Hi all,
It's been an incredible 4 months. On behalf of Wiki Loves Monuments
international team I'd like to thank /all/ of you who made this year's
contest possible. We have achieved a lot together.
In this email, we're sharing with you the result of the contest. There are
15 winners in this year's contest chosen among 392 photos that made it to
the international contest. The international jury carefully reviewed these
photos and chose the top 15 among them.
Like any other contest, there are photos and countries that have made it to
the top 15 and those who haven't. It's important for us to remember that
our work towards free knowledge for everyone is beyond the geographical
borders and contests. The contest is a means to an end. This is a day that
we all should celebrate for empowering more people to share in the sum of
all human knowledge, for helping them bring amazing photos to Wikipedia,
Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage, Wikidata, and our other projects, and for
helping them discover their heritage.
All key metrics showed significant growth compared to last year: the number
of participating countries (more than 30% increase), the number of
participants (62% increase), the number of first time contributors to
Wikimedia projects (78% increase), and the number of photos uploaded (20%
increase). This year we also welcomed four first time participating
countries from very different parts of the world: Bangladesh, Greece, Peru,
and South Korea. I want to emphasize this: /you/ made all of this happen! :)
Now, please sit back and enjoy the result of your efforts:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2016_winners#Winners
You can read the blog posts about the results as well. They are:
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/winners-2016/
and
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/15/seventh-annual-wiki-loves-monuments/
Best,
Lily, on behalf of the WLM international team
--
User: LilyOfTheWest
Hi all,
An update on the international team's end, as much as I have visibility
into:
*The feel*
These are very exciting hours for us. We all have worked for almost four
months with you, and today is the big day for all of us. We are doing the
best in these final hours to tighten up anything that needs our attention.
*The facts*
Unless something unexpected happens, here are the facts as we know them now:
* The results are scheduled to be announced at 19:00 UTC today.
* The results will be announced through different channels, some of which
are: http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/ and https://twitter.com/wikimon
uments and https://commons.wikimedia
.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2016_winners.
* The WMF will have a blog post about the results at https://blog.wikimedia
.org/
* There are probably other channels who will tweet about the results or
cover the story of WLM 2016. I won't call them out here since I'm not sure
about those channels. :) We will celebrate if this happens.
* We initially had a plan to do a count-down starting rank 25 all the way
to rank 1. We had to change this plan for the following reason: We had to
agree on an embargo time with some press outlets, meaning that none of the
top 15 photos can be shared on social media (or anywhere public) before
19:00 UTC. At this moment, we're planning to still do 1 tweet per photo,
but probably starting Friday morning. This way, we can bring back some more
views to the top 25 photos on Friday and over the weekend. This plan is
still not fully settled and we may have to adjust it depending on how
things go in the next 15 hours or so.
*What can you do?*
* If you are an organization with access to local press, you can take one
or more of the blog posts (once published at 19:00 UTC) and encourage your
local press to cover the story. This will be incredibly helpful to spread
the story of WLM 2016 even further.
* If you are on social media, please consider retweeting or sharing the
announcements, photos, etc. We want to reach as many people as possible,
bring them to the beautiful photos and tell them the story of WLM and the
volunteers and people behind it.
* I'm sure I'm missing so many things you can do. Please be creative. :)
If you have questions/comments, please share them here. We may not respond
immediately, but we do our best to respond asap. :)
Best,
Lily
--
User: LilyOfTheWest
Hi everyone,
We are getting ready for announcing the finale results of Wiki Loves
Monuments 2016 contest. This email gives you an update about what the WLM
international team is busy with these days and how the coming week will
look like, as best as we know it at the moment.
Our focus at the moment is on communications. This includes working on the
jury report, aligning social media efforts, and reaching out to news
outlets and organizations for covering the story of WLM and announcing the
finale results via their websites, social media, etc. There are a few
reasons for a strong focus on communications for this week: We want to make
sure that your efforts in organizing WLM 2016 in your country and
participating in it gets the attention it deserves. It would also be great
if we can support the photographers of WLM by bringing more eye-balls and
attention to their work. And lastly, more coverage in the media means more
brand recognition for WLM, something that will help all of us us walk on a
stronger path for WLM 2017 and beyond.
Here are more specifics:
*Results*
We expect to announce the results on Thursday, December 15 (UTC). There
will be 15 winners in this year's finale. We will start the count down from
photo rank 25 in https://twitter.com/wikimonuments and we move all the way
to rank 1. At the moment, we have not fixed when exactly the count-down
starts. We will announce that on this list once we are ready to fix the
time. And of course, the results will be announced on https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2016_winners, in http://www.
wikilovesmonuments.org/, and possibly in more places.
*Coverage in news outlets*
The WMF Communications team has worked tirelessly with us in the past weeks
to build a strategy for increasing the chances of coverage of WLM story and
the announcement of the final results. Thanks to those of you who have been
helping us with this effort. More details:
* A blog post about WLM 2016 went out on Friday: https://blog.wikimedia
.org/2016/12/09/wiki-loves-monuments-human-heritage/ The goal of this blog
post was to tell the story of WLM by sharing the story of some of the
people who participated in this year's contest and their photos. The
content of that blog post is also used as a press pitch to gauge the
interest of news outlets for covering the announcement of the results in
the coming week. (If you are a local organizer or WLM enthusiast, you
should feel free to take that blog post and pitch it to your local news
agencies for more coverage as well.)
* Another blog post is being prepared for the announcement of the results
on Thursday. Once that blog post is published (on Thursday), it would be
great if you take that and share it with your local news outlets and
heritage focused organizations to increase the chances of more coverage for
WLM and the winners. The WMF Communications team uses this text to pitch to
their relevant network of news outlets as well.
On this front: if you have a direct contact in a news outlet that you think
should/would cover WLM finale results, please email me offlist.
*Preparing for traffic*
We expect a lot of traffic to https://commons.wikimedia
.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2016_winners starting Thursday, December 15.
Between now and then, you may see us making changes to the page to make the
content more easily/enjoyably viewable/discoverable from more devices (we
expect a lot of traffic from mobile devices, especially when social media
starts announcing the results).
That's about it for now on our end. If you have questions/comments, please
feel free to reach out to us on this thread (and if they need to stay
private, off-list:).
Looking forward to this week! :)
Best,
Lily
--
User: LilyOfTheWest
Dear WLM organizers and enthusiasts,
*tl;dr *
We need your help with collecting one story (per country) about the people
who participated in WLM in 2016 or in the previous years (a slight priority
for stories from 2016). While the story of every individual participating
in WLM is unique, there are stories that you know of and remember more
easily, and you bring them as anecdotes to your fellow Wikimedians,
friends, and families. We are eager to hear those stories. Please share
them with me and Jeff (cc-ed). Please do this by Friday, Nov. 11.
*Longer version*
*What?*
The WMF Communications team has offered to write a blog post about WLM (2-3
weeks?) before the announcement of the WLM international results. For
writing such a blog post, they will need stories from participants from
different countries. Currently, they're looking for 6-8 stories to be
shared as snippets in the blog post.
*Why?*
We are trying to create some momentum in the press to pick up the story of
the WLM when the international results are announced. A blog post a few
weeks before the final announcement may help us with that. Of course, we
are interested for press picking up the story for some specific reasons,
for example:
* We think that certain types of press coverage can benefit the winners in
the future and beyond WLM. (They may be recognized internationally, for
example.)
* Certain types of press coverage can bring much more visibility to the
work that all the volunteers and organizers in many parts of the world do,
to make WLM happen every year.
* And, press coverage can help us build a stronger presence/brand for WLM,
which can help WLM organizers with building stronger
partnership/sponsorship relationships the future years.
*When?*
>From the international team's perspective, the blog post can go out any
time between November 14 and 30. We will count on the Comms team's
expertise to choose the optimal time given their other constraints and
timelines.
*What we need from you?*
We need your help with collecting one story (per country) about the people
who participated in WLM in 2016 or in the previous years (a slight priority
for stories from 2016). While the story of every individual participating
in WLM is unique, there are stories that you remember more easily, and you
bring them as anecdotes to your fellow Wikimedians, friends, and families.
We are eager to hear those stories. Please share them with me and Jeff
(cc-ed).
If you have questions or comments, please let us know on or off-list. :)
Thank you!
Lily
--
User: LilyOfTheWest