Wikimedia Conference 2015/Programme/9
9: "Wiki Loves" Photo Contests
How to move forward
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Wiki Loves Photos Contest session
- What was this session about?
By gathering pros and cons of different experiences, participants tried to define conditions for a perfect Wiki Loves Photo Contest.
- What are the next steps to be taken?
No further steps were agreed to be taken.
- Who is the person to reach out to?
Nobody took the official lead for this topic. Reach out to Cornelius, the Program and Engagement Coordinator for the Wikimedia Conference, if you’re interested in the topic and would like to further work on it.
- Photos
- Slides
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- Preparational links
- Wiki Loves Monuments and Other Photo Events evaluation reports by the L&E team
- Discussion about the report on wikimedia-l
Session Documentation
- Original Description
- WLM/WLE organizers from from two chapters (Wikimedia Polska and Wikimedia Ukraine) would share their learnings and best practices about Wiki Loves photo contest. Tomasz (WMPL) would particularly talk about why WMPL switched from Wiki Loves Monuments to Wiki Loves Earth to Wiki Loves Earth. Illia (Wikimedia Ukraine) would share his experience of organizing WLM and WLE in Ukraine.
- Desired Outcome
- Shared experiences and coordinating activities for future contests.
- Audience
- Those interested in organizing the "Wiki Loves" photography contest in their home country
- Session Format
- talk and Q&A; 45 min
- Speaker
- Tomasz Ganisz (WMPL), Illia Korniiko (WMUA)
- Summary of the discussion
The session was split into two parts, the presentation part and the Q&A part. Tomasz and Illia presented the most different “Wiki Loves” photo contests the Wikimedia movement experienced so far, as everyone has different aspects to be considered. Both explained that there were three types of “Wiki Loves” photo contests:
- Wiki Loves Monuments style (mass contest advertised to all readers of Wikipedia with list of objects to take and easy upload wizzard)
- Wiki Loves Africa style: (also mass contest but without list of desired objects but with general scope)
- Europeana/Wiki Loves E-text style (very narrow scope, advertising focused on selected groups of potential editors).
WLM style contests have many participants who upload huge numbers of files, but with relatively low average quality, and very few of them really join Wikimedia projects (almost none). WLAfrica style produces lower number of uploads but also some textual input and has still low but better retention of users. Finally narrow thematic contests have much smaller audience and uploads but, produce much higher average quality content and have higher retention of user.
Still, both explained, there were no easy answer how a perfect photo contests could look like. In the discussion several questions about how to improve the photos’ quality were raised. The idea to encourage the use of Flickr / Flickr users was raised, however participants agreed that this approach might be counterproductive with regards to gaining new contributors for the Wikimedia projects. Another idea was to have a minimum size for the uploaded content, but participants expressed the feeling that people were not happy with that. Furthermore, the idea of having at least a mid-quality photo please more people, than to have no photo. Also, mid-quality pictures allowed photographers with more professional equipment to find the monument easier, another high quality contribution can always be added later.
Regarding technical questions (like the usage of Wikidata for the Wiki Loves Monuments workflow or the usage of bots) there was no further discussions. One of the outcomes of discussion was also that organisers should better maintain contact with participants, e.g. organise workshops for them, meet them, create "helpdesk" or similar.