[Wiki Loves Monuments] Why deadlines exist

[Platonides]

On 05/10/12 09:27, Lodewijk wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> a few remarks from this discussion:
> * The suggestions by Polimerek sound really good - although I'm not sure
> if it is viable to set up such an extra banner system (it's quite a lot
> of work). 

If we can use "magic banners" next year, it would be simple.


> * There will '''always''' be people just too late... So lets not get
> discouraged by that. 
> * Pete: yes, the local jury should decide on the interpretation and
> admission. However, a) this doesn't mean we agree with it/like it, and
> b) reverting a bot is not the way to implement it. If you have valid
> exceptions (might very well be good reasons for), you should contact
> Platonides directly. But please be careful with this. 

To be fair, it was me who contacted Peter after being asked by one of
his participants.
Other people have been reverting the bot loudly, crying it should be a
"democratically 'human' decision" (sic) and that the bot should ignore
uploads two-three hours after the deadline (!!).


Timezones are a novel concept for some people, when they see an upload
time [in UTC] before midnight, they assume the bot was wrong.
It is also confusing how the Upload Wizard places the current date in
local time and without timezone in the date field. I have opened a bug.


We should clarify the "deadline rules" next year, and make clear that
there will be a bot with an axe for any image whose upload wasn't
finished before midnight.

And for people considering that deadlines are not needed, I have seen
uploads marked for WLM2011 in March. :)


> and in fact bending the rules is almost asking for conflicts of interest. 

One of the reasons for using a bot, since it will be completely neutral
in its ruling.
You may decide next year if you prefer to state that you will accept
submissions finished until 00:05, but beware that there will be someone
with a file at 00:05:48 begging for an exception...