I would correct some big misunderstandings. Take it as a personal comment not like a board member but like the organizer of WLM 2013.

Sorry for the English.

 * there is *no fears*, but there is a *workload*. There is no fears
   (WM CH had two WLM, I suppose that after two years the fears should
   be forgotten) but there is a big workload to do and it cannot be
   managed by a single person
 * the b-list is not in charge of the Office de culture / Protection of
   cultural heritage but it's in charge of every single canton, so the
   potential WLM's team should discuss with 26 institutions (not only
   one!!!)
 * no one has to approve to use the b-list because it's public
   
http://www.bevoelkerungsschutz.admin.ch/internet/bs/de/home/themen/kgs/kgs_inventar/b-objekte.html
 * the 80% of the b-list is changed in the 2013, so the changes of
   these lists are frequent


As organizer of WLM 2012 I would say that the same A-list transferred in Wikipedia had a lot of problems:

 * it was incomplete or the object were not clearly defined (for
   instance what is protected may be the collection of the museum, not
   the building of the museum, but the tools used by international team
   were not so sophisticated to identify this difference and people
   took the wrong object)
 * the tools used by WLM team harvest only a single list of objects in
   Wikipedia, WM CH has three lists of objects (one in German
   Wikipedia, one in French Wikipedia, one in Italian Wikipedia and one
   in English Wikipedia), there are a lot of differences, so the same
   lists of objects used by WLM tools for Switzerland replied these
   problems and they were not translated in the right language
 * if we increase the problems of the A-lists adding the B-lists, it
   would be a real nightmare

I would say that the real problem of WLM are the tools and the organization of the contest which is not helpful for Switzerland.

At the moment the budget to solve the big bugs of the WLM tools may be really high and the time is short.

In my opinion WM CH may solve a lot of problems developing their own tools, but it requires time and money.

The time is short because the international team has not decided yet how WLM 2013 will be. So they are spending much time, and this lost time is a big disadvantage for Switzerland who cannot fix the bugs.

Having WLM 2013 more or less like WLM 2012 it's not a big challenge, the lists of monuments is available, the website is available, and they need only to be updated shortly. A WLM's tem for Switzerland may take it easily.

Having WLM 2013 with the b-objects is a big challenge and I am speaking using my experience for the contest of 2012.

Regards

On 15.04.2013 07:58, Estermann Beat wrote:

Dear all,

Apparently, there has been some reluctance on behalf of the WMCH Board to engage in the international photo contest “Wiki Loves Monuments” <http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/> in 2013, despite the fact that several people from within the community clearly manifested their interest in participating in the contest and its organization.

Like other members of the community, I am convinced that the contest is an excellent opportunity to reach out to new contributors, to generate high-quality pictures for the illustration of articles covering Swiss cultural heritage objects and that it provides us on top of that with a great opportunity to do PR with regard to a broader public and to reach out to cultural institutions and like-minded organizations.

I have therefore talked to and e-mailed with several of the board members to understand the reasons for their reluctance and have proposed to make a feasibility analysis, to enroll “volunteers”, and to bring the topic up at the General Assembly to see whether the WMCH members are backing the Swiss participation in the contest.

As far as I understand, the reasons for the reluctance of the WMCH board members have been at least fourfold:

-Some of them seem to doubt whether the international contest would actually take place this year, suggesting that the

international WLM team has no clear plans and no budget for WLM 2013 yet.

-There have been some fears that some federal institutions would not approve of WMCH using the official lists of cultural objects of regional significance (B-objects and possibly C-objects). Given the fact that the lists of A-objects are only lacking very few images, this would make the contest obsolete.

-There have been some fears that the task of translating and updating the B- and C-lists poses too big a challenges in terms of volunteer workload, especially if we are expecting the lists of B-objects to undergo significant changes every year.

-The board seems to expect a lack of volunteer engagement, while the paid staff members are not available to compensate for this.

I will therefore focus my feasibility analysis on the following points:

1.We need to have clarity concerning the international WLM contest in 2013.

2.The federal institutions (Office de culture / Protection of cultural heritage) should not protest against us using the official B-lists.

3.We need to find an easier way to ingest the lists of cultural objects into Wikipedia and to update them in the future.

4.There needs to be a fit between tasks and available personnel resources.

5.The GA needs to approve the project and the budget.

Concerning point 1, I have had extensive talks with Lodewijk Gelauff and Maarten Dammers, the initiators of the WLM contests, this week-end: There is no doubt that the international contest will take place and that they will support us with the organization of the national contest. In order to facilitate the coordination at the international level, the Swiss contest will be fully aligned with the international contest: the Swiss contest will take place in September and use the same infrastructure as the other countries. There will be a WLM coordination meeting in Milano next Thursday, which I will attend to join-up with the international team.

Concerning point 2, I will contact the institutions holding the data of the lists of cultural objects in order to ask them to make the data available in a machine-readable format and to provide us with the missing internal identifiers (B and C lists). It has been related that representatives of federal institutions have objected against WMCH using the B-lists for the contest in the past. I therefore ask the people who have been confronted with such positions to transmit me the names and contact information of their interlocutors and the context in which the statements were made by the end of this week. I will then contact these people to see how I can alleviate their concerns. If the GA votes in favor of WLM 2013, I will of course ask the federal institutions to become official partners of the contest.

Concerning point 3, I agreed with Maarten Dammers that we will ingest the lists automatically; he will support us with this. Eventually, the monuments lists will be ingested into Wikidata, and the various monuments lists on the different language versions of Wikipedia will be generated from there. Both Maarten and another guy from the Netherlands have started to work on this, and there will be a Hackathon in the Netherlands in May where they will also tackle this issue. We don’t exactly know yet whether Wikidata will be ready to support this until August, but this is not a critical point; we will in any case be able to produce the lists in an automatized manner, and we will be able to ingest updates of the object lists via Wikidata next year.

Point 4 seems to be the most critical one. I am ready to assume the overall coordination of the Swiss contest if there are enough other volunteers to support me. I won’t have the time to carry it through virtually on my own, as Nico did in 2011, and I am not willing to pull it off at the last minute, as was the case in 2012. I will therefore focus my efforts in the next 2 weeks on building up a team supporting the contest. If you are interesting in joining, please have a look at the various tasks and sign up at the bottom of the project page, indicating in what area you would like to help: http://members.wikimedia.ch/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013 <http://members.wikimedia.ch/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013#Objectives_of_the_project> . Alternatively, you can also contact me by e-mail or phone.

For point 5, I am counting on your support. I’ve set up a project page <http://members.wikimedia.ch/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013> on the members wiki and will file an official proposal at the GA. Please have a look at the project description and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

1.I wish all of you a good week and hope to hear from you soon!

2.Beat Estermann

_____________________________________________________

Beat Estermann
Research Associate

Bern University of Applied Sciences
Business and Administration
Morgartenstrasse 2a
Postfach 305
CH-3000 Bern 22

beat.esterm...@bfh.ch <mailto:beat.esterm...@bfh.ch>
www.e-government.bfh.ch <http://www.e-government.bfh.ch/>

Phone +41 31 848 34 30
Phone (direct number) +41 31 848 34 38
Fax +41 31 848 34 31



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