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
_______________________________________________
http://wikimedia.ch Wikimedia CH website
Wikimediach-l mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediach-l
--
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch
_______________________________________________
http://wikimedia.ch Wikimedia CH website
Wikimediach-l mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediach-l