I agree with Mike that we should be recognising quality, and I agree with the others that
focusing attention on specific gaps (as long as they're broad enough to interest
enough people) is likely to yield better results than a "go out and take photos of
whatever" approach.
Not quite within the scope of WLM, but it would be nice to get people to upload/release
images relating to historical events. For example, there must be someone out there with
photos of the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing, or of the SAS storming the Iranian
embassy, or even of the London bombings in 2005 (ie something more than a mobile phone
photo taken in a tunnel and a photo of a queue of emergency vehicles). Images of notable
events actually taking place (as opposed to, say, a picture of the burnt-out Iranian
embassy after the siege) is an area where we struggle I think, and one of the few areas
where commercial media out-do us.
Harry
________________________________
From: Michael Peel <michael.peel(a)wikimedia.org.uk>
To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, 23 January 2012, 14:01
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Making Wikipedia loves monuments work in the UK.
Don't forget that whilst we have photos of a lot of things, we don't necessarily
have *good* photos of them. In particular, Geograph consists mostly of low-resolution (and
often low-quality) images. We could/should be encouraging people to share higher quality
photos with Commons as well as covering subject gaps (e.g. by rewarding quality rather
than quantity).
Thanks,
Mike
On 23 Jan 2012, at 12:42, WereSpielChequers wrote:
In suggesting things like war memorials I'm not
trying to restrict people, but I would like to point them to our gaps. It should be easy
for anyone to work out whether we have photographs of the churches, libraries, statues,
war memorials, blue plaques, pubs and hospitals in their patch, and a fill in the gaps
project would in my view be well worthwhile. I think that it is much more positive for our
current and future photographers to acknowledge that we already have a couple of million
images in the UK and our aim is to make that more comprehensive.
Of course those who are willing to look up lists rather than just look at the images that
we already have would be welcome to complete our collections of listed buildings and
Ancient monuments. ut for Wiki Loves Monuments I think we need to make things easy and at
the same time interesting. The Geograph really does have images of a fallen fence post
with the description "most interesting thing in this grid square". I think we
could and should do a WLM contest that asks people to fill in interesting gaps, and caters
for pretty much whatever interests our photographers.
A photo of every gravestone in every cemetery would certainly be of interest to the
amateur genealogists, but we need to remember that not every volunteer would share their
enthusiasm - I've categorised a fair few Geograph images and apart from notable people
like Darwin, Monty and Captain Bligh the bulk of the cemetery shots don't give detail
on inscriptions. But following on from Charles Matthes point, maybe what we should be
doing is outreach to these various cemetery societies and offering them a home on the web
for their images.
WereSpielChequers
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