Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012/Evaluation

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This evaluation meeting took place on 19 & 20 January 2013.

Actual Agenda

Day One (Saturday): Looking Backwards

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          09:00-17:30

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1. 1: 09:00-09:45 Walk-in, coffee, introductions, organisational stuff
2. 2: 09:45-10:30 Session I: Study of Feedback from the Organisers' Survey & Commons Page -- see Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013/Meetings/Doc/WLM-2012-feedback
3. 3: 10:30-10:45 Break
4. 4: 10:45-11:50 Session II: Most Complicated National Problems: Case Studies
5. 4: 11:50-12:00 Break
6. 6: 12:00-12:30 Short Session I: Professional Support on the International Level
7. 7: 12:30-13:30 Lunch break
8. 8: 13:30-14:15 Session IV: On a Happier Note: What Makes a Successful Contest
9. 9: 14:15-15:00 Session V: Active Session: Getting Things Done
10. 10: 15:00-15:15 Break
11. 11: 15:15-16:00 Session VI: Agreeing On the Basics
12. 11: 16:45-17:30 Session VII: Legal Considerations and Other Small Topics

Day Two (Sunday): Looking Forwards

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           09:00-17:00

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1. 1: 09:00-09:15 Walk-in, coffee
2. 2: 09:15-10:00 Session VIII: Budget
3. 3: 10:00-10:10 Break
4. 4: 10:10-10:55 Session IX: Technical Issues, Part One: Database, and how the data gets in and out (incl. Erfgoedbot)
   1. Elke explains how the database works
   2. We look forward how things are going to be done
5. 5: 10:55-11:40 Session X: Technical Issues, Part Two: Technical coordination (mobile,

blablabla -- notes not being taken at http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/WLM-2013-01-20

1. 1. We make an overview of all the other techstuff that needs to happen
   2. ...
2. 7: 11:55-12:25 Short Session III: Promotion
3. 8: 12:25-13:25 Lunch break
4. 9: 13:25-14:10 Session XI: Countries Run-Through, Part One
5. 10: 14:10-14:55 Session XII: Countries Run-Through, Part Two
6. 11: 14:55-15:10 Break
7. 12: 15:10-15:55 Session XIII: Guinness Book of World Records & Collaborations
8. 13: 15:55-16:40 Short Session IV (Summary of the Meeting)
9. 14: 16:40-17:00 Walk-out, goodbyes, photos

Notes

• Present at the meeting:

1. Lodewijk
2. Romaine (not Saturday afternoon)
3. Tomasz
4. Monica
5. Platonides
6. Karthik
7. Elke
8. Raimond
9. Maarten (only for parts, via Skype)

Feedback

First of all, the textual feedback of the participant and organizational survey have been discussed. First there was a focus on the suggested improvements and negative feedback, later on the positive feedback. Some points that came out:

• The division of work between the international team might have not been clear enough for the people; is this something we can improve next year?
• Some people were not sure what the international team was supposed to do or when it would happen.
• Monica: The documentation on the UploadWizard and how to set up the list of monuments was insufficient: it could use some screenshots on how the wizard will work.

(AP) include screenshots in the documentation.

• Romaine: bug https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30645 (history for changes in Upload Campaigns) needs to be fixed! Suggestion: let's try to centralise things, not give the rights out to people so liberally – this probably saves time in the long run. Have a specific group of users who do set this up. A lot of users have no experience/feeling with templates, upload campaigns, etc. And have a central person people can talk to regarding this subject. (AP) Select a central coordinator for the Upload Campaigns
• A number of national organizers missed important announcements because there were too many emails sent on the international WLM mailing list.
  • It is agreed that setting up an announcement-only list will probably mitigate most of these problems. (AP) Tomasz: Set up wlm-announce@lists.wikimedia.org with reply-to to wikilovesmonuments-l
  • Confirmations (“please react everybody...“) etc should probably be on-wiki or private email – also to reduce emails.
• Some countries ask us to give more guidance, some others suggest to back off and give more space. It is clear that this is a balancing act, and that there is no perfect solution to suit all.

(AP) Have a discussion on meta/commons about privacy etc.

• A lot of technical feedback, mostly because there was too little capacity.
• Tools (…)
• We need an FAQ aimed at the participants as well as at the organisers. -> documentation can be improved, and split for different target groups.
• Note for Elke: intermediate level of experience WLMers, to support newcomers

Case studies

We decided to study some specific scenarios we encountered in 2012, and felt difficult to deal with, and discuss how we could handle that better next time.

• Countries joining late: What should we do when a country wants to join the competition late?
  • We all agree we should try to avoid that the situation occurs in the first place, by giving a lot of support early on.
  • However, joining late (after deadline) is problematic for the international organization because it causes a bunch of extra work. If you're considering taking part in WLM, and are waiting for government permission for lists, etc. – just /please/ at least let us know you're considering that. It is also a PR problem for the team; we don't want to give the impression of being a ruler of the national teams, and don't want to be the bad guys.
  • (AP) We should publish the reasons why joining late is a problem, and make the process how we will handle it clear in the documentation.
• Countries with complicated monument infrastructures (i.e. federative). Lists on Wikipedia might not be complete, and this makes the whole system fall apart. There is no perfect solution for this.
  • A side effect of this problem is that because of the federative structure, local volunteers may primarily care about their own region and not collaborate optimally. Setting up a national team is harder. Combine that with a chapter that is only supporting and not taking the lead, and there’s a recipe for a tough organization.
  • The only thing we see that we could do from the international perspective, is join the discussions on the local level, and transfer as much knowledge as possible.

• Countries that want to start the contest in a different month (for example because of monsoon)
  • There were a few countries that would have preferred another competition month. In the Philippines this was resolved by motivating people to make the photos before, and uploading them in September.
  • Having the competition in a single month allows for more effective PR world wide, helps us fulfill the Guinness World Record definitions and gives a certain focus. It also ensures that all the tools are available, and allows maintenance/development in the rest of the year.
  • We agree that we will maintain the single month principle.

• Countries with regions that organize some things with a certain level of independence
  • We agree that we stick to the one country-one contest principle, with the exception of a joint contest by multiple countries. This keeps the concept simple, and reduces complicated situations. National contests still allow for regional contests as part of it of course, but 10 nominees per country stand.

• Countries that lack Freedom of Panorama: several countries have no FoP, which means no uploads of modern buildings (<100y old) is allowed. In France the system worked well where dedicated WLM admins asked the Commons admins to handle the images themselves. An overview of which buildings are free to photograph does help. Explanation to the participants is crucial.

• Countries that show interest, but don’t get off the ground (i.e. the United Kingdom).
  • This costs us a lot of time, to help them getting their act together, and then it is quite disappointing if that doesn’t pay off. Maybe we should give more weight to having a few dedicated volunteers from the beginning!

• Big countries like the USA sometimes have multiple groups that want to organize something. It might be complicated to let them work together. In the US this worked to some extent through the ‘WALRUS’ but it is especially important that one volunteer is dedicated enough to coordinate the different efforts.

• Special prizes:

1. We had one special prize (the GLAM photo), it was a bit out of the focus. We were quite late with organizing it, the prizes were confusing. The definition wasn't clear enough (how to get something categorized).
2. Theme has to add some value, and has to be communicative. The definition has to be clear (list?). Example might be heritage in danger (Europa Nostra) or UNESCO world heritage list.

Professional support

In 2012 we had some professional support from Barbara, working from the WMDE office. This was only part of her job at WMDE. Originally a 3 month FTE spread over 6 months was agreed upon, this changed later on.

Identifying what were the gaps where more hands were needed:

• Developing technical infrastructure: database, API's, tools: Elke expects a huge amount of re-development to be done. Has to be talked about tomorrow in more detail.
• Project management
• Financial management

See also http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Meetings

The happy note: successful contest

• You need a team that prevents people from burning out: its either the number of people, or the kind of people that are in team. (both national and international this is valid)
• You also need completely different competences in the team; it isn't sure that you can influence that; you sometimes "need to row with the paddles that you have."
• You should not ask the general public for help in a very general way, as nobody will answer you; the way is to ask a very specific person (and that it accepts the challenge and does answer...).
• It is important to understand up front which tasks are most time-consuming.
• Define the bare minimum for a national contest, and make it a modular package. Which parts can you potentially add to that, depending on the team members you have. (AP) Lodewijk and Karthik to define the modular package better tomorrow. (this is being built on this page
• Maybe have a few backup mechanisms for the core package: tools.
• Pool of backup juries, jury exchanges. (AP) Set up backup mechanism for jury duty.
• (AP) Write a pool of questions & answers from participants to local organizers, put them in a FAQ, and ask local organisers to translate them into their languages.

(AP) Timeline: differentiate critical from optional. (AP) set up wlm-africa list because we learned that the African situation is quite different from that in most European countries – and can be helped by a better knowledge and experience exchange.

•  Done

Active session

Portal page on Commons, how to organize documentation/information

• A lot of information is there, but people don't find it apparently (see feedback).
• idea: Example https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors for how to present out FAQ, create Boxes/Icons for Participants, different target groups, drop down/fly out menu for single topics. (AP) find out how they did the Javascript part and how to implement on Commons.
• idea: split up/modularize every single FAQ and include it on pages with different target groups / topics
• Localizable Video like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa0Nmv9qsd8 for "how to use the upload wizard" (AP)
• tools for participants: how many images you uploaded

How to avoid redundancies between On-wiki and Wordpress blogs, for participants. Where to send them so they don't get lost?

• • This is /the/ question.
  • make it easier (for Wikipedians) to use Wordpress, try http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wiki-embed/installation/
• how to help with technical stuff for organizers: try to create a screencast like http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Denkmallisten_Calc2Wikipedia.ogv (AP)

The bare minimum and beyond

Working on it here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013/FAQ#What_is_the_minimum_setup_for_a_national_Wiki_Loves_Monuments_competition.3F

The Basics

We went through the basics, to make sure that we all agreed on them.

• The goals of WLM are not only related to the number of images, but primarily the number of people. We all agree with the basic explanation on this issue in this blog post: http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/why-we-are-doing-this/
• We also agree on the basic five pillars that we learned on how to achieve those goals, as summarized in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments/Philosophy :
  • Fun
  • Easy
  • Local
  • Quick results (we can improve on that)
  • Help Wikipedia
• The contest is set up in a Federative method, which means that the organization happens primarily on a national level. Some aspects will of course still be international in nature, such as the tools. Improvement on this compared with the past is needed, developing tools shouldn't happen for one country specifically, but rather coordinated.
• We agree on the basic Rules which should apply in all countries:
  • All participating images should be uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, and thus freely licensed.
  • An image has to be taken by the uploader (to keep the whole concept simple and not end up in complicated copyright scenarios)
  • All uploads have to happen in September (exceptions should be discussed well in advance)
  • A participating photo has to contain an identified monument.
  • Nominations through the federative structure: we stick to 10 nominations per country.
  • Last year we had some trouble with email enabling. We agree that to be nominated for the finale, Email has to be provided and enabled. It is the task of the national organizers to check on this.
• We aim at as few rules as possible, but there are some rules that we have to have on the international level.
  • Guidelines for local juries: It would be nice if you could keep the Wikimedia Commons Featured Picture criteria in mind (including the use of image altering software)

Team (who is on the team, how do we collaborate?)

We discussed what the international coordinating team should look like this year. Today we have six people present who want to continue (Karthik, Lodewijk, Monica, Platonides, Romaine & Tomasz), and Cristian who couldn't be here – totalling 7 people, which equals the aimed number. Some more people indicated they were willing to help out – and we're very happy with that. We will get in touch with them sometime soon, indicating that their help is very welcome! Perhaps better than last year, we should make use of an extended team.

Roles

We identified a few roles that definitely need some coverage, including technical and keeping an eye out for the individual countries. We made a round who likes and who doesn't like to do what – based on that we tried to cover each topic with a caretaker. This person is not 'in charge' or 'the only person to do the job' but he/she has to make sure stuff gets done.

Needs doing:

• Website metrics & other stats: (to be defined further)
  • ____
• Spreading the Word (workshops, sessions at international meetings etc)
  • Lodewijk
• Documentation; FAQ
  • Tomasz, Monica
• Communication: OTRS, press releases, blogging, tweeting, Facebook account
  • Monica, Lodewijk
  • (Tomasz can continue answering OTRS tickets)
• promotional materials
  • Tomasz
• communication with the countries (keeping the overview)
  • Lodewijk, Karthik
• Technical development (Toolstuff)
  • Platonides
• Setting up wizards & translations
  • Romaine (!)
• Technical operations of the monument database (adding sources etc)
  • Romaine, Cristian?
  • Banners: Tomasz

Legal stuff and other small things

• We had a discussion, like last year, whether it would be beneficial to register the “Wiki Loves' as a trademark or not (this was suggested by the WMF at some point). We decided again that there are no big reasons at this point to register it, but there might be in the future. The danger (with not being registered) is limited, and there are no major advantages. There are downsides in cost and bureaucracy. We decide that we are /not/ going to promote registration of the Wiki Loves-trademark.

• In several countries the lists are not freely licensed – this makes things quite complicated. We shortly discussed it, but didn't find a real solution unfortunately.

• For this year, we plan to put up a privacy policy link on the website. The lack of it seems to have caused some confution with some people.

dinner: http://www.brakkegrond.nl/

Budget

We went through the budget of last year (Lodewijk explained the topics and the reasoning behind the amounts), and made some preliminary guesstimates for the amounts for 2013. The file is available on Lodewijk's computer and will be shared later on.

Lodewijk will discuss this with Sandra Rientjes, and see her input on this and loop this back to the international team, especially regarding the coverage, which we didn't exactly agree upon yet (depends on many factors).

We agreed on having a Skype conference at some point in the future to make a final decision on the budget for Wikimedia Nederlands to officially submit it to the Wikimedia Foundation as a grant request.

Suggestion to invest more efforts in external sponsors, might be capacity for that.

• find a sponsor for logistics (calendars)
• find a sponsor for printing...

Technical

Elke explained the database flow and how the scripts run. We discussed the balance that we need perhaps some more human resources, and if this comes from professional support or that this would scare away volunteers

We definitely need some help with respect to operations (adding countries, minor fixes to the database & toolset).

There's a short discussion regarding Mysql and solr http://lucene.apache.org/solr/ (supposedly more flexible and better in scaling), but solr would need reimplementation and more resources. The data would be structured in XML or JSON. However, if we continue with the current system, work needs to be done to make improvements, especially on the output side.

Also had a discussion on whether it is likely that the toolserver stays alive. The uncertainty is hurting the continuity, especially since it is unclear whether the WLM tools would be transferred to the labs environment, if that will ever start working.

Maarten has indicated not to continue in his current role for next year, so we had a discussion on what tasks would have to be transferred (a.k.a. What it means, to be a Maarten):

• Keeping the (technical) overview -> Platonides
• Keep stuff going, fixing stuff. --> ??
• Statistics (visits & images) -> ask if Emijrp wants to scale up (AP Platonides) (very nice to have)
• Monuments on the map -> ask if Emijrp wants to scale up (very nice to have) (AP Platonides)
• Importing data into the database (not time critical, but critical) -> 4,5 people able to do that right now, should expand on that.
• Running the scripts (erfgoedbot) (not time critical, but critical) -> lazy scripts, don't need a lot of maintenance
  • Convert cron jobs to 'Sun Grid Engine' (has to happen before 2013-MM-DD) (AP ?)
• Development of new tools (..., ... & …) (AP Platonides to make a list)
• Api stuff is Platonides
• create a developer-oriented documentation (AP ?)
• Un-breaking things
• Keep in touch with Erik Möller: wishlist (AP ?)

• Make a frontend for monuments-config.py (AP ? )

UploadWizard Romaine volunteers to coordinate the upload wizard for the coming year.

• Setting up campaigns etc -> Romaine
• Cleaning up the mess (no history: bug 30645) -> Romaine
  • This bug seriously needs to be fixed.
  • Also, we should fill out another bug requesting a timer in the UploadCampaigns (starts at:, ends at:). Maybe with bug 39910.
• Getting things translated
• We can use a lot of campaigns from last year
• Keeping uploadWizard development going at the WMF
• Make sure everything *works* and isn't broken by other MediaWiki stuff.

Central WLM 2013 bug: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/42164

• • A wish of the international team: fix'em all. Easy, innit?

CentralNotice

• Setting up the different banners
• Setting up the piwik tracking
• Getting it translated

the Mobile app from the WMF: Cost a bunch of time investment of Elke and Maarten. Partially because of data quality at the source, and part because of how the database was structured. but also the whole communication side of things. We learned that we would have to do more cleanup at harvesting. 30k installs

9k active installs
3k images

The WMF will move on to a more general Commons app, and campaigns might be possible? We'd have to submit data in some kind of standardized form. We may lose some monument-specific information. We would however be part of a larger app. Who is going to pull the communication with the WMF mobile app team? (AP)

A nice to have feature would be to be able to create an account on Commons from the mobile app (no bug??). (Q) What is the WMF time path of the general app production for Wikimedia Commons. (Q) How much effort and recourses would it take from WLM side of things, or would they import things.

Transfer of jobs slowly in the coming months:

• Try to import as many countries as possible to avoid busyness in August
• Maarten will look into writing an email about what needs to be done (@Platonides)
• AP Maarten make a list of open bugs
• AP Maarten look into the possibility of make a ranking of the worst source countries
• AP Platonides contact Jason Spriggs if he would like to help out
• AP Lodewijk put Platonides in touch with Edoderoo

Some access issues regarding technical tools are discussed, and who should keep access (and who shouldn't because they are inactive). (getent group | grep erfgoed::6028)

Chapters Meeting in April, Milan. (AP Lodewijk check the options with the Italian folks and report back via email)

Countries run-through

We shortly discussed all countries that have some chance of participating in WLM this year, as prepared by the participants of the meeting. The main point here is to get a good overview of which countries are in the game, which are game and which are just hopeless. Notes for this part were taken in a continuous spreadsheet so that it can also be used in the future.

Collaboration with international partners

We shortly discussed past collaboration with international partners. They were first and foremost network partners that helped us get in touch with local partners to organize the national contests more efficiently and effectively. For next year, it would be nice to see what else can be thought of.

• Europa Nostra
• Europeana
• INTO
• World Monument Fund

We conclude that asking help of the partners only works if we have good and specific questions - we can use them to connect local organizers with local partners.

Lodewijk will look into the Europa Nostra collaboration. If well defined. (AP)

Get in touch with UNESCO:

• Special competition for UNESCO world heritage?
  • if yes: Database redundancies predicted. Needs to be solved then, but good idea to have it.
• Who gets in contact and how? It's located in Paris. Ask Europa Nostra. Collaborate with WMFR on that. (AP Lodewijk)

Guinness World Record

We discuss the status of the GWR application of recognition of the 2012 record. We had to halt the application, because there were some questions raised about how to define the paricipating images; contest may be 2-round, but in the end they count only the ones that have a chance to win an international prize. For the GWR application, we have to fit with their definitions.

• some ossies we have to keep in mind when counting:
  • deleted images (should not be included, they are not valid submissions for the sake of GWR)
  • images of monuments out of the lists of mo numents
  • Problem 1: South Tyrolia, couldn't win in Italy, no chance to be nominated for finals
    • Decision: it wont be counted. While it is sad, the criterion is that they have to make a chance to win the international prizes. They didn't.
  • Problem 2: Belgium/Luxembourg: national contest, but no finalists because they missed the deadline.
    • Decision: we do not count it for the GWC, communicate it as clearly as possible to the community that this is not a value statement of the images or organization, but it is a matter of keeping definitions.

how to reply to the other people that showed interest

In the past several (many!) people have indicated interest in helping out the international team. We're very happy with that, and should make good use of them.

• [AP Tomasz] Write a blog post explaining the changes in the team, thanking Barbara, Elke, and Maarten for their participation ;-(
• [AP Tomasz] Include a note in the organisers FAQ that people need to submit their nominations in time, or Tomasz will shoot them in the knee with a bazooka.
  • That's not really for the FAQ... Maybe a "What if... ?" :)

Thanks for applying, would you be interested in helping out with... We need:

• Technical help
• mentoring countries?
• documentation
• helping with blog posts etc?

(AP Lodewijk make a draft)

Action points

• (AP) include screenshots in the documentation.
• (AP) Select a central coordinator for the Upload Campaigns: Romaine
• (AP) Tomasz: Set up wlm-announce@lists.wikimedia.org with reply-to to wikilovesmonuments-l
• (AP) Have a discussion on meta/commons about privacy etc.
• (AP) We should publish the reasons why joining late is a problem, and make the process how we will handle it clear in the documentation.
• (AP) Lodewijk and Karthik to define the modular package better: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013/FAQ#What_is_the_minimum_setup_for_a_national_Wiki_Loves_Monuments_competition.3F
• (AP) Set up backup mechanism for jury duty
• (AP) Write a pool of questions & answers from participants to local organizers, put them in a FAQ, and ask local organisers to translate them into their languages.
• (AP) Timeline: differentiate critical from optional.
• (AP) set up wlm-africa list.
• (AP) Set up a split portal for the different target groups.
• (AP) find out how they did the Javascript part for the WMF staff page and how to implement on Commons.
• Localizable Video like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa0Nmv9qsd8 for "how to use the upload wizard" (AP)
• how to help with technical stuff for organizers: try to create a screencast like http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Denkmallisten_Calc2Wikipedia.ogv (AP)
• Statistics (visits & images) -> ask if Emijrp wants to scale up (AP Platonides) (very nice to have)
• Monuments on the map -> ask if Emijrp wants to scale up (very nice to have) AP Platonides
• Convert cron jobs to 'Sun Grid Engine' (has to happen before 2013-MM-DD) (AP ?)
• Development of new tools (..., ... & …) (AP Platonides to make a list)
• create a developer-oriented documentation (AP ?)
• Keep in touch with Erik Möller: wishlist (AP ?)
• Make a frontend for monuments-config.py
• Who is going to pull the communication with the WMF mobile app team?
• AP Maarten will look into writing an email about what needs to be done (@Platonides)
• AP Maarten make a list of open bugs
• AP Maarten look into the possibility of make a ranking of the worst source countries
• AP Platonides contact Jason Spriggs if he would like to help out
• AP Lodewijk put Platonides in touch with Edoderoo
• AP Lodewijk check the options with the Italian folks and report back via email) for the WLM part of the chapters meeting.
• AP Tomasz include the Greek contact details in the spreadsheet
• Lodewijk will look into the Europa Nostra collaboration. If well defined. (AP)
• Who gets in contact and how? It's located in Paris. Ask Europa Nostra. Collaborate with WMFR on that. (AP Lodewijk)
• [AP Tomasz] Write a blog post explaining the changes in the team, thanking Barbara, Elke, and Maarten for their participation ;-(
• [AP Tomasz] Include a note in the organisers FAQ that people need to submit their nominations in time, or Tomasz will shoot them in the knee with a bazooka.
• AP Lodewijk make a draft for email to applicants)