Grants talk:PEG/UG GR/European Science Photo Competition Greece 2015

A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who support this request

1. Violetova (talk) 14:34, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
2. --Ilario (talk) 08:55, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

GAC members comments

Polimerek

1. Do you have any contacts with any scientific institution? (ie. scientific institutues, universities etc?). If not - how do you want to reach scientific communities - which are obvious target for the contest?
2. How do you want to form a jury and who is going to be?

Polimerek (talk) 10:37, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Polimerek and thank you for the interest. We are worried more than anyone about the deadlines of this project, as we have to cover expected delays in a swift manner. But, thank you anyway to bringing those up:

1. Yes we have contacts with EKT, as we have organized there a daily seminar and they were kind to provide us the venue to do that. We always prefer public institutions instead of private venues. We don't think that we should spend Foundation's money for paying expensive private venues. It will not bring more participants, neither more content to WMF projects. Geraki can tell us more about contacts as he has collaborated with many Universities for Education programms. Well, to my opinion what we need is Research Foundations. There is a list of research centers here that we are more than interested to involve. I have spoken today with most of them. The expected answer is to send them a formal letter. So I did. But the good news is that some of these research centers can provide guided tours or give permissions to contestants in order to take pictures. We are also very much interested to get them involved (researchers and staff) in the contest. I will be in the position to provide more information when I'll have their official replies.
2. The jury will be formed according to the instructions here. We are in discussions already with some known photographers in Greece. We hope to have at least one specialist.--Γλαύκος (talk) 20:03, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Some thoughts

First off, this is a great initiative! A couple of thoughts regarding the Activities listed on the draft:

• Jury. The competition may attract more entries if the jury consists of some photography professionals. Getting people like Bechrakis on it may be difficult, but professors of photography, or known photographers at least within the Greek photography arena may be a big bonus.
• Advertising. You can consider advertising this on photography-related forums. The open source community may be large, but the photography community is likely to be also very large. Plus, since the primary focus of this competition is photography and then open source, I think targeting people within the photography circles would help with participation. And if not participation directly, it will help spreading the word and making this known more widely. Another good place to consider is scientific journals and magazines, since the focus is science after all.
• Funding. Consider reaching out to photography equipment brands (Canon, Sony, Minolta, etc.) to see if they would be interested in sponsoring or part-sponsoring this effort. Or they may be interested in getting involved in other ways. WLM Italy secured Canon's support for their competition - they may have some good advice to offer. It may be early days for a first-time competition, but maybe something to keep in mind for the future.

Tsoukali (talk) 10:06, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Tsoukali, and thank you for the insightful feedback. We also appreciate your endorsement. Briefly:

1. The participation of one or two specialists in the jury of the local contest is a must do in the requirements of the Jury selection. We have to move fast in order to set up the jury on time.
2. We will consider your suggestions of promoting the contest in photography circles. A member of our team, Ggia is a photographer himself and I am confindent that he will help in that respect (you can check his uploads here).
3. Yes, photography equipment brands will be in our list of candidate spospors. Thanks for mentionting. --Γλαύκος (talk) 10:05, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Update: Today we delivered some formal letters asking major photography equipment brants in Greece to sponsor the competition. --Γλαύκος (talk) 18:50, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Community comments

Tony1

Hi, very good suggestions above.

I support the application. Queries (different numbering from your activity numbers):

1. It's precariously close to your start-date (launched just a little over two weeks before). Really?
2. "Wikipedia" is one target ... which one? There are 280. There's a hint that it's the Greek and English WPs—elsewhere it says "all languages" ... Old English? Volapuk? Why not a manageable list of target languages? Pleased if you concentrate on the Greek more than the English. Will you have support from specific UG volunteers in documenting and categorising uploads?
3. How is the drafting of the rules going? Can we have a link please (I'll use gtranslate). Same for the list of articles of scientific interest—I'm delighted you're doing this; so many photo comps lack any strategic connection with where we need to improve the display of images on WMF sites. Could we see the list?
4. Do you have experience with writing and sending press releases? WMF staff can advise if you wish. Personal phone contact with journalists is a great advantage.
5. Pens and posters? Are these trinkets of any motivational or publicity value? Seems very fiddley. Why not put this and other physical items into the first prize, which in my view is not enough ... 500 or 600 euros—it's a big motiviational symbol.
6. Award ceremony: I don't expect expensive live streaming, but do you have plans to video and edit down the highlights and post on Commons? Will there be an address by the UG to marshall the community members and enthuse them with future plans?
7. Venue: sounds good. Is there a national Greek science institute, and/or a university or college with people who are keen to reach out through you? There's good publicity for them.
8. Measures of success: we're getting better sections in more recent applications. Excellent. I note: average of 10 uploads per participant are anticipated ... ok.
9. Quality of photos: are you aware of the learning patterns related to photography of buildings etc? Are they useful? Will participants be able to read English? Do you have a list of hints for taking good photos, and how to avoid simple mistakes (cars parked in front of items, time of day for best lighting, basic composition of photos, etc)? Advertised phone/skype/email support from UG volunteers to anyone who needs help uploading, wants advice on themes, etc?

Tony (talk) 08:39, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

1. Indeed, it is very close to the start date, but we thought to at least try. As we want it to be part of the Commons:European Science Photo Competition 2015 it is supposed to follow that timeschedule, where "Local winners will be selected by the end of 2015. When will the results be made public depends on the local team. Winners in European level will be announced by the end of January 2016."[1] We wish we had decided it earlier but if we don't do it now, we will have to postpone it for a year.
2. The fact is that it is not an article writing competition (which would target specific wikipedias) but a photo competition, with very special theme ('science'). So the photos may be useful to Wikipedias who do have an article on the subject of the image. I bet that most images will find a place in English Wikipedia that does have more science articles than any other.
3. Rules Commons:European Science Photo Competition 2015/Rules and prizes/el (en) + commons:Commons:European Science Photo Competition 2015 in Greece.
4. We have written press releases before, for different outreach activities (meetups, workshops, anniversaries). Personally I have given enough interviews about Wikipedia and I can contact the same journalists to promote the event.
5. The intention is to keep more people happy and keep them interested on wikimedia projects - not only the winners. :-) The prize could be higher but it is connected with the expected ability of participation (see below).
6. Everything that we can record from the award ceremony we be uploaded to commons, together with our reports on success or failure. We expect that more people from the community will be part of this.
7. Venue: In the past as a community we had asked for and got for free a conference room in the National Hellenic Research Foundation. We expect that we will be able to get this again, or something similar.
8. Measures of success + Quality of photos: It must be noted that this is not a Wiki Loves Monument/Earth etc competition where anyone can get a camera, get out of his home and start taking pictures. It has special themes which need expert skills, access to places, access to equipment that is not available to most people. That makes every similar photo or image more valuable to Wikipedia than for example an otherwise perfect quality photo of a building that we already have another 100 photos of it.

--Geraki ^T_L 12:03, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Geraki, We are pleased that you have decided to participate in the European Science Photo Competition and look forward to seeing the results from the Greek User Group. Tsoukali, Polimerek and Tony1 have asked most of the questions we had about this proposal, so our comments focus strategies to help you achieve your goals.

• It is good to see that you have included indicators for quality in your measures of success. You might consider asking an experienced science photographer to share tips for how to improve image quality on your contest page.
• In an email exchange you mentioned that contest prizes needed to be high because participants will need to access to laboratories or scientific institutions have have significant results. One way to increase participation in the contest is to host photo events at labs or backstage tours at science museums.
• Consider using tools such as Free Image Search Tool, and GLAMify to meet your goals of 20% images in use.
• One of the reasons that WLM is so successful is that organizers create lists of monuments that need images. While it is good that there are some basic categories for images in this contest, it is a good idea to ask partners at laboratories or universities to help identify key gaps in scientific images for participants to focus on. In addition to ensuring that your contest helps fill important gaps, we have heard from several grantees that providing lists of articles/images needed is an easy, effective way of making contests new user friendly.
• Since the award ceremony involves travel and makes up nearly 1/3 of the contest budget, we recommend that you add a workshop, editathon or some other activity so that it is more than a social event.

Thank you for the time and effort you have put into writing this request and for responding to community comments so thoroughly. Check out the photo contest toolkit for more tips for running successful photo contests. Cheers --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Kacie, thank you for your suggestions. We are already considering to implement most of these into the plans. We do note that some things cannot be done yet since we don't know if we do have a contest or not. Some other things that we would like to note:

• We are aware that lists for photo contests such as WLM and WLE are essential. For example: we have prepared a list of Wiki Loves Earth more than a year ago. But "science" is an enormous subject. English Wikipedia has tens of thousands of science articles. So any list of article subjects without images would not be very useful.
• We don't think that it is fair to compare the number of images from WLM/WLE and the cost for those. We have been told that "the cost of the contest is high relative to the number of images we expect". Indeed, an award ceremony would not cost a lot higher if it was for Wiki Loves Earth. And the prizes would also not need to be a lot higher. And we can expect thousands of images. Yet, these are almost standard expenses. As those for traveling, except we expect that winners and volunteers should pay from their pockets (then we don't need to have a ceremony at all).
• We are cutting some of the expenses now, but we believe that it is all we can do. Having in mind that the Ukrainian part of the competition is already running from October 1st and currently (October 22nd) has 417 submissions we are worried that with 500 images we have already set the bar very high.

-Geraki ^T_L 10:25, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Geraki, I did not mean to imply that you should lower the budget - we will approve funding for travel and food as long as the event involves an activity, workshop or editathon in addition to the awards ceremony. In fact, an editathon focused on adding contest images to Wikimedia projects could be helpful in reaching your goal of 20% images in use. You could even offer a small prize to the editor who incorporates the most images. The Ukrainian organizing team may be able to offer tips for ways to make your contest as successful as theirs, and you may find useful tips, especially around promotion, in the photo contest toolkit. Given your concerns that the goal for total images may be very high, I suggest that you focus on meeting your goals for images in use. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Best, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 19:12, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Extension request

New proposed date of completion: 20 March 2016

Circumstances that require that change: We had almost a month of delay for the delivery of WLX Jury Tool, which in fact hasn't been delivered at all. So we had to extend the deadlines for our jury for 20 days in order to setup another jury tool in a private host in order to deliver what we have promised to the contestants and to our community. The first round of the jury procedure is finished today (the prejury). The winners of our local competition will be announced after 20 January, when the second round of the jury ends.

How this change will affect other aspects of your project: It affects not the budget at all. We need more time to organize properly the winner's ceremony and the photo edit-a-thon, but most of all to deliver the needed publicity for the event itself. We need more loose deadlines for that.

Will you need also extension for your grant's reporting schedule: Yes, please --Γλαύκος (talk) 23:15, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi --Γλαύκος , your request for extension is approved. The report will now be due on May 19, 2016. We very much look forward to hearing more about the contest! --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 13 January 2016 (UTC)