Grants:IEG/Funding for contest prizes and meetups for local cultural heritage content ingestion

status: idea
project:
Funding for contest prizes and meetups for local cultural heritage content ingestion
idea creator:
project contact:
jane023(_AT_)gmail.com
participants:
summary:
I would like to expand the contest-based idea of "Wiki Loves Monuments", which is mostly about uploading photos on Wikimedia Commons, into a formula that works also in other areas of cultural heritage, and specifically, other projects such as Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Wikivoyage.
If only we had had a contest to digitize content from these Cologne archives, before they collapsed in March 2009...
If only we had had a contest to digitize content from these Cologne archives, before they collapsed in March 2009...
created on: 10:50, 1 February 2013‎

Project idea

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I am a firm believer in the idea of using low-threshold games to entice people to participate in teamwork. I think the success of Wiki Loves monuments is due in large part to the temporary contest-based format (one month of participation by uploading photos linked to unique-ids of cultural heritage in September). Asking people to contribute to Wikipedia is much more difficult than asking them to produce specific information about a unique part of their own local cultural heritage that is easily available to them.

My idea is to create a standard sustainable Wikimedia formula to enable WMF funding to be used for modest prizes and meetup costs (meals & drinks?) for distributed cultural heritage groups who would like to contribute to Wikipedia. I am thinking of examples such as a competition to move a specific set of notable data such as out-of-print books or archive material to wikisource, an editting contest for cultural heritage sites that are also popular visitor attractions, or creation of biography articles of notable architects or artists whose works form an important aspect of local heritage.

Project goals

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Recent programs under the GLAM umbrella show there are numerous cultural heritage institutions who see collaboration with Wikipedia in a positive way. They are often at a loss how to proceed to share their knowledge with Wikipedia, though they may have a significant number of motivated and dedicated volunteers at their disposal. This project seeks to unleash that potential for content ingestion by offering a reusable contest format, in the same way that the Wiki Loves Monuments team has developed a "monuments database".

Just as a new language group desiring their own native-language "Wikipedia" must deliver a list of "10,000 must-have articles" before going into the incubator, a new group knocking on the door of this project will need to come up with a list of "10,000" uniquely numbered objects or articles. In addition, before requesting funding for meetups and contest prizes, they must form an organization team with a jury, timeline of activities, list of partner organizations, communications plan (local site notices or internal Wikimedia calls for action), and Wikipedia volunteer instructions for the corrections, additions, and proper sources for the list(s) of "unique ids". Theoretically, each successful project can itself become a reusable script for a different local group in another location, in the same way that Wiki Loves Monuments has scaled from one country to very many.

Open questions

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  • Can we reuse the WLM monuments database for this, or should we create a new function on Wikidata for the unique ids?

Get involved

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