything in 2015. When an inferior version of the very same view wins this year, it is hard not to use that as an example that something is wrong with judging, or indeed the point of the competition. I can't really use UK images as an example, because I entered to the UK and so there may be a perception of sour grapes (I don't think my entries this year were outstanding). I don't think it is fair to describe this as just negativity and nothing constructive, and I can appreciate it is awkward to comment here because you can hardly come out and say "yes I know, the judges we had this year were clueless" or "I agree some of the winning images are a bit rubbish, but you should have seen all the crap we had to wade through" :-) so basically each year we just get defensiveness from the WLM organisers and nothing changes. It's your competition, so if you want to produce images to be proud of, the ball's in your court really. I don't think it is fair really to blame Commons users for not volunteering to help each and any country that tries to run this.

The participation of entries/photographers to Ireland has been falling each year, with a low this year of only 50 entrants and (once you exclude the top two photographers) only a few hundred images. Some other countries have even lower numbers. I'm not sure that is viable so perhaps some restructuring of how the competition is judged and run is needed. -- Colin (talk) 15:43, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please take my apologies when any of my comments had the effect of being demoralizing. This was surely not my intention. I think we all want WLM to be a success including in Ireland and we acknowledge that you and others of WM Ireland deserve a lot of credit for the work you have done. I've offered my help right before the first WLM Ireland contest but was never contacted. My offer still stands. And others from the Commons community would surely like to do the same. --AFBorchert (talk) 14:38, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much AFBorchert for your interest and kind words, and I would certainly like to take you up on your offer of help. Send me an email when you have a chance and we can discuss what elements of the project you would like to work on. I am currently slowly trawling through NIAH data drawing out what is suitable to include on Wikidata. But there might be some work to be done with the Monument Service and the OPW to address outliers like Castletown House. --Smirkybec (talk) 14:59, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I too would be more than happy to help out in some capacity with next year's WLM in Ireland. Some cross-fertilization of idea with the UK contest might be useful. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:06, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An interesting discussion. No doubt the Irish jurors restricted themselves to the images that have been uploaded this year, without considering our existing holdings. That's what we do in the UK, as well, when we judge images against the our local criterion "Potential usefulness and overall value of the image ... to the Wikimedia projects". But we have discussed for next year the possibility of changing how we judge "potential usefulness" by taking into account the images we already have. The reason we might want to do that is that we are starting to get multiple images of popular photogenic monuments, where the more recent ones aren't as good as the ones we already have. We might perhaps consider giving such images less weight in our national judging in order to encourage contestants to photograph less well known sites. I'd be interested in views on this. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:54, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a member of the Irish group, and as Michael pointed out, the numbers and scope of the images uploaded in any given year can vary considerably and we can only work with the images submitted. We attempted to place the emphasis on those monuments which had no existing image, but short of delisting places such as Trinity, there was little we could do about people choosing to upload more images of popular sites. Given that Ireland had a very limited and poor selection of images of national monuments when we began in 2014, I think we are very far away from having all together too many images as of yet. As regards the selection of winners, that is up to the jury. I think you would agree that it would not be acceptable to invite judges to give their time and energy into judging photographs, only to overturn or disregard their choices. Our criteria are taken from the international guidelines, are published, and provided to our jury. Often judges are dealing with large volumes of images, and the turn around for judging is relatively short, so expecting them (or the organising team) to be familiar with any and all existing images doesn't seem reasonable. I appreciate your interest in the outcomes from Ireland, and we always like to hear about strategies to improve the project further, but I don't really see anything concrete that we can bring forward other than to perhaps liaise with the UK about their similar concerns with the project outputs. --Smirkybec (talk) 18:47, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Smirkybec, I've been involved in a couple of WLM in the past so I know there are often several rounds of judging, usually involving volunteer community members, before the jury choose their winning selection from a shortlist. Of course it is hard to stop people uploading images that are not the focus of the competition, even if they are technically in scope. That doesn't stop your judges and final jury being selective when choosing winners. The poster indicates that the aim this year was to focus on missing monuments, so I'm rather puzzled that any reviewer at any level would consider Trinity to be a missing monument. Looking at the other Ireland winners, all of them have a selection of existing images on Commons, of varying quality, with the exception of Islandeady Church. I'm aware Spain had strict criteria for their images to be for missing subjects, but they also have a 4-5x bigger pool of photographers and uploads. So perhaps restricting the scope in this way doesn't really work for Ireland and best to leave "missing monument" for a special prize category. Perhaps some countries aren't attracting sufficient interest: more than half of Ireland's 870 uploads were from just three photographers, and 870 photos isn't very many from which to select a top 10. -- Colin (talk) 19:54, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Michael, in the case you are interested, here are my thoughts (and Colin's) about this topic out of discussion we had yesterday about the possibility to focus the contest on subjects we have no images from. That would be something I really recommend. Poc o² 19:12, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Poco, see above comment. I think the Ireland contest is so limited in participation that further restriction would only lower the quality of entries. Spain has 4-5x the population of participating photographers/uploads. If we consider that in 2015, WLM encouraged Diliff to take and enter his amazing photo of Trinity's Long Room, even though we had poor quality existing photos on Commons already. So I'd be concerned to discourage the taking and uploading of great photos that improve our collection, merely to satisfy a desire to tick some boxes on a "missing monuments" list. -- Colin (talk) 19:54, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I'd like to see 'missing monuments' as a separate prize category at the local level. I wouldn't want at least in the UK to restrict the top-10 images for the international level by excluding our best images, whatever site they depict. Other countries may want to do things differently. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:30, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

+1: While many of the winners are indeed stunning images which could be good candidates for being featured we should indeed also seek for a better coverage. I would like to see competitions regarding not yet covered objects which would qualify for QI but not necessarily FP. They do not need to be forwarded to the international competition but the recognition of such uploads could nonetheless motivate to look for lesser known objects. --AFBorchert (talk) 20:56, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Colin I think you have realised the main issue with Ireland, and that is scale. We tend to have a much higher profile (culturally speaking) which is not reflected in our group or participation. We have a very small group of volunteers directly engaged in the competition (3), and not a huge pool of submitted images to work from. It is fairer to compare us to a country like Norway rather than Spain or the UK. Many of the "missing" monument would be quite obscure and potentially difficult to find, and possibly difficult subject matter to work with. As with many of these things, there is no one reason behind perceived issues with such a project! --Smirkybec (talk) 22:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Selection of monuments[edit]

According to Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments, this photo contest is “around cultural heritage monuments”. I would expect that this refers to objects which are classified as monuments by the corresponding governments. I was surprised to see a photo of the Castletown House to be among the winners this year. This is surely a splendid building worth to be photographed but, to the best of my knowledge, it is not an officially registered monument of Ireland as it is neither included in the public databases of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland nor the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. Celbridge, the town where Castletown House is located, has a large number of monuments that are officially listed. This includes quite a number of remainings of the Early Christian period and a historic town. None of these objects were included in the list of eligible objects. --AFBorchert (talk) 13:15, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

it is listed on the register http://webgis.buildingsofireland.ie/HistoricEnvironment/?REG_NO=11805001 which would make it eligible Gnan garra 13:21, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Gnangarra: Did you examine this record and the attached photo? It refers to a “attached three-bay two-storey gate lodge, c.1890” – this is hardly Castletown House, a Palladian country house built in 1722. --AFBorchert (talk) 13:51, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If it's not a bona fide image of a registered monument, no doubt it will be disqualified by the international judges. I'm assuming they don't award international prizes without checking that the winners comply with the international rules. Submission of an image by a local contest into the international competition does not in itself make the image automatically eligible for an international award. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:58, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So Ireland has a complicated system of looking after it's older buildings, not all of which involve numbering or databases. There is an error here in the Wikidata item Castletown House is pointed to, but the buildings is maintained by the Irish Office of Public Works under its National Historic Properties. Also included in this list are St Enda's, St Stephens Green and Farmleigh, so it is safe to say it is regarded to be of historic national importance. --Smirkybec (talk) 18:29, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

All governments have monuments which are protected legally. In Ireland, we have a National Monuments Act and the Architectural Heritage and Historic Monuments Act, among others. The databases serve to maintain the corresponding inventories. They are not legally binding and because of this they are not necessarily perfectly synchronized with the current legal state. But this a general problem that we find also with public monument databases of other governments. The Castletown House would be surely a good candidate for inclusion in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. But so far it wasn't included in the NIAH and we have no indication that it is scheduled to be included. That Castletown House is now partially owned by the government and put under the management of the NHP does not turn it into a monument.

In case of Ireland we are fortunate to have these public databases which are even released under free licenses. Ireland has an amazing number of objects covered by these databases (c. 138,800 records in the Archaeological Survey of Ireland and 43,326 in the NIAH) including, for example, many buildings of significance in the historic towns of Ireland. WLM could be very helpful to get a better coverage of these objects at Commons but unfortunately the actual set of eligible objects is quite limited. Such a limited approach allowed perhaps an easier start of WLM Ireland but I would recommend to work on base on these databases for the coming WLM events. --AFBorchert (talk) 20:46, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I accept that Castletown House is an anomaly. However, having worked directly with the data over the past 4 years, you are somewhat understating the work that is required to use that data. With the National Monuments the location data is not under an open licence as it uses a propriety grid system which is under the copyright of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. NIAH is better, but a huge amount of structures listed are on private land, and scant descriptive data - from the point of view of importing it into Wikidata to then be used with WLM. I have presented an academic paper on this subject detailing the complexity here. --Smirkybec (talk) 22:55, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have photographed a lot of sites in Ireland on private land with permission of the respective owners. Examples are Moylisha Wedge Tomb (national monument #368) or Clonmines. It is not hard or impossible to do that. Likewise many ecclesiastic sites have been locked up where it takes some effort to get access. You have the same problem in other countries as well where all monuments are eligible independent from whether they are on private sites or not. Nobody should conclude that a permission is not required just because a monument is eligible for WLM. I am familiar with the Irish grid reference system which is well-known and which can be easily converted to WGS 84. This is not an issue. --AFBorchert (talk) 00:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not implying that it is impossible to gain access to certain sites, it was a concern that both the Monuments Service and the NIAH raised with us when we approached them about reusing the data, so we took those concerns on board. The issue is not just around access, but also the safety of a site and the protection of vulnerable sites. Thus we defer to those professionals in the relevant government department when making that decision. We are well versed in the process of converting the Irish Grid, but that does not mitigate the issues around copyright, apart from it is a slow process. We would be delighted to have more people to collaborate with on getting this data on to Wikidata and thus incorporate it into WLM Ireland. We are not opposed to including more monuments, what we do is contingent on our capabilities as a group! --Smirkybec (talk) 00:32, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Legally, the main problem is that Wikidata accepts only {{Cc-zero}} material. The Irish databases have compilation copyrights and some of the texts within the database are likewise eligible for copyright. We have currently a similar discussion at Commons regarding the data namespace. If we wouldn't have this obstacle, we could simply copy and convert the entire databases (but just the databases, not the material from the Historic Environment Viewer which includes other copyrighted material). Other WLM contests simply refer to the national databases. Take for example France:

Le monument devra être identifié par son numéro d'inventaire, tel qu'il figure dans la base Mérimée ou dans la base Palissy du ministère de la Culture et sa description devra être aussi complète que possible. (quoted from here)

You could similarly open the competition for WLM Ireland.

The concerns regarding the protection of vulnerable sites are understandable. However, the databases are already public record. And all monuments are vulnerable whether they are eligible for WLM or not. When I visited WX041-008010- in 2009 I found centuries-old headstones recently smashed to pieces. When I talked with the friars of White Abbey in Kildare (NIAH 11817079) I learnt that some of their stained glass was recently damaged by vandals throwing stones from outside through the windows. Many monuments suffered from badly documented excavations or botched attempts of preservation (see, for example, the guide ruins: the conservation and repair of masonry ruins of the advice series, ISBN 978-1-4064-2445-4). Some monuments were deliberately destroyed to make way for motorways and other construction projects. And monuments can be subject to catastrophes like St. Mel's Cathedral. One of the things we can do is to use movements like WLM to document these monuments by photographing them and writing articles. This raises awareness and invites all of us to look after these monuments. Allow me to quote Victor M. Buckley, Archaeological Inventory of County Louth, p. ix:

The decision to commence production of rapid non-intensive inventories was made in 1982 by the Commissioners of Public Works in order to enable them to formulate a comprehensive programme for the protection of monuments of national importance in the face of increased rates of destruction.

In other words, the records of the Archaeological Survey were published in order to protect vulnerable monuments. --AFBorchert (talk) 07:53, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To be blunt, none of this is new information to me or to the Irish organisers, and they are all elements that we have discussed and considered over the years. You may disagree with the decisions that we have come to, but they were not taken lightly or rashly. The fact of the matter is that we worked with the Monument Service and the NIAH and took their concerns on board. Given that we want to maintain and grow a relationship with both of them, it is important not to dismiss these concerns and to view this as a collaboration not just the appropriation of their resources. What may appear to be straight forward from a distance in far more nuanced when you are at the coalface. --Smirkybec (talk) 11:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Loves Monuments India[edit]

Why India Haven't yet announced the results while all participating countries are done?---IM3847 (talk) 02:56, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I was told that some countries are holding off announcing their winners, perhaps until the international competition is finished or until they can have an award ceremony of some kind. I am only guessing as to the reason, but it's not just India that has not publicly announced its winners. My understanding is that all participating countries have submitted up to 10 images to the international final including India so I'm sure the Indian winners will be announced in due course. Diliff (talk) 07:26, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 winners

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Talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 winners

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Wiki Loves Monuments overlap with Wiki Loves Earth[edit]

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