Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki Loves Love/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki Loves Love.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Yes we are satisfied with how the project went. This project was organized on Commons and Wikipedia simultaneously.

Wiki loves Love 2019 on Wikimedia Commons

Wiki Loves Love 2019/Project Page

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
100 participants	1500 + participants from all over the world	high participation within the movement
1500 photos uploaded to commons	7121 images	high participation within the movement
No articles	1000 articles written in 25+ languages	A parallel writing contest for Wiki Loves Love was organized from 10th February to 31st March 2019 in 20 languages.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

The theme of this project was to document cultural heritage of different regions around the globe with colorful festivals, ceremonies and celebrations of love. The result of this project was over 6100 images from over 100 countries covering some of the rare dance forms, rituals and festivals that are missing from Wikimedia commons, thus, bridging an important gap. Over 2000 participants, including, photographers and Wikimedia members contributed in the contest. This theme represented a cultural gap that has not been covered in Wikimedia Commons project. This was a successful pilot where we were able to document interesting festivals and indegenous knowledge that is prominent in certain regions of the world. The surprising response from Commons contest was just as productive as the Wikipedia project that Nattes A Chat from Le Sans Pages project organized simultaneously on Wikipedia in 20 languages in which we gained got over 1000 articles bringing cultural and gender gap. We also loved the fact that there was diversity in the international team and jury from different affiliates, regions and genders. WMBE, WMFR, WMDE, CIS-A2K were the partners who sponsored t-shirts, merchandize and postcards for the wiki loves love project. We presented the project at the poster session in Wikimania Stockholms. We had separate teams that worked for filter task and categorization for the images. All the images are categorized properly on the basis of subject topic and the country it is based in by our international team.

What did not work so well?

The theme and the front page should have less complicated interface. It confused many participants, especially, many participants who are non-wikimedians need simpler interface. We got this feedback from the postcard winners.

What would you do differently next time?

Next Time, we will plan the wikipedia project for helping the participating wikis evaluate using fountain tool. We will also be approaching partners that are working in the heritage area to collaborate with us for this project. We were approached by couple museums this year but due to lack of time and preparations, solid collaborations were not formed. For Commons project, we already did categorization of the contest images. We need to think about designing campaign around the article illustration from the contest images. We tried the same as a pilot in the simultaneous Wikipedia contest. We need to design a new campaign after the project is over that aims at integration of media files on a bigger scale. Additionally. Research using Wikidata, on the gaps present around cultural heritage needs to be done. We are looking forward to doing something different than the other wiki loves contest with this approach.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

The funds were spent as seen in the File inserted here. Unfortunately, the winner of the first prize didn't answer and didn't give his contact information. Thus we spent the money on a video editing and animation software for the years to come to make promotional videos and explanation videos. We also had to pay people for designing promotional material and a web designer as no one in the team was able to do those tasks in the required time frame or the skills weren't available.

wiki loves love finances

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds? There are no funds left and we will probably pay for the transport of the Wiki Loves Love materials from India to Stockholm out of pocket.

None

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Feedback and comments from International Team and postcard winners

I've seen a lot of enthusiasm among the organization team and for being the first edition I believe that the participation all over the world has been very productive
While uploading photos I used images not only from ceremonies but photos which somehow show wiki love during different wiki events with Wiki images and emojis. Thank you for this project. Let it be continuous.
More homework around gaps in existing multimedia content is required. Also, there should be more work around integrating images with other projects.
It would be great if people actually care to share the pictures. Thank you for the opportunity!

Additional Comments from postcard winners

The Upload page looks clumsy and confusion, it would be great if it has a neat format.
Too much english for a frenchman.
Its really good. But I would request you guys to accept photos of not just cultural things but also self made ones too. 👍
Please send whole Message for winners on mails instead of wikimail or talk page.
I propose to emphasize on more detail for the categories of photos, because many participants did not get what they needed specifically for the competition. Аnyway thank you very much it was very interesting.
Better user interface would be an excellent update. Thank you.
Everything is fine, but the updates were not sent to me on my mail instead only on wiki account, which I may not use that frequently... so I would suggest to take care of that thing. Thank You.

Winning Images of 2019

The photograph showcases an authentic Russian wedding ceremony.
His image depicts the famous Kinabayo Festival celebrations of Philippines.
His image depicts a Belarussy style wedding.
Couple at a wedding in Nashik,India
Bridegroom placing Sindoor on bride's forehead, as part of a Hindu wedding in India
Couple at a pre-wedding ceremony in Thailand
Wedding ceremony in Punjab, India
Couple at a wedding ceremony in Indonesia
Student pays Namaste to a Yogamaster in India
Couple watching fireworks as a part of Chinese New Year celebrations
Theatre of spirit rituals of Maya Indians