Grants:Project/Rapid/Gikü/Wiki Loves Earth 2018 in Moldova

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:
1. What content will the contest focus on, and why is it important to your community?

This is part of the international photo contest Wiki Loves Earth 2018, focus content is natural heritage. It is an important topic for Moldova because the country still has poor awareness of its natural heritage over the internet, especially when it comes to freely licensed images. Before Wiki Loves Earth was first organized in Moldova in 2016, there were only 7 protected areas illustrated on Commons out of a total of 471. Currently – after two editions of WLE – 158 items are illustrated (33.55%).

For 2018, two more paths are planned to be pursued. First, a lot more prize categories will be introduce to help getting people involved of various interests. Second, a writing contest will be organized to improve the articles on protected areas, on 5 Wikipedia language versions: Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, English/Simple English. At Romanian Wikipedia, all the articles are expected to be created with minimal information until the start of the contest.

2. How will you let people know about the contest?

Through Facebook page, press release, and offline media; also by participating in eco-related events when such opportunities emerge. Society for the Protection of Birds of Moldova (SPPN) will promote the wildlife/birdwatching special prize.

3. How will you judge the contest and award prizes?

Jury is yet to be defined. Last two editions, jury had 2 professional photographers and me as Wikipedian. For the 2018 edition, participation of those 2 photographers needs to be confirmed. 2016 winner expressed his desire to take part in the jury process too. Jury evaluates submissions using a software provided by international organizers. Awarding will take place in August and will be a ceremony held by WLE Moldova organizers, just as last couple of years; only this time it will include winners of the writing contest.

4. For photo contests, what is the strategy to get images used on projects?

Volunteers of Romanian Wikipedia (mainly TotalAnarchy and me) are regularly adding images to articles in Romanian language. It is assumed that Wikipedias in other languages will use these articles as example in illustrated their articles. There is also a good categorization on commons: c:Category:Protected areas of Moldova, and the image property is regularly updated on Wikidata items with new submissions. The writing contest will provide additional scope for using images, especially if there will be articles created in other languages.

5. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

It gets even more awesome, keep reading.

Calendar / schedule

before May: preparing articles for all the protected areas; secular trees will not have separate articles for the most part – they will be included in a list
May: promoting through Facebook page, press release, and off-wiki media
June 1 – June 30: contest is running; the timing is aligned with Wiki Loves Earth Romania, User:Strainu plans to organize the first edition in 2018
July 1 – July 31: writing contest is running; jury works in parallel:
- July 1 – July 20: members of the jury are selecting their favorite submissions
- July 21 – July 27: members of the jury gather to decide on the best 10 images
- July 28 – July 31: the local results are announced and are sent to international team as international submissions
August 1 – August 10: results of writing contest are assessed
August 12: local awarding ceremony

There is a risk involved. From March until May, I, Gikü, as main organizer – and for now sole organizer – will be in an important journey abroad related to my job, with little time to allocate for Wikipedia. As much as possible I will try to prepare everything until March, so that I am not worried about the contest when I am at work.

Impact

How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets and feel free to add more:

The targets are as follows:

at least 2500 photographies uploaded;
- of which 10% wildlife pictures;
- and at least 350 images used in Wikipedia articles on different languages (there is an estimated average of 15% usable images in the articles, as many uploads come in batches with more detailed images than needed in an article, also a lot of images from past editions are already in use);
50 participants (photographers) with at least one upload
- of which an estimate of 30 newcomers;
at least new 50 covered of the total of 471 monuments / protected areas (before the contest there were 158 items covered);
at least 10 participants (writers) with at least one improved / created article;
at least 20 articles improved in Romanian;
at least 60 articles created in other language (English, Simple English, Russian, or Ukrainian).

Last year goals and results

For reference, please see the last year (2017) grant proposal and the subsequent report.

Last year edition displayed good results; almost all the targets were fulfilled, and Moldova was 12th in the country ranking. Still, some improvements are planned, see below.

What will be improved

A lot of exciting new prizes are planned:
- An additional prize pool will be provided for wildlife images – that is, best image of an animal or group of animals that has been seen in a protected area (or on a protected tree, to get the terminology right). The idea is to have two ~$20 prizes, one for best birdwatching photography, one for best wildlife photography (animals except birds). SPPN will select best birdwatching image (photos uploaded by their two representatives will not participate), main jury will select best wildlife image.
- A writing contest is planned. Last year, there were suggestions from the participants and partners to have more articles in Wikipedia / Wikivoyage, so that images are of use in the Wikimedia world. It is planned to hold the contest in a multi-lingual manner, and have the participants write in Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, or English / Simple English. (The list of languages is constrained to languages I know). In Romanian, all the articles will be ready by the time contest starts, most of them as stubs (example), some of them as full articles (example), and some not notable enough for Wikipedia in a list (talking about the list of protected trees; article for which has not been created yet). See ro:Arii protejate din Republica Moldova as a starting point for navigation though all protected areas. For other languages, participants are welcome to start new articles. The contest will be organized in a similar way to Romanian CEE Spring.
  - The writing contest will be won by whoever wrote / improved more articles; I'll also notify the rowiki community and ask for suggestions on how else – more fair – we could select the winner.
- A new prize will be awarded for best image of a protected area / protected tree not covered on Commons before (query). Let's call it "Best fresh image" This is intended to encourage participants to travel and search for more areas to cover. In the first editions it was risky, because the organizing team was not too familiar with how the areas look, and we risked to have people who would claim incorrect locations just to get the "Best fresh image" prize. Now there is more expertise to discern such fake claims, and we can benefit of a book printed in 2016 by the Academy of Sciences of Moldova with illustrations and detailed descriptions of each and every protected area.
- Yet another prize is planned to be awarded in a lottery. Last year we had 60 participants, and only three of them received prizes. The criteria was "the better the quality, the more chances you have to win something". This is a good approach, but people who upload images of great encyclopedic value but of below-top quality were not encouraged. Now they are – after winners in all the award categories are defined, and all the bad images are disqualified, a random pick from the rest of the participants (except those who only participated in the writing contest) will get the lottery prize. Maybe it's even a good idea to do the lottery within those who showed up at the awarding ceremony, so that more people have incentive to come.
To summarize: contest is expected to have 8 prizes: 1st prize for best quality image, 2nd prize for best quality image, 3rd prize for best quality image, lottery prize, fresh prize, writing contest prize, wildlife prize, and birdwatching prize.
Participants from previous editions will be invited to join the contest via Commons user talk pages.
Targeted posts will be posted from contest's FB page for each district of Moldova, inviting them to join the contest and offering them specific ideas of areas to take photo of, from their region.
Location will be added for secular trees, based on the newly published book on protected areas of Moldova. From the same source, random info about all protected areas can be updated, and participants of the writing contest can use it to write articles and translate them.
An Instagram account will be set up to share photos. All images will have watermarks with author | project | license.
The how-to video on uploading images will be re-recorded, as the UI had changed. A new video is planned to be recorded on how to use the map.

Planning, but not promising

To find a way to upload files directly from map.

The following table displays what are the goals of 2016/2017 vs. 2018, and the total results of 2016/2017 for reference of past effectiveness:

Metric	2016		2017		2018
Metric	planned	actual	planned	actual	planned
No. of uploaded images	3000	553	2000	1737	2500
No. of quality images	10	0	5	0	NA
Images used in articles	300	± 190	300	± 476	350
No. of participants (photographers)	30	25 (17 valid)	30	62 (54 valid)	50
No. of newcomers	20	15	20	49	30
No. of new items covered	50	63	50	88	50
No. of wildlife/birds images	NA				250
No. of participants (writers)					10
No. of articles improved in Romanian					20
No. of articles improved in other languages					80

Resources

What resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).

I am doing local promotion and I am helped with that by project's partners: Wikimedia Ukraine, Moldovan ecology-oriented communities Hai Moldova and MEGA, EcoFM radio station, and the Society for the Protection of Birds of Moldova.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.

The table below lists the items that need to be purchased in order to fulfill the project scope:

Item	Number of units	Price per unit (MDL)	Price per unit (USD)	Amount (USD)	Comments
1,500 MDL gift certificate from the photography store Fotomax.md	1	1500	84.4167		Main prize
1,200 MDL gift certificate from Fotomax.md	1	1200	67.5333		Second place prize
1,000 MDL gift certificate from Fotomax.md	1	1000	56.2778		Third place prize
Any books from elefant.md online store in a total amount of max. MDL 1,000	1 (batch)	1000	56.2778		Prize for the writing contest
Globex Q100 Power Bank	1	500	28.1389		Lottery prize
1,000 gift certificate from the outdoor sports store X-Style	1	1000	56.2778		Best fresh image
any two books from „Lumea animală a Moldovei” ("Fauna of Moldova") series	1 pair	338 ~ 445	19.0219 ~ 25.04360		Best wildlife photography; there are four books in the series with prices ranging from 169 to 228 MDL – winner will choose any two of them, hence the uncertainty in final cost.
Ghid pentru identificarea păsărilor (bird guide book)	1	400	22.5111		Best birdwatching photography
Promotion (banners, FB page management, etc.)	-	0	0	0	Negligible amount.
Hosting awarding ceremony	1	0	0	0	"B. P. Hasdeu" Municipal Library of Chișinău provides access to their venue for free (they also hosted 2016 and 2017 awarding ceremonies). As a backup, platzforma.md or Tekwill innovation hub can offer the hall in their headquarters also for free.
Books of the Protected areas series published by the Academy of Sciences of Moldova	2	0	0	0	There are two volumes recently published by specialists from the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, describing geological, paleonthological, hydrological, pedological monumnents (volume 1) and secular trees (volume 2). They will serve as ideal bibliographical material for the writing contest, and will also validate entries of the photo contest by having detailed descriptions of the sites and - often - descriptive images. They cost 220 MDL each, but I will buy them for myself (so no funding needed) and use them within the contest, this includes sending photocopies of particular pages from the books upon participants' request. UPDATE: User:Crissty90 has the first volume and is sharing it with the organizer.
Total

Note: USD amounts are based on exchange rates provided by Oanda on November 6 2017

Endorsements

Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

From the 2017 report, photos and their usage look impressive and communications impact good. I'm not always convinced that prizes are effective incentives but I'm ok with trusting the locals' call on this, especially given the modest amount and the grantee's personal investment. Nemo 13:02, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
Strong support. -Visem (talk) 10:52, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

2nd place winner in 2017: Lower Prut reserve, by Roman Friptuleac