Commons talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in the United States/Archive

Lists

If there are any lists you will be using (I do not mean just NRHP, but the aggregate lists of all monuments per county/town/etc) it would be helpful to give a reference to them, so that people could start taking pictures. I will probably be in March, in particular, driving in CA, NV, AZ and NM, and make take some pictures if I know what is needed. I know about NRHP lists.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:11, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Ditto, though I will be in the Pacific Northwest. Are WikiProject for states and WikiProject United States in the loop about this project? --Another Believer (talk) 16:17, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I know that it was seriously discussed in the NRHP WikiProject, but I do not know about these two.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:23, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Will the goal be to upload as many pictures of NRHP sites as possible? Non-photographed NRHP sites? I am constantly uploading images of buildings, parks, etc., including NRHP sites--shall I hold off until September? :p --Another Believer (talk) 17:00, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

WLM won't be focusing on anything but NHRP at this time. It's too complicated and too much for us to handle in a timely manner - that is, the data sets for every single state. We also want to encourage new user retention, and having too many options might be overwhelming when there are over 1 million places on the NHRP listings as it is! And yes, do hold out until september if you have NHRP images! :) SarahStierch (talk) 03:34, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Just an indication of why it wouldn't work to do almost anything other than NRHP sites this year. There are about 85,000 NRHP sites (including historic districts) and a few more are added almost every week. The US NRHP has a pretty good database that they sorta make available on line - but you need to be almost a professional programmer to use it. WP:NRHP has historically done a great job in downloading the database, ordering it and keeping it up to date. User:Multichill came in last Fall and organized a complete modernization and cleansing, which is pretty much complete. State historical lists are completely different - some just mirror the NRHP sites in their states, others are available only on paper! and you have to pay a state fee to take the once a year one day training course in New Jersey just to get reasonable access to the paper documents! Others are put into various categories that don't make it clear what's officially recognized and what's not. There can be county or city lists on top of, or vaguely incorporated into, the state lists. And then there are private organizations or historical societies.

Getting away from architectural sites, a List of Public Art - more like what most Americans consider "Monuments" - exists at the Smithsonian. They probably have many more sites than NRHP, but they don't have coordinates, and some of the adresses are missing or out of date or just unclear. If we want to include even part of these for 2013, we should be working on the database NOW. Then there are state historical markers - all the same problems as above - sometimes with different state agencies - and often there isn't anything at the site (the marker says "This is where something happened, but it ain't here no more") and taking pictures of the markers themselves has copyright problems.

So let's see if we can do a good job on NRHP sites this year, and start looking for good databases for other types of sites soon for 2013. Smallbones (talk) 22:33, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Placing images into articles

"participants are encouraged to place the images in articles". This requires more careful wording, since the easiest way to place images in articles is to create galleries, and this is discouraged according to en:WP:IG. I do not have immediate ideas though how to formulate this better.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

How about "participants are encouraged to add images to articles as appropriate, particularly to infoboxes if missing" or something along those lines? --Another Believer (talk) 16:49, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

That was indeed my idea. May be "Participants are encouraged to add images to articles as appropriate. The most valued are images in the articles previously without illustrations""? --Ymblanter (talk) 16:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Be bold and change at will :) I was working in a frenzy during GLAMcamp DC and I'm sure I made a few funny changes to this page. Also, keep in mind it still is undergoing major work. SarahStierch (talk) 03:32, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll be bold in a bit. But first, I'd like to correct a common misconception - Wikipedia doesn't actually discourage galleries - we just give (tight) guidelines on when they are appropriate to use. They can be the best thing to use at times. Maybe it's just a matter of interpretation, but ...

Also, I've just discovered galleries on Commons, see The Flower Book by Edward Burne-Jones. These are appropriate for photos, actually very easy to use once you know they are there, and should probably be encouraged. You might ask why they are needed when there are Category pages with almost the same name. Commons Galleries let you select, order, annotate, link and in general make things look nice, even when they are very simple. Smallbones (talk) 21:15, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

There was nothing much to be bold about - I extended it to "Each image should include the NHRP registry number, and participants are encouraged to add images as appropriate to NRHP County Lists, an article on the individual site, or perhaps in a gallery on Commons. The most valued are images in the articles previously without illustrations."

Then an explanation of how to find the county lists - which might need to be moved somewhere else. I'll probably do a Commons gallery to link to as an example. Smallbones (talk) 21:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Time to start moving!

Hello,

How many people are watching this page? I think it's time to get started and we'll probably have to make some real decisions soon. In the best Wiki traditions this willl involve some discussions, disagreements, wrangling, etc.

• The first decision might be what to do with the web page http://wikilovesmonuments.us/
• US-specific rules?
• Prizes?
• Sub-contests?
• Selecting judges?

I'm sure there are lots of things I've forgotten, please add to the list above.

Or just check in to let us know you're interested.

Thanks,

Smallbones (talk) 19:42, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry I've been a bit busy. Yes, we need help with wikilovesmonuments.us. I can mainly help with the technical stuff and not quite sure about the other aspects. We're doing the next [[1]]" meeting in June on IRC (if you're into that or can join via webchat [2]) and maybe we should get folks interested together sooner via chat or conference call or something? Thoughts? Aude (talk) 23:11, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

July 27 organizer conference call

• Attending: Smallbones, Aude, Matthew, Pharos

Agenda

Sponsors/Partners

• Goal is to reach out to as many potential partners as possible to get prizes for national competition and for local events.
• In addition to large camera companies, the team agreed to reach out to large camera retail shops and others.

Action items

• Smallbones to outreach to U.S. marketing departments of Nikon, Canon, etc.
  • Autogyro offered by email to help draft sponsor letters.
• Matthew to send Smallbones sponsor template [DONE]
• Matthew Make spreadsheet for sponsor outreach to share with team (contact Matthew or mroth{@}wikimedia.org to get access) [DONE]
  • Canon, Nikon, Olympus, B&H, Adorama, Zazzle, SmugMug, Calumet
• Matthew to speak with James WMF about possible shop.wikimedia.org support.
• Aude to reach out to WMDE to

Jury

• The team has developed a spreadsheet with contacts for a U.S. jury. Outreach to prospective jurors has begun. All hands on deck. For access to the spreadsheet and to participate in outreach, contact any of the above users.
• In order to manage the large number of photos, organizers will develop community voting mechanism modeled on Commons POTY voting. Goal is to have community select top 500 photos to pass on to jury for final voting.
• Resolved to implement process for WLM participants and any Commons user to nominate photos (category, Upload Wizard feature).

Action items

• Aude, Smallbones, Kaldari to coordinate development community voting mechanism.
• Matthew to reach speak with Multichill see if he can incorporate feature into Upload Wizard for self nomination of photos.
• Aude, Smallbones, Pharos to reach out to prolific Commons contributors to discuss formation of team to help steward the voting process and to help coordinate proces. WP:NRHP and Commons FP and POTY folks will be approached.
• Aude, Smallbones to consider process to try to be sure every state has nominations, working with WP:NRHP and others.

Events

• Pharos has developed a Wiki Takes America page to coordinate events around the country.
• Organizers agreed best approach for September is to organize Wiki takes events and photo walks in local and regional capacities. In October, option to organize editathons with WLM participants to get them editing current articles and writing new articles that correspond with the newly uploaded photos. Good opportunity to bring in new Wikipedians and hopefully keep them active.

Action items

• Pharos will put up Central Notice announcing WLM and Wiki Loves Libraries starting in August.
• Smallbones will reach out to the NPS and National Register of Historic Places folks to see if they will coordinate with us. Scanathon? Release photos? Contribute reports?
• Smallbones will coordinate with WP:NRHP to see what kind of capacity they have to help organize events throughout U.S.
• Smallbones will contact local Wikipedians (from project page) about getting local events going.

Miscellaneous

• Lists - we agreed that where state and local lists exist, we should consider those photos eligible for the competition
  • SarahStierch is adding California Historic Register lists to EnWP
  • Smallbones will coordinate with WP:NRHP to see what other state and local lists exist
  • Pharos will coordinate New York State and NYC lists
• Matthew will reach out to Flickr groups to encourage participation among active photo groups.

Agenda for IRC meeting 15 August

1. Lists - Image files, deprecation, etc.
2. Website - are we confident we can withstand hundreds of thousands or millions of visitors once Central Notice goes live on EnWP?
3. Website - let's re-write some of the site to be simpler (I want to add a short bullet list on top of the Participate page that defines the whole thing in a "For Dummies" simple way. 1- look up the list, 2 - click on the upload link, 3 - follow the instructions on Commons uploader, etc.) Let's include an upload link on every page (Kaldari, can you add the image you created for the lists?
4. Website - can someone add Piwik to track analytics? There are instructions on a recent thread on WLM list
5. Website - what else am I missing?
6. Prizes - status update
7. Jury - status update on bios
8. Events - question about Heather Moran scavenger hunt idea - too far off topic?
9. Events - anything else we should be thinking about adding?
10. I know I'm being a pain about the voting/screening tool. Can somebody put me out of my misery by just saying "I guarantee that I'll have a working version of a tool by Sept. 1, that will be capable of taking broad community input into a reasonable voting/screening system that will be capable of handling 100,000 photos and outputting the 500 best."
11. Is WMDC submitting another grant for WLM? I was forwarded a draft grant on wikimediadc.org and thought it looked pretty good. There are a number of scenarios I can see where it would be very helpful to have a few thousand dollars: for prizes, if we don't have sponsors lined up for bandwidth bills, if we need to seriously upgrade wikilovesmonuments.us for event support, printing palmcards (to give to curious onlookers), etc.
12. Partners?

Uploading imags

I see that for sites without images on NRHP county lists, there will be a button to click on, directing participants to upload forms. With this form, the NRHP registration number and coordinates will be automatically entered on the upload form. I am assuming this will also add images to a category along the lines of "Category:Images from Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in the United States" (or sets of categories/galleries indicating participation in the competition). How do we add NRHP numbers and include them in these competition-specific categories/galleries for sites that DO have already have images on the NRHP county lists? Must they simply be added manually? --Another Believer (talk) 23:49, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

See discussion here. --Another Believer (talk) 01:53, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

State categories?

Would it be helpful to include subcategories for each U.S. state within Category:Images from Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in the United States? If so, I'd be happy to organize. --Another Believer (talk) 15:15, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Agenda for 23 August IRC meeting at #wikimedia-us

1. Prizes - Nikon, etc. have sent their regrets. DC Chapter funds?
2. Screening/voting mechanism progress.
3. NRHP tables - 90% sure that the controversy is gone permanently. What about an RfC on the matter?
4. NRHP table tweak - Buttons and icons. Kaldari to update?
5. Press - Sending out our version of the WLM press release. Deciding our press contact, social media, targeted outreach, etc.
6. page on Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012_in_the_United_States/Get_Started and 2 links from the http://www.wikilovesmonuments.us site.
7. page on Commons - Heather's design sketch: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Heatherawalls/sandbox
8. Website - blogging function. Encourage contributions
9. Website - clickable map page
10. Website - design. Let's prominently feature photos and buttons for uploading photos/finding lists.
11. Collateral - examples of palm cards, etc. - sent by email from Almonroth
12. Events - Pharos to get contacts of event organizers should press want to attend
13. Central notice banner - plan to switch to Commons page if traffic overwhelms us.

• Comment (I did not post above agenda): Please see section above "Uploading images" re: upload button for sites in which image already exists in NRHP table. Perhaps this will become obvious, but I just wanted to raise the question ahead of time. Thanks, --Another Believer (talk) 22:47, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Responding to myself to direct to this discussion at en. --Another Believer (talk) 01:54, 24 August 2012 (UTC)