Learning patterns/How to start a Wiki Loves contest


A learning pattern forphoto events
How to start a Wiki Loves contest
problemYou want to organize Wiki Love Monuments or Wiki Loves Earth for the first time.
solutionStart small and focus on the basics.
creatorKHarold (WMF)
endorse
created on00:37, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
status:DRAFT

What problem does this solve?

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International photo contests like Wiki Loves Monuments or Wiki Loves Earth can be a good first project for volunteers to organize together. What should small Wikimedia communities or interested participants consider when planning a Wiki Loves contest for the first time?

What is the solution?

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Focus on basic goals

The first time your community plans and participates in a photo contest it is a good idea to focus on basic goals while you learn to coordinate a project as a team. Photo competitions can have different goals -- to get the best photos possible on a specific topic (with the hope that they will be used on Wikimedia projects in the future), or as a way to attract new contributors to Wikimedia and your volunteer community, or both.

Learn from other communities

The list below covers the basic steps for organizing any photo contest:

  1. Find a few other volunteers to help coordinate the contest.
  2. Create a list of monuments, sites, foods, locations, objects or art that are relevant to the contest theme.
  3. Organize a jury to select local winners.
  4. Create an event page or website for your contest and set up Categories and Templates on Commons.
  5. See international contest pages for rules, tools and guidelines and mailing lists.[1]

Evaluate your results

After your community has planned and participated in a photo contest the first time, you can collect baseline metrics about how many participants and photographs to expect in future contests. You may also identify challenges that can be avoided the future.  Write these lessons down and review them when it is time to plan the next event.

Things to consider

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When to use

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Wiki Loves Food India - Restoring relationships with disparate communities
"Wiki Loves Food is the first major program from WMIN after a long time that actively involves [volunteers in] the pan-Indian community. While, this has helped us restore relationships with many of the communities, the friction in community engagement was also quite expected."[2] "The contest aimed to educate people about and promote donating images to Commons on a national scale. India has a vibrant photography community and we succeeded in adding 10,000+ Indian Food related photographs on Commons through this contest campaign. More than 3000 people registered for this contest from various parts of India." [3]

Endorsements

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See also

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References

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