Grants talk:PEG/WM UA/Wiki Loves Monuments 2015

A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who support this request

1. --DerekvG (talk) 14:29, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
2. --Ilario (talk) 19:48, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Comments from the organising team

We are really sorry for submitting the grant proposal that late, but we had a huge challenge with Crimea (and it is stated in the grant proposal itself). We initally intended to submit it around 17 August (you can see this from the page history), but instead we had to dedicate all our efforts to solving the conflict about Crimea (which included calls from the community to boycott Wiki Loves Monuments, to ban any collaboration with Wikimedia RU and Wikimedia Foundation and so on - for more details see our Village Pump. Thus we spent a lot of our WLM time on the problem of Crimea this year (for example, we ran a survey among our participants if they are going to take part and our decision to carry out the project was based on that), and it is only now that we are finally ready to proceed with this grant. Ukraine is 2nd currently with more than 32,000 of images already uploaded, we haven't changed the Measures of success, and they are just what we have expected to get as the result. But we have adjusted the proposal a bit (we wanted to have more outreach events organised before and during the contest, now we are planning to have them organised after the contest, to prepare for a new one, some parts of the country are not well pictured and we want to concentrate on them, though we cannot do anything much about Crimea, some parts of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts due to the war, of course) --アンタナナ 14:46, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

--DerekvG (talk) 13:44, 2 October 2015 (UTC) I'll support your request, but I would like you to think for next edition about follow-up events that retain editors, that stimulates contributors to return and contribute more, and that improves the content and contributions in different language sections.

Hi DerekvG and thank you for your comment. We actually do intend to organise follow-up events this year which are labelled as "outreach events" in our proposal. Those are targeting exactly the same goals: stimulate participants to contribute more, improve the content and get more contributors / contributions. The only difference is that we do not have any targets concerning different language sections, as we primarily concentrate on Ukrainian Wikipedia / Wikivoyage, but we would be glad if anyone contributes in a language of a national minority (e.g. Crimean Tatar or Hungarian) or in a foreign language — NickK (talk) 14:25, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello NickK, thnaks for your reply, however I was not thinking along those lines. You will produce mostly imagery the problem with a lot of the WLM photographs is that they are insufficiently catagorised and not correctly labelled/described moreover they often lack GIS data. What I'm suggesting is that you organise followup events such as an edithaton to correct that missing inof on the pictures, and to link the pictures to relevant articles or to start an article about the subject of the pictures. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by DerekvG (talk) --DerekvG (talk) 19:33, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

DerekvG, thanks for your comment but that's also something we want to organise! First of all, info on the pictures is not a big issue for us: we have configured our UploadWizard so that images automatically get description, categories and coordinates if they are uploaded from the list (see for example File:Pechera Wooden Church RB.jpg, a random picture by a newbie that automatically got everything needed). The only problem is that coordinates and links to Commons should be added to monument lists, but here we are back to Wikipedia. Thus the main goal of the post-contest period is improving content about monuments on Wikipedia, and we explicitly mention writing articles about monuments and integrating images into article in our grant proposal (WLM thematic month) as one of the axes we want to work on — NickK (talk) 22:05, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Very good, now we are thinking along the same lines --DerekvG (talk) 19:33, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Big Thank you

I would say a big thank you to WM UA to have given the availability of the Jury tool developed for WLE also for WLM. This is a good example of solidarity with other projects and a special help to have a good WLM. Ilario (talk) 15:41, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Community comments

Tony1

Hi, could you please adjust your start-date, which was nearly a month ago? We'd like to get a good idea of what we're paying for, when—and not feel you've already been spending money pending approval. Thanks; I'll be back when we know the timings. Tony (talk) 13:30, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello. We haven't paid anything yet, everything up till now was done by us as volunteers. We still believe that the start day is to be September 1st (start of the contest) --アンタナナ 13:39, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

OK—it would still be better to adjust the start-date. I mildly support this application.

"This thematic month will involve both writing articles about monuments and integrating images into articles."—I like this very much (I'd like it to be a standard expectation of funded photographic competitions). How is it proceeding? Also, you might think of listing areas that are in particular need of photos and related articles, for this or next year. Next time, please consider a prize for the best contribution to related articles, and/or to embedding competition photos into articles. Would be great to encourage an integrated approach.

Awful to hear about the issues with Crimea. Do be careful on field work! Please keep the WMF informed and ask for advice if you're faced with difficult decisions or need to work through strategies.

Will you prepare a press release with a small selection of top photos for journalists to choose from?

Any advice to competitors concerning quality of photos, technique? And are these learning patterns useful? Grants:Learning_patterns/Improving_your_building_photography, Grants:Learning_patterns/Photographing_your_local_buildings. (Is it a priority to get them translated into Uk?) Tony (talk) 07:50, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Tony1 and thank you for your comments!

Concerning the start date, the effective date of start of our activities was on 1 September, the effective date when we need funding is mid-October for outreach events. I don't think it's a big deal, it is probably up to WMF to decide which date is more meaningful.

Speaking of thematic month, it has not started yet as it is scheduled for 15 October. In the meantime you can read our last year report as we also organised a contest last year. We also plan prizes for the best / most active participants of the thematic month, although they will be a bit smaller (we put them as "souvenirs", line 4.1). The reason for this is that we already had two contests on monuments with prizes this year: Wikipedia Loves Monuments in spring and Monuments of Ukraine: Crimea in summer, thus we are not sure that a third large-scale contest with expensive prizes is a good investment of time and money.

We do indeed encourage picturing areas in need of photos (monuments that did not have photos on Commons before count double), and we have will make a list of articles for creation (you can check the one from last year)

Speaking of Crimea, we did ask WMF but WMF said they have no position and could not offer anything else than consulting Ukrainian and Russian communities. The problem is that when we consulted Ukrainian community they proposed to boycott cooperation with WMF instead which did not help solving the problem at all.

We always send press releases with photos and they get regularly published, last year they were notably published by BBC Ukraine and Ukrainska Pravda (a leading news website in Ukrainian)

We do have a few pieces of advice for photographers, for example, we have a brief page on quality back since 2012 (uk:Вікіпедія:Вікі любить пам'ятки/Якість фотографій) and we had a post with advice for photographers this year. We will consider translating these patterns into Ukrainian (we have quite a lot of volunteer translators) but it will not be a high-priority task.

Thanks! — NickK (talk) 08:56, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Noted. Thanks, Nick. Tony (talk) 09:00, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Antanana and NickK, thank you for preparing such a detailed funding request. The delays are completely understandable given the Crimea challenge. Your community has had incredible results from past Wiki Loves contests, and we are pleased to see the ways you have shared tools and success strategies with the movement. The only question we have is about the outreach events: will those be conducted after the contest is over, and if so, do you have goals or measures of success associated with the outreach events? We should be able to move forward with funding quickly, however, first we will need receipts from WLM 2014 so that we can accept the report. The documents we received appear to be a list of expenses from your expense tracker, but not actual receipts. We look forward to additional details about your outreach plan, and are happy to answer any questions. Cheers --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Kacie and thank you for your feedback.

Our outreach events are already included in our measures of success, in particular those ones:

• 5000 images used across Wikimedia projects (we will invite users to add images to articles)
• 200 Wikipedia/Wikivoyage articles to be created/improved (we will invite users to create and improve articles about monuments)
• 8 cities and towns with Wiki Loves Monuments outreach events (number of events organised)

In addition, they will be reflected in Global Metrics (number of users, number of images used, number of articles created, number of bytes added)

Concerning receipts, we will check and send documents that are lacking — NickK (talk) 22:09, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi NickK, We are pleased to fund this proposal, however, we will need to resolve the issue with receipts before we can issue a grant agreement.--KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:15, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Extension request (for reporting)

Hello Alex. We would like to request extension to the grant report deadline until 4 March 2016. We have completed the main activities, but we need a bit more time to prepare the report itself. Thank you very much for your understanding --Ilya (talk) 08:02, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ilya. Thank you for the update. This is fine. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 1 March 2016 (UTC)