[Wiki Loves Monuments] Increasing participation in WLM

[vacio at riseup.net]

Hi, I want to share a little bit about our experience.

We organized a number of photowalks during September 2013 (usually in the
weekends). I think the good thing about this photowalks was:

* Involved local people, which means the photowalks helped to reach 
geographic locations where there were no Wikimedians (currently the
overwhelming majority of active Wikipedia editors in Armenia are from the
capital).

* Locals can more easily find and identify monuments.

* We found that many people have no writing skills/interests, but are
willing to contribute to Wikipedia. They learnt that they can do so by
making photographs

* After the upload workshops. For 80% of the participants, this was the
first time they contributed to a Wikimedia project.

After the contest, we found that 14% of this participants continued to
edit Wikipedia.

We also found that it would be a good idea to:

* Organize more than 1 workshop in a location, at least 2 (in fact, any
Wikimedia program we have done until now in Armenia, has proved, that it
is much more effective if you meet the same group of people at least
twice.)

* Organize a workshop on basic photography skills. This will help to avoid
the flow of large number of low quality images.


Cheers,
Vacio



> Hi All,
>
> I recently joined the Wikimedia Foundation as Program Officer for the
> Project
> and Event Grants Program
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG>(PEG). One of my main
> duties is to review grant proposals and reports. Many
> PEG grantees participate in WLM and I have noticed a trend in their
> reporting on WLM activities -- there is a decrease in volunteer
> participants year-on-year and a desire to strategize on how to address
> this
> issue.
>
> It would be great to start a discussion around new strategies for engaging
> WLM participants. The proposed session at Wikimania on "What can we learn
> from the WLM participants' survey"
> <https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/What_can_we_learn_from_the_Wiki_Loves_Monuments_participants%27_survey%3F>will
> be a great place to discuss this issue, but please also feel free to share
> ideas on this email thread. If there is a better place to have this
> conversation - perhaps on the WLM 2014 page -- please feel free to move it
> there!
>
> One idea that some grantees have been implementing is to organize *photo
> expeditions* to places that are under-represented. These photo expeditions
> have two benefits -- (1) they allow people to travel to places they may
> not
> normally have the chance to visit due to transportation issues and (2)
> they
> travel to places where monuments have not been photographed. They also
> promote community!
>
> Another interesting strategy is to introduce *photography workshops*.
> Skills training can definitely be appealing to participants and will
> increase the quality of photos on wiki projects. We are encouraging
> grantees who have organized photography workshops to share their
> materials.
>
> Excited to hear your ideas!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Alex
>
> --
> Alex Wang
> Program Officer
> Project & Event Grants
> Wikimedia Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home>
> +1 415-839-6885
> Skype: alexvwang
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