[Wiki Loves Monuments] Why deadlines exist

[Peter Ekman]

Responding to Odder (below)

I was quite surprised any controversy happened on this.
My strict reading of the rules is that, in any case of confusion, the
local contest organizers should decide, since this is a federal style
organization.
The only reason I know of that any controversy could exist is that
people started uploading before the deadline (time marked on their
upload) but it didn't finish uploading until after the deadline, so
the bot didn't mark it WLM.  We probably should have expected this
(but I certainly didn't).

In the case of the US, I certainly didn't expect many uploaders in the
very early morning (6:01 New York time) or the middle of the night (3
AM LA time) but it made sense to go until midnight Hawaii time.  There
were 2 photos which started uploading on time, but got cutoff - and I
didn't see any real reason to exclude them.  Perhaps we could
re-jigger the bot for next year, but it hardly seems to matter for
this rare case.

Probably more important is the case where somebody starts uploading
hundreds of photos just before the deadline (Did this actually happen
somewhere?) To me that suggests something wrong, but not with the bot
or even the rules of the contest. I'm not sure I would know how to fix
that behavior.

As a start, perhaps we can move toward a greater emphasis on quality
over quantity for next year.  This question won't be solved here and
now, so can wait until the results come out before tackling it.  But
that's the best I can suggest about the general case.

All the best,
Pete
User:Smallbones





Message: 2
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 22:46:41 +0200
From: Tomasz W. Koz?owski <odder.wiki at gmail.com>
To: Wiki Loves Monuments Photograph Competition
        <wikilovesmonuments at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Why deadlines exist
Message-ID:
        <CAHr62s=EyPNCfWzDU0Q3b-St0Ndaa-SXP4FtdYq-2JVDTtudXA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Hello there,
it came to my attention today that several users have been reverting
Platonides' Wiki-Bot, contesting it's "decision" about disqualifying
pictures uploaded to Wikimedia Commons after midnight local time.

I am aware of the fact that there have been probably hundreds of files
uploaded in the night of September 30/October 1, and plenty of those
did not make it before midnight. I am also aware that in the
perspective of a month, 2, 5, or even 20 minutes do not make any
difference, but we have all agreed to have this competition running
for exactly a month -- from midnight local time on September 1 until
23:59:59 local time on September 30 (while taking into consideration
the needs of countries with multiple timezones, too.)

There is an English saying that you shouldn't change the rules in the
middle of the game; I think it would apply for changing the rules
/after the end/ of the game, too. What is more, it isn't fair for
people from other countries that put a lot of effort into making it
before the deadline if you decide to accept photos uploaded in October
in your country, for whatever reason.

Having said so, I would urge every local team to give this some
consideration, and try to explain to your participants' why pictures
uploaded after midnight do not participate in the competition.

Thanks in advance,
--
Tomasz W. Koz?owski
a.k.a. [[user:odder]]



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