Competing with the PayWalls? Hell no!!

Competition is about business models and, the business models of the Wikimedia Foundation and publishers are utterly different. At the WMF we do better when people read more. The business model of publishers is that people pay before they read. When people like our service, they share their data, their money enabling us to do more.

Notions of "professional results" for our readers are outside of either business model. Terminology like "professional results" are interesting but to some extend they are a fringe benefit.

When a professional adds 278 ORCiD identifiers to Wikidata, he and all his colleagues benefit professionally because he did put in the effort. It follows that Roderic Page is a member of our community and his professional work benefits us all. These 278 scholars need to have their work known at Wikidata and when Roderic and others want to work on other scientists as well, they may.

There is no point is competing with paywalling publishers. Whether people do need to use a document that is behind paywall it is of no real concern to us. When we point to a free version of a paywalled document we do a better job because more people read. The business model of a publisher is of no further concern to us, our aim is for people to read.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Commons - Picture of the Year

Every year Commons has its Picture of the Year competition. This year's winner shows a butterfly drinking the eye fluid of a tortoise. There is a word for it.. lachryphagy I had never heard of it.

Congratulation to Commons for another successful year :)
Thanks,
     GerardM

Will this be the "Reasonator" logo?

When you use the #Wikidata based search functionality, you have to click on a "R" to trigger the "Reasonator" for the visualisation of the information available for an item. Reason enough to look to look for something better.

The first proposal for a logo was created by CristianCantoro. It looks really smart and it is certainly useful. The only drawback is, that we have a choice of one. Maybe there are other people interested in proposing a logo for the Reasonator. I understand that the winning design will get a Wikidata t-shirt....
Thanks,
       GerardM

Depressed because of a #photo #competition

In many a #Wikipedia there is an article for almost every subject. All these articles need illustrations and  Commons is where these illustrations are stored. Some subjects are hard to illustrate. Subjects like depression or schyzophrenia for instance.

In my home town there was a competition to create something that expresses depression. There were prizes to be won and the jury included a professional photographer. There were many great entries to the competition. Having a professional photographer in the jury however was a mistake.

When you run a competition, there is a point to it. This contest had the intention to bring attention to the subject of depression. This means that the winning picture has to be published. Obviously it should be part of the conditions of entering the competition. It wasn't.

The professional photographer told the winner that the picture was of professional quality and that it is worth money. The result is that the picture is only available on the Intranet of the organisation running the competition.

The picture you see did not win.. It does show the Almere skyline. The weather was a bit depressed as well. Thanks Tamar for sharing your picture that "also ran". For me this picture is much more the winner because it is available.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Plan your #holidays with Wiki loves #Monuments in mind

When you are playing the tourist, it is nice to be on a mission, when you are not only moving about "because that is what you do" but  when your movements have a purpose. Wiki loves Monuments can give you such a purpose.

The Wikimedia chapters of Europe are working together in one big photo competition to document the architectural heritage of Europe. Some countries like Belgium do not take part because there is no Belgium chapter and others like Italy do not take part because their laws assume copyright of Italian monuments.

This Belgium problem can be solved by its Wikimedians.

Italy deserves a quite different response. Just do not go. Ignoring Italy as a travel destination because your pictures are not yours to license is quite appropriate. A solution may be found in cooperation with the regional authorities in Italy; when this allows us to ignore such silly dictates from Rome, you will find it amazing what the Italian country side has to offer.
Thanks,
       GerardM

A plan for a subsequent photo competition

The Dutch #Wikipedia photo competition Wiki Loves Monuments has been a resounding success and, a text is circulating to do it on an even bigger scale next year. I am happy to use it on my blog as a great example that there are many ways to have photo competitions.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Summary of this email 

Sorry for a long text...  We did "Wiki Loves Monuments" in the Netherlands and we would like to do Wiki Loves Monuments again in 2011, but now in Europe. This is possible when many chapters participate. To be clear: this event will only happen on a European level if there is sufficient chapter and community participation to combine efforts. Please feel free to forward this to whomever you find appropriate.

You might have heard before about Wiki Loves Monuments 2010 in the Netherlands. It was a highly successful photo scavenger hunt with 12.500 submissions and over 250 participants. We recently completed a post mortem of this project with a full description and an analysis. There are still many more monuments in the Netherlands which can be photographed and we are considering another run for next year and, we want to give it an European context. Below we will explain how we got where we are, what we have in mind, and what you can become a part of it. 

It all started on the Dutch language Wikipedia with the windmill project. One of its main goals was to have an article with an image for every windmill in the Netherlands. Lists were created of windmills per province and statistics were regularly updated to track progress. This approach worked really well and now all the windmills have an article.

Volunteers together with the Dutch chapter, managed to get a dataset of all 60.000 "Rijksmonumenten" ie buildings/objects with some historical or cultural relevance from the "Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed". This marked the birth of the "Rijksmonumenten" project. The project uses the lessons learned in the windmill project. The data from the RCE was converted into lists by location and put on the Dutch Wikipedia. The community started improving the lists by adding missing information and by adding photo's.

In June 2009 Wikimedia Nederland ran Wiki Loves Art /NL This was a  photo scavenger hunt in more than 40 museums. It was quite successful, 5.400 photos, but it was much more laborious because we needed to keep contacts with all the participating museums and the nearest museum was usually further away from people's homes than the nearest monument. 

For 2010 we were looking for a nice topic for a photo competition. The "Rijksmonumenten" project was running very well so we decided to organize Wiki Loves Monuments to give this project a boost.

So, what could a European WLM look like? Obviously it is very much open for debate but we are trying to incorporate the lessons learned in the Netherlands into a European model. We think it will work best with national Wiki Loves Monuments projects and international cooperation, shared resources and international prizes. The national contests do not have to be identical, but similarity will prove to be practical. We are not sure yet what countries would be most successful, but initially we are considering the EU chapter countries and Switzerland ...

Wiki Loves Monuments would run in the month of September 2011, and participants will submit photos of monuments which are part of a list of monuments. This list includes the addresses and maybe the geo-coordinates of all the identified monuments. In each participating country there will be some prizes available, to be awarded by a jury for that country and the best will be competing for prizes in an European final. 

Most of the local work will be to get a database with the objects and create object lists from that. Dutch volunteers can support you as they have the experience. You will need to communicate to get the community and the public informed. You will need to find a jury and prizes for them to award. We can help with example press releases, best practices, templates and list examples and community motivation. 

So, what to do when you like the idea? First of all check with your collegues (at the board, other members, community) what they think of it. You will need several people to run such a project. The next step is to analyse your local situation: who would be good partners (who keeps the lists of monuments?) for you, how many monuments are there in your country, are they well spread? Roughly how much information/photos is already available and are there community members already active in this field?

We already registered www.wikilovesmonuments.eu and are in touch with CARARE and Europeana who may help us by laying contacts with European Union cultural heritage organizations. This will stress the European context and the impact this may have. The most important partner in each country will be the one that maintains a database with bational monuments, and may release this to you. Such a database/list is crucial for the success of such an event. 

Please inform us when you are interested in joining in such European event. When there is enough enthusiasm, we will create a special (easy to join) mailing list to coordinate efforts and to allow the volunteers to join in the discussions. We  took the liberty of discussing this with some chapters, and are hopeful that it will actually become the first grand chapter cooperation program. You can already join #wikilovesmonuments on freenode irc when you are interested. 

With kind regards,

Maarten Dammers
Lodewijk Gelauf

A photo competition with a twist

We need illustrations for our #Wikipedia articles and it is tough to find high quality pictures of those parts of the world where Wikipedians are rare. Both Albania and Kosovo are not well covered with Wikipedians, our Wikipedias do not cover these areas particularly well either and there is a lack of high quality pictures to illustrate such articles.

Organising a photo competition makes sense but a standard competition has a few drawbacks:

• it is time limited
• it does not necessarily build skills
• judging photos is a serious pain in the posterior

The current photo competition in Kosovo is different; there is no need for judges, the photographers have to make pictures to a high standard and best of all, there is no time limit. The first prize is for the first photographer who has its picture featuring a Kosovar subject as a Commons featured picture. 

The first valued picture will not be featured

Nominating a picture is easy but qualifying is hard. Technical requirements for digital photos are high and jealously enforced. This removes the need for the organisers to judge the pictures themselves. This competition has already generated quite a lot of pictures by several photographers and the quality is improving.

This competition has it all;

• we gain many new pictures about an area we know little about
• the competitors gain valuable skills
• Commons and Wikipedia become better known in Kosovo and Albania

It will be interesting to learn when the competition has ended.

Thanks,

       GerardM

The Dutch November 2010 mini conference

Yesterday was a small Wiki conference in Utrecht. Sadly the day before a building that controls the train traffic into Utrecht burned out and consequently it was announced that there was no train traffic possible. Now, on Sunday I received a mail that the trains are running again.

First prize at the "Wiki loves Monuments" competition

Some forty people made it to the conference and they had a really pleasant event. Part of the event was the announcement of the winner of the "Wiki loves Monuments" photo competition. There were presentations and there was the usual after party.
Thanks,
        GerardM

#Mifos localisation rally / sprint at #translatewiki.net

With Wikipedia we aim to bring knowledge to the people of this world. Often we are criticised because we do not reach the people who do not have the necessary technology. Microfinance helps people to grow economically and this gets many of them telephones...

Mifos supports the administration of the microfinance industry. The microfinance industry make loans available to millions of people. So hey, our wiki movement can make a difference by localising Mifos at translatewiki.net.

The next release of the Mifos software called "Leila E" will have its code and translation freeze on November 23. When you look at the statistics for the localisation for Mifos, it does not even cover the languages it needs to cover, languages like Portuguese, Chinese and Spanish.



 So what will the rally be like. The prize is three signed copies of the book "Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance are Changing the World" by Alex Counts for the people who contribute the most localisations before November 23. When people finish the localisation in a language that will help the microfinance industry, they will get a book anyway. Think languages like Bengali, French, Tagalog, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili, Hindi ... 
Thanks,
     GerardM

NB Some breaking news from Kenya..

RTFI - Read The eFfing Instructions ,, :(

The biggest winner of the #translatewiki.net; the usability of many #Wikipedias and any MediaWiki installation using LocalisationUpdate. Sadly there are people who lose out. They do because the instructions of the rally insist that there is a requirement to proceed to another category of messages only when the previous category has been completed.

The purpose of the rally is to improve the usability and the usability is served best when messages are localised in this order:

• the most often used messages
• MediaWiki core messages
• messages of extensions used by the Wikimedia Foundation
• other MediaWiki extensions

The instructions are there for a reason; they ensure that the money is spend to the best effect and they ensure that participation as a contestant ensures eligibility to the prize.

Disqualifying people is bad business. It is upsetting to do. It is upsetting because we do wish people who do the work to qualify for the prize.

There is only one real winner, that is the language community the localisations were done for. Like all the other localisations they became available in all MediaWiki projects that use LocalisationUpdate.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Do you love Dutch #monuments ?

Wiki Loves Monuments has had a good run. A cool 35GB is available for you to download from a torrent. This torrent is there for those who have an interest in monuments, for the jury to decide what is to receive a prize.

Maybe you want to download all this freely licensed material.. It is nice to know that not everything that is on a torrent is illegal :)
Thanks,
       GerardM

#MediaWiki #localisation rally

At #translatewiki.net we are quite happy to hold rallies that bring some excitement to our community. The format is simple. We have 1000 Euro and it will be divided between those who localised more then 500 MediaWiki messages. We are looking to optimise our result so the "most often used" messages have to be complete before we validate the "core" messages, followed by the messages of extensions used by the Wikimedia projects and then any MediaWiki message.

• To make it something of a competition, the two people with the highest number of newly localised messages share 100 EURO out of the total.
• This is where you find how many messages are valid for you
• This is where you find instruction on how to join the fun

Thanks,
     GerardM

Wiki loves monuments II

September has come and gone and #Commons has already been enriched with over 11.111 images of Dutch National monuments. It is still the 30th of September, there are a few more hours for people to upload their pictures.

Many Dutch Wikipedians have worked hard to ensure that things went smoothly. The pictures that were uploaded to Flickr have been continuously uploaded to Commons. And once the clock strikes midnight in the Netherlands, it will be a big job to decide on the best pictures that will be considered for a prize. It will also be a big undertaking to give these pictures a home in an article.

One big achievement has been reached: this has become a big, relevant collection of contemporary pictures of Dutch monuments with annotations and, they are freely licensed to boot.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Wiki loves monuments

the website

The national monuments of the Netherlands represent the places where history was made, the buildings that represent an era that has gone by. They often define the character of a place an area.

Such monuments are rich in details, they are there to be discovered by the people who are willing to look at them and give them their attention. The Dutch Wikimedia chapter is organising a challenge to discover all the 60,000 monuments with a camera. We are looking for great illustrations that will help us bring these monuments to our Wikipedias.

To make it attractive, there is a competition with prizes to be won. This competition will run in the month of September and on the "Open monumentendag" (Saturday 11 and Sunday 12) many monuments will open their doors to the public.

We hope that the amount of high quality pictures will give us a hard time to decide what will be the winner of the competition. We love our monuments and the pictures that will become illustrations in Wikipedia will be true winners as well.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The proof of the pudding

If ever there is a contest where the biggest prize is won by a community, it is the Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010 competition. Consider what it would take to double the number of regular editors, what it would take to have 60% of them to be female? What it would take to challenge any Wikipedia for the quality of the new articles that were written?

I think the Indonesian chapter has proven itself with a carefully organised and flawlessly executed competition. They have set the standard for involving universities in an effective and also cost effective way. Impressive is the scoring methodology; the criteria were published in advance, each jury member scored independently but at the same time the results could be challenged. This competition proves that projects like this can be run anywhere.

On the foundation-l there is again a lot of talk about getting women involved in our projects. This competition makes the Indonesian Wikipedia shine. Consider; the contest was organised by a woman, it was won by a woman but more importantly 60% of the new editors are women!!

I sincerely hope that the innovative approaches taken with the Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010 competition will find many encores.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The future of #wikipedia? Women !!

The Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010 competition is doing outrageously well; consider:

• the number of regular editors have more then doubled
• over 60% of the top 6 are female
• the quality of the articles is second to none
• universities pit their best against each other and, it is a no holds barred competition

The students of the 10 universities  really have to work hard; they get extra points for editing every day, every sentence has to be supported by an appropriate reference even taking part in the discussions using the talk pages is valued in this competition. Not only will many new quality articles be created, as important a new generation of Wikipedians find their way into our project.

Out of 87 participants only 37 are allowed to continue in the competition. This is based on the quality of their contributions. At this time Kartika Sari Henry is the best of the best. This is certainly a project that breaks new grounds.

For the Public Policy project it will be impossible to make as much of a difference. It is even easy to argue that their project would benefit by reaching out to the Indonesian universities because they and for instance a Russian and a Dutch university are needed to prevent the inevitable bias that will be the result when only American schools take part in this project.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010

A writing contest on the #Indonesian #Wikipedia will introduce selected participants from 10 universities within Jakarta greater area to be trained in writing for Wikipedia and compete for three months.

"Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010" or "Free Your Knowledge 2010" is an ambitious project that aims to bring many new quality articles from what are to be new very active users. This project will pit contestants from 10 Indonesian universities against each other to write articles that provide quality references, a neutral point of view, correct grammar, informative content, and make internet browsing in the Indonesian language a quality experience.

The project is financed by grants from among others the Ford foundation and is seeking additional donations from well wishers.The winner of this contest will visit Wikimania in Gdansk.

The participating universities are:

• Universitas Indonesia
• Universitas Mercubuana
• Universitas Paramadina
• Universitas Al-Azhar
• Universitas Bina Nusantara
• Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Jakarta
• London School of Public Relation
• Universitas Pelita Harapan
• Institut Pertanian Bogor
• Universitas Atma Jaya 

Thanks,
      GerardM

The results of the Kiswhahili #Wikipedia challenge

I received this e-mail from Christine Moon on behalf of the Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge Team. I think it is of interest to all of us and, I want to congratulate and thank the Challenge Team and the contestants for their important and interesting work.

Since we launched the Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge in November 2009, there has been a significant growth of the Swahili Wikipedia. In the first month alone, Swahili Wikipedia grew 30% from 2.2MM words to 2.9MM words, which can be compared to single digit organic growth for many African languages like Afrikaans and Zulu.  You can view the progress of the growth published by Wikimedia here:. The statistics are encouraging and show that the challenge was able to spur individuals who would've conventionally been consumers of Wikipedia articles to become creators of new content on Wikipedia. 

As we announce the final prize winners of this Challenge, we're quite thrilled to hear that many participants would like to continue to contribute articles and content to benefit the online community. Some participants said it well, "the winners of this challenge are all of the participants who are walking away with the knowledge gained." As Swahili Wikipedia continues to grow and is referenced by more users, all of you who participated in this Challenge can take pride in the critical role you've played in building up this rich resource.  Thank you to all those who participated and all the judges who made this a success.  Remember, this is just the  beginning! 

Now, please join me in congratulating the final prize winners.  Congratulations for your hard work and passion for Kiswahili!! 

*Final Prize Winners:*

Grand Prize Winners
Kenyatta University - Peter Kanda (Kandyzo)
JKUAT - Samson Maosa (Coolsam)
Strathmore University - Abbas Mahmoud (Abbasjnr)
University of Dar es Salaam - Maria Alphonce (Maria alphonce)

First Prize Winners
IFM - Janeth J Jonathan (Janeth J Jonathan)

JKUAT - Limoke Oscar (Limoke oscar)

Strathmore University - Daniel Kimani (Kimanikihiu)

University of Dar es Salam - Moses Kehengu (Moseske)

University of Nairobi - Peter Kamero (Kamero)

Individual - Neville Tirimba (Perijove)

Second Prize Winners
JKUAT - Eric Kosgey (Erickosgey)
JKUAT - Kenneth Kirop (Kiropkanda)

Kenyatta University - Jacob Kipkoech (Jakibiro)

Strathmore University - Mark Ekisa (Ivermac)
Strathmore University - Erick Njenga (Erick njenga)
UDSM - Mwasapi Kihongosi (Mwasapi kihongosi)

University of Nairobi - Martin Nduati (Nduati)

University of Nairobi - Damiano Wanjohi (Wawanjohi)

Third Prize Winners
Kenyatta University - Chacha Maroa (Chamaroa)
Strathmore University - Alex Wafula (Xelawefs)
Strathmore University - Patrick Kinyua (Rickiny)

The WikiCup is about quality and, Durova is a winner

For a few years now there is the WikiCup, a competition on the English Wikipedia aimed at creating quality content. It runs from January until the end of October and it generates a great amount of featured articles, featured pictures, did you knows, good articles ... all in all around 1.500 pieces of quality content.

I am really pleased that Durova won.. It is a massive boost for the restoration movement as it demonstrates the appreciation for great quality illustrations. It is not that Durova only contributed with illustrations but it is certainly what she is known best for and what made her win.

With the WikiCup 2009 secured, Durova will retire from the WikiCup, she indicated that she wants to spend more time on working on and the promotion of content collaboration with GLAM's. We would like to see more content from more museums and archives from all over the world and, in order to make this happen, digital restorations of what they have to offer makes a difference.

To make the whole restoration movement scale, we need to recruit in the whole world people interested in this. It is much easier when working with Arabic museums or archives when you speak Arabic and you can translate annotations into Indonesian for material from the Tropenmuseum when you speak Indonesian. In order to make this happen we have to coach people and teach them how to do this.

Congratulation to Durova, may you bewitch and beguile with your splendid work for a long time to come !

Thanks,

       GerardM