Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013/Meetings/Doc/WLM-2012-feedback-national

Welcome to a pad gathering feedback provided by the local organisers through the survey run in November 2012. This pad gathers opinions about the national aspects of the preparations & the organisation. For answers on questions about the international aspects, please see http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/WLM-2012-feedback.

What needs to be improved most in your national organisation?

1. "More helping users."
2. "Outreach and promotion. This year advertising was mainly through social media. We feel we did not reach the provinces as we would have liked to, mainly because the organizing team was on the capital and we could not get budget/funding for massive advertisement (televison, radio, newspapers and others)."
3. "Partnership and sponsorship."
4. "More money will be needed."
5. "We need more people really involved, not just casually improving categories."
6. "(1) Involving volunteers who are willing to help; (2) having local events to engage people to take part in the contest, which is my plan for the next year, since the foundation has been set this year, so I will have more time to deal with that in 2013.)"
7. "(1) People who initially said that would help with the organisation got cold feet afterwards; (2) Starting to organize the contest earlier would be a lot better (e.g. some sponsors also got cold feet; contacting them earlier would a] prevent this a bit, and b] reduce the damage this does in case it happens; more complete lists can be get with more time; etc.)."
8. "(1) Composition of our judging team -- attracting professional photographers; (2) Re-thinking of partners (it was easy to cooperate with some, and very hard to with others); (3) Increasing interest for WLM among Wikipedians."
9. "Sponsors and partners."
10. "We need a better explanation of the way the national monuments committee collects and maintains their information, so that we can structure our "differences" for them. Our "differences list" (of mistakes such as wrong descriptions or addresses) is not in a format that they can use."
11. "Earlier start, more involvement of volunteers, better contact with sponsors and partners."
12. "External promotion through partners. They were involved in sponsoring but not spreading the word. The organization has limited channels of PR."
13. "Rules for the photographers and rules for the jury. We are working on that."
14. "Promotion and timing."
15. "Better sell the work done by the organization, both internally (especially) and externally."
16. "Having more people involved, as the process [of organising WLM] is very time-consuming. It was also difficult to market Wiki Loves Monuments to potential sponsors since it was not held in the Philippines before."
17. "We need to start much earlier. (...) We need to have a much larger share of the work in the hands of more volunteers. (...) And hopefully we can get successful partners, sponsors, and a lot more events."
18. "I think what needs to be improved is the PR and media relations."
19. "Myself I question whether the big budget adds that much as it should do. How much would we achieve with half of the budget is a question that I ask myself. If we can't grow in the size of the contest we could try to maintain this size with a less big budget."
20. "Timeliness and promotion."
21. "We need to free more monuments and to communicate even more and get even more people participating."
22. "Timing and technical features."
23. "I think that it is really important to be more outgoing to other organisations about working together on projects. Create a positive vibe within the Wikipedia community."
24. "Better planning, more promotion, sponsors."
25. "Evalution of former jurys, provide future jurys with experience of the ones before."
26. "Involvement of volunteers."

What would you need most to make WLM 2013 a success in your country?

1. "More active people."
2. "We had a student category and we would like to reach more students in more places of the country, [e]specially [in] the provinces."
3. "Much more merchandise, technical stuff, etc."
4. "More money."
5. "Volunteers."
6. "Volunteers and sponsors."
7. "More people."
8. "Tools."
9. "A better upload site (with clearer instructions)."
10. "We need sponsors, if there are no sponsor it won't happen."
11. "We need more people interested in running Wiki takes [events] in remote areas."
12. "Earlier start, better communication, more volunteer involvement."
13. "After two years of competition it is hard to repeat success in a third one. People may lose interest and the organizing team needs a break or a renewal. We need to find new incentives but I'm not sure how."
14. "More interest of the media in Austria in WLM. They are bored of photo competitions and do not see the uniqueness of WLM."
15. "Promote it earlier, more volunteers who engage in events and more local events outside of Stockholm."
16. "Become equal that an borderlined state." (Andorra?)
17. "More volunteers, perhaps paid staff would be beneficial too."
18. "More people helping out more."
19. "Better prizes, more media exposure. Highlight[ing] the advocacy [for] Wikipedia."
20. "Sponsors, enthousiast[ic] participants, and after 3 years a news story would be welcome."
21. "More promotion."
22. "More communication and outreach."
23. "More money :-)"
24. "A really outgoing attitude to make more people participate in helping organize real local events like Wiki Takes Franeker or Wiki Takes Zierikzee. And to make a strong choice about reaching out to local historical organisations."
25. "Promotion thr[ough] a better planning."
26. "Good cooperation, using former experience."
27. "More volunteers to organize photohunts and other promotional events."

What surprised you most in your national organisation?

1. "That the second time was harder than the first time, even while most things already existed."
2. "The amount of pictures sent by participants. Our optimistic forecast was of 1,000 pictures and we had more than 2500, even without massive advertisement."
3. "Everyone walked on a motive for a grand success."
4. "Activity of participants, really good."
5. "Nothing."
6. ""The good side: (1) the results. I expected less photos to be uploaded; (2) jury process, which went rather smoothly, without breaking the deadline. The bad side: (1) not many people willing to help with the project."
7. "Not too much. I was greatly surprised, however, with the diverse help I received from external people."
8. "The amount of work that WLM required, and the amount of work that some of our volunteers were willing to do."
9. "We spend much more resources than last year, e.g. contacted 350 schools around Sweden by snail mail, but the overall number of contributions decreased, while the average quality was higher."
10. "Contributor Andrei_kokelburg, new to Wikipedia, was one of the top-10 world uploaders."
11. "I was surprised to see among the top-uploaders new Wikipedia users."
12. "Sponsors: they contacted us because they wanted to repeat the experience from last year and they offered three great prizes."
13. "The continuous work for categorizing the pic[ture]s on Commons and integrating them in the German speaking Wikipedia. The team doing that since last year won the Zedler prize for community activities in the German speaking WP."
14. "The diversity of the photos, concerning place, monuments, style, quality."
15. "The great level of my teammates."
16. "The great number of participants from what was originally targeted. Online queries were also abundant which showed their interest."
17. "The level of response from WMPH members."
18. "The enthusiast and fresh involvement of local volunteers in the city of Gouda."
19. "The number of people that participated."
20. "The amazing response of many people not limited to WM-IT members or Wikipedians, everybody tried to help, especially contacting local institutions to obtain the authorization for taking pictures of the monuments or organizing local events."
21. "The number of volunteer[s] outside the Wikimedia movement we involved"
22. "The huge amount of work to cope with in a narrow window of time."

What are you proudest of about your national organisation?

1. "Enriching Wikipedia."
2. ""The list of monuments. Before we created it on Wikipedia, there was no single place online where you could find a comprehensive list of Panamanian monuments. We still have work to do with the list (add coordinates, descriptions, etc.), but as it is on Wikipedia we can do it permanently even after the contest has finished."
3. "India was able to generate maximum number of participants."
4. "Results are very good."
5. "We managed to go outside WLM and fund the Romanian Wikipedia writing contest."
6. "It is the first year of having WLM organized in Serbia, so I am very proud with the results [that] were accomplished."
7. "Being able to organize the contest alone, from the beginning to the end, without having timing problems and with nice results. That included developing tools for judging."
8. ""For the first time a list of monuments was created. The list did not exist prior to the competition. Now - a list exists in Wikipedia."
9. "We managed to surpass the number of contributions from the last years."
10. "I am proudest of the fact that so many involved this year were also involved last year and the year before that. It seems that WLM can be a lot of work, but is fun for volunteers to do."
11. "Great results thanks to involvement of volunteers. After a great on-wiki work, volunteers helped to spread participation. Two Wiki takes [events] were organized spontaneously by volunteers."
12. "The big award winning ceremony in the oldest building of Vienna, the Hofburg."
13. "The event with the organisation that supports newcomers in Sweden."
14. "My teammates. Participation (users and files uploaded)."
15. "When we achieved 319 contributors from our original 100 targeted participants."
16. "I'm happy we got through it all. We started very late, so it's impressive that we could get as much done as we did in such short time."
17. "Going beyond the internal target of 100 unique uploaders and gathering photos from the far flung areas of the country."
18. "The fact that even though most monuments are photographed (70%), we still got the same quality of pictures overall. We went from 13,000 to 7,000 but that was mainly/only a decrease in the easy-to-photograph city houses."
19. "Our pilot for municipal monuments in the city of Gouda, and the passionate involvement of the local volunteers there."
20. "Managing to complete the monuments lists/tables on time."
21. "Our monuments list. since every single monuments available in Wiki Loves Monuments Italia had to be authorized by the owner (being a public institution [government, municipalities, etc], an association, etc.)."
22. "Agreement with Cultural Heritage Ministry."
23. "That we worked very nicely with the local organisers of the heritage day in Gouda (Open Monumentendag)."
24. "The quality of the selected pictures and the efficiency of the selection process."