[Wiki Loves Monuments] 'evaluation'

Mon May 4 16:51:19 UTC 2015

Hello Lodewijk & all,

Yes we disagree on that, but that is fine.
My personal goal of organising Wiki Loves Monuments is to get the cultural
heritage monuments on Wikipedia with photo, and that is the actual thing
that happens for sure with Wiki Loves Monuments. If other people want to
set other goals, I am fine with that.

But, I have analysed for myself what is to me a realistic goal, and I do
only come out on having more cultural heritage monuments on Wikipedia with
photos. As side effect it is fine to have more people on board, but not as
main goal. Let me explain why.

For me personally Wikimedia/Wikipedia is a relative nice environment as I
well in easily learning myself new things and to pick up new stuff. For
people who have the capability to explore the Wikimedia environment
themselves, it works fine. For those people it is easy to continue after a
contest with taking pictures and writing articles, because they have the
capability to find those other things to do. But I think most people who
have that as strong personal characteristic have already tried this and are
still active or found it not interesting enough. The software and
environment is excellent for those people to work with, for early adopters
and pioneers. But those kind of people are almost sold out now. But still
the focus is still pointed towards this kind of people.

Over the past 5 years I have helped many people with editing Wikipedia and
with uploading pictures to Commons, and I have spoke with a lot of people
why they stopped editing Wikipedia. Almost none of those people have the
capacity of exploring the environment on their own. Besides the (hostile)
mentality and atmosphere on Wikipedia, the environment of
Wikipedia/Wikimedia does not full-fill basic needs those people have. There
is not a really friendly environment, there is no productive environment
that gives sufficient stimulation, and it is not a really social
environment the large majority needs. With the VisualEditor there is an
easy way to edit Wikipedia for people who are not comfortably with
wikisyntax, but it still lacks a social environment in what those people
are comfortable.

As a figure of speech: The early adopters like the assignment to build a
house in the middle of the desert, the large majority wants that house
already been built and wants to do the decoration only or wants a much more
comfortable living.

There is after a contest like Wiki Loves Monuments no environment at all
that fits to handle all the participants and give guidance so that they can
continue to be active. Those users that participated in a contest fall in a
black hole afterwards. This is with all the contests volunteers from
Wikimedia organised. But not just with contests, this is also the core
problem why edit-a-thons and workshops in editing Wikipedia gives so little
result in editor retention: it is going fine during the edit-a-thon and the
workshop when they have a personal coach next to them to ask questions. But
after the edit-a-thon or workshop, those users are on their own. Wikipedia
is aiming on creating content, with all kinds of pages that try to support
that. What Wikipedia misses is a social environment that fits with these
people and gives them stimulation.

With past edit-a-thons I noticed also another strong need with the
participants. After the editing they all are interested to continue doing
this together as group. Then you can say that they can use a project page
on Wikipedia, but that does not work for them at all. It appears way too
primitive for them.

WMF is trying to push and pull on editor retention, but that is pulling a
dead horse as long as the environment is not adapted to those the people.

And please understand me well: I consider it as the most important to get
more people on board, but with the current environment it seems to me to be
unrealistic to have a big influence on this.

And yes, I think it is great all the organising teams have done so much
work. All the organisers have achieved something really great. <- This is
actually something I miss as well in this "evaluation".

Romaine

2015-05-02 14:02 GMT+02:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org>:

> I think this is a clear demonstration that WLM is a diverse project :) You
> identify that having a picture for each monument is the main goal, but as
> you know I disagree with that: for me the competition is and will always be
> a tool to get more people on board, to get people aware of the fact they
> can contribute, and help them over the threshold. For many local
> competitions, it is more important however to use WLM as a community
> building tool. I have seen great outcomes in this field in the Middle East,
> where communities work together in real life for one of their first main
> projects, and after that continue to organize other activities as well.
>
> Best,
> Lodewijk
>
> On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 1:54 PM, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The focus of the evaluation is very much biased.
>>
>> The focus is too much on money, it gives me a horrible feeling, the
>> community/participants are not a factory plant in what every employee needs
>> to work a minimum number of hours. The goal of Wiki Loves Monuments is to
>> get all monuments with a good picture on Wikipedia, not just of the most
>> popular or easy monuments. The first time a contest as such is organised
>> the low hanging fruits are done first, but they forget to mention that
>> getting the low hanging fruits is not the core goal of Wiki Loves
>> Monuments. The goal of Wiki Loves Monuments is to get a photo of every
>> monument. The more monuments get a picture, it becomes much harder to ge a
>> picture of the other monuments. It are too much easy thoughts without
>> thinking it through. It is failing in describing the actual situation and
>> misses totally what Wiki Loves Monuments is about.
>>
>> WMF has set some objectives for itself, and now the evaluate those
>> objectives/goals, even while Wiki Loves Monuments has a different focus.
>>
>> To me the evaluation is a signal that WMF is too far away from the actual
>> community.
>>
>> Romaine
>>
>>
>> 2015-05-02 13:26 GMT+02:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org>:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> it seems that the WMF evaluation department has once again put together
>>> an evaluation of Wiki Loves Monuments. Out of curiosity, were any of the
>>> organizers involved in this? A quick glance suggests some factual errors,
>>> and again a big focus on assuming WLM is a consistent project, that is
>>> similar in each country (while in reality it is a diverse collection of
>>> projects, tailored to the needs of each country, by its community) and with
>>> a focus towards number crunching.
>>>
>>> Statements that begin with 'the average Wiki Loves Monuments
>>> implementation/contest' make my eyes bleed... Did anyone make a more
>>> thorough analysis of the report?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Lodewijk
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list
>>> WikiLovesMonuments at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments
>>> http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list
>> WikiLovesMonuments at lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments
>> http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list
> WikiLovesMonuments at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments
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>
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