On 18 January 2012 03:38, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: There was plenty of discussion of WLM in the UK flying around yesterday, between and after the GLAM events in London. Let me try to give a summary, reserving the right to post my own opinions later. We do have the upcoming workshop, and perhaps discussion on this list can be a stepping stone towards having that workshop addressing issues in depth and more effectively. The workshop is at the London office of WMUK on Saturday 18 February from 1 pm: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_brainstorm (A) Aims and objectives: What running WLM in the UK would do that matters most is that it could make two contributions to the overall effort: (a) provide useful images usefully categorized on Commons; (b) increase participation in the projects, by bringing in new people. I heard the opinion that (b) matters more than (a). (B) Running the thing: Given that we know why running WLM would be of benefit, there is a Procrustean bed argument that it has to be run in a certain way. This may come in three parts: (i) WLM is a global “brand”: it has been run before, and any UK version would have to live up to and comply with certain pre-existing ideas and norms. (ii) Annotated lists: the model is that there are lists of places (“monuments”, a concept that has various definitions) that are annotated in certain ways, at the heart of the photo scavenger hunt. There is discussion about what these lists should be, how to get hold of them, and what to do with them once the required information is obtained. (iii) WLM is run as a competition, so there have to be rules, a judging process, and prizes set up in a way compatible with what is trying to be achieved here. So: (i) can be bypassed if there is a better model of what would be good to do in the UK, which just ought to be called something distinctive. I.e. there is an argument that the localization of WLM to UK conditions is too tricky, and we should start with a clean sheet of paper. A counter-argument is that WLM has not yet been run here, so that there is a danger of reinventing the wheel. Part (ii) is where a fair amount of effort has been placed so far. Here the localization business hits the major issue that different countries hold this kind of “heritage” information in different ways, administratively speaking. Cue quite a long discussion of what is actually done here, depending on what definition of “monument” is taken. Part (iii) comes down to a couple of issues, it seems. Firstly, scale (success makes more work for the judges); secondly, setting up a system with the right sort of incentives; which then comes down to nuances in A (a) under aims. (C) View from Commons: Debates on WLM seem good at throwing up secondary discussions about the issue of UK-related images on Commons. Briefly put: the import of UK images from the Geograph site to Commons has been a huge accession, representing a substantial proportion of the site; the accessioning work is demanding technically with unresolved issues; and the portion of that which is straight categorization work is still largely there to be completed. Now all this doesn’t actually undermine the aims of running WLM, but it complicates the issue in more than one fashion. The points I understand are these: 1. Technically the position could be improved by the use of bots and tools, but these are not all to hand yet. 2. Running WLM-UK is going to add to the accessioning problem, however you cut it. 3. In a pragmatic sense having more eyeballs on the categorization issue on Commons for UK images is, in accordance with general wiki reasoning, going to help. In other words there may be snags and issues that come up as a result of trying to run WLM-UK, that cannot be minimized or dealt with in the next six months. But that doesn’t mean that ducking those issues is the right decision. It means the decision should be informed by the “view from Commons”. 4. Going back to what would be meant by “useful” in aim A (a), setting up the competitive side in B (iii) above ought to take all this into account. Tweak the system so that competitors get more credit for images considered more useful (e.g. filling a gap rather than duplicating something), and consider a range of prizes, reflecting the way that categorization activity fundamentally improves the usefulness of files on Commons. (D) The Board and finding a way to run a competition Here lies one of the things the workshop should be addressing. There is the chicken-and-egg issue of whether the Board can get a volunteer to head up WLM-UK before all the issues above are sensibly resolved; or whether the Board should be prepared to delegate some of the decision-making about how to run it to someone who would then be empowered to get it run in line with a short specification of aims. I think this is roughly where we are. Charles