[Wiki Loves Monuments] Long Term - a bit different

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On Sun, 4 Nov 2012 14:38:29 -0500, Peter Ekman wrote:
> I'm pretty encouraged by the several responses to my "different"
> proposal, in particular Basvb and Lodewijk (below)
> My proposal in brief - move toward a platform/permanent organization
> that supports multiple contests on multiple topics at different times
> of year, with less stress on bigness and more on retaining
> contributors.
>
> ...
>
> We supply the experience and expertise. Tools and basic standards.
> They supply enthusiasm, manpower.
>
> More later.
>
> Pete
> User:Smallbones
>

Actually, to me there is no contradiction between proposals, of, say, 
Peter and Lowewijk (to take two extremes).

It looks like there is a contradiction if we think about the top-down 
approach. Then, of course, we are a small group of individuals, with 
pretty diverse interests, and if we try to accomplish a broad variety of 
goals like trying to organize at the same time WLM and also a photo 
contest on rivers and may be an article contest on ballet and also to 
provide at least one photo of every village on the Earth - we will 
certainly fail.

But I was thinking more about a bottom-up approach. We are good, let 
define this as building up a mechanism on characterizing cultural 
heritage. We have some instruments for it. We have more and more people 
who are interested in the same issues and learn that we have an 
organization - and they come and get assistance. Take Indian cultural 
heritage - what did we have a year ago and what we have now? (And, yes, 
I am also populating the lists, and the lists on English Wikipedia are 
still waiting for about 5000 photographs to be placed). And I think we 
should have more than just an organizing committee. (Note that I do not 
propose a year-round submission of photographs for the contest - I think 
the contest is doing fine). Indeed, Andorra has completed all of their 
monuments last year, and the Netherlands has a chance to complete them 
next year - at least if we do not include the provincial monuments. But 
then, for instance, are we interested in translating Dutch lists into 
English and placing them into English Wikipedia? Are we interested in 
translating Indian lists into Dutch? Are we interested in having more 
articles? I think there is certainly room for organized activity, and, 
indeed, cleanup is a part of it. As I mentioned earlier (answering 
Lodewijk) I would be interested in setting such portal.

But now, back to the bottom-up scheme: If we have a working portal like 
this, interacting with wikiprojects in different languages, and if there 
are similar portals specializing on different topics - these portals 
inevitably would have to talk to each other, and interact in some way, 
eventually building the Meta-community. There is an interesting thread 
on Meta: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_comment/Global_bans#Wikimedia_community 
where we discuss why despite the fact that important decision should be 
taken on meta it is impossible to take any decision, almost all votes 
end in no consensus. An Jc37, who started the thread, explains that 
actually there is no coherent meta community. And actually having this 
bottom-up system of meta-projects would be a way of building up such 
community - finally, after 12 years of our existence.

Cheers
Yaroslav