Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2020/Participant Survey Report

This page is a work in progress page, not an article or policy, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable. Please offer suggestions on the talk page.

WLM 2019

Participating countries

Uploaded images

Organizers

FAQ

Help desk

For organizers

Context

Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) is an annual international photography competition held during the month of September, organised worldwide by Wikimedia community members and local Wikimedia affiliates across the globe. Participants take pictures of local historical monuments and heritage sites in their region, and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. The aim of the event is to highlight the heritage sites of the participating countries to encourage people to capture pictures of these monuments and put them under a free licence which can then be re-used not only in Wikipedia but also everywhere by everyone. The first Wiki Loves Monuments competition was held in 2010 in the Netherlands as a pilot project. The next year it spread to other countries in Europe and according to the Guinness World Records, the 2011 edition of the Wiki Loves Monuments broke the world record for the largest photography competition.

In 2020, fifty-one countries took part in the competition, gathering a total of 230K+ pictures of cultural heritage artefactss. The top ten images from each participating country were considered for the international pool, and the winners of the international competition were announced in February 2020. In order to understand various experiences by participants of Wiki Loves Monuments 2020, what worked well, and what can be improved for the next year, the participant survey had been conducted in four languages - English, Italian, French and Ukrainian. The questions have been translated with the help of Wikimedia volunteers.

Analysis & Considerations

• Of the 1,290 responses received, only 1,181 have been considered for the analysis, according to the following criteria; responses from countries that didn't participate in 2020 were removed. So were the responses of respondents who selected “I never participated” when asked, “What was your first year of participation?”
• Wherever possible and relevant, the analysis had been done in a comparative manner between participants who participated in WLM for the first time in 2020, and not for the first time in 2020 i.e. second, third, so on and so forth. This was done to understand the experiences of first-time participants as compared to participants who have already gone through the processes at least once. All throughout the report, they have been referred to as “First-timers” and “Seasoned” respectively.
• For open-ended questions, only responses that significantly stood out and would add value to this report have been added. For privacy reasons, open-ended responses have been - merged, edited, and broken down, to anonymize them as much as possible; if in case they were more sensitive, specifically targeting an individual or a group, they have been dropped off from this report.
• At the top right corner of each chart, you may find N=x, which indicates the number of respondents to a particular question; NF indicates first-time participants and NS indicates seasoned participants. Please check out the section titles for the question and the image captions for summary and insights.

Summary

Participants of the survey represented 49 of the 51 countries that took part in WLM 2020. Of the 7670 participants of the competition, 1181 responded to the survey, which was about a 15% response rate. 67% of the respondents participated in WLM for the first time in 2020, and 32% were seasoned participants from previous years. 80% of the respondents used the English-language version of the survey, followed by Ukrainian and Italian, each about 7%, and lastly, French, used by 5% of the respondents. The median time taken to complete the survey is six minutes.

About 55% of the participants fall in the age bracket of 25-54, and 68% of the participants identified themselves to be males, 28% as females, and 1% as belonging to non-binary genders. The majority of the awareness regarding the contest had been through the Central-Notice banners across Wikimedia projects, followed by social media posts. It has been observed that seasoned participants tend to contribute a higher number of images as compared to first-time participants, and motivations to participate - “to share local heritage with others” “to help Wikipedia” and “share their work,” form 60% of the total. While finding out general information about the contest, lists of monuments, uploading a photograph, had been easy for the majority of the participants, finding monuments’ identifiers had been comparatively harder and was reported to be the hardest of all processes. 80% of the participants did not face any problems.

While 80% of the seasoned participants claimed to have contributed to Wikimedia Commons irrespective of WLM, 75% of the first-time participants have only contributed to Wikimedia projects for the first time through WLM. For 40% of the participants, participating in WLM was a quite good experience, and for 38% it was neutral. Comparatively, more seasoned participants have reported to participate again, in further iterations, and recommend participating to others, as compared to first-time participants. Of the 75% of first-time participants, who reported to have only contributed to Wikimedia projects for the first time through WLM, 55% claimed that they will definitely continue contributing after the competition, while 41% reported "maybe."

Report

What is your age?

What is your gender

What was your first year of participation in Wiki Loves Monuments?

This question was asked to seasoned participants only.

Almost 32% of the participants from 2020 participated for the first time in 2019 and 2018 iterations, which demonstrates a higher retention rate of participants from immediate previous iterations of the competition.

How many years did you participate in Wiki Loves Monuments including 2020?

This question was asked to seasoned participants only.

~70% of the seasoned participants have in at least three previous iterations of the competition, and at least ~30% have participated in at least five previous iterations, which is almost 10% increase compared to the previous year.

How did you come to know of Wiki Loves Monuments 2020?

While the Central-Notice across Wikimedia projects had been the most effective way for first-time participants to know the competition, for seasoned participants it was their previous participation. Social media also remained a key channel to attract participants to the competition.

Search terms used on Google and other search engines, that resulted in the results of or related to WLM

• Italiano: concorsi fotografici
• Português: wikipédia concurso
• Українська: Пам'ятки Запорізька область
• international photographic competition
• National register of historical places
• photo competitions 2020
• Photos of Wikipedia
• the largest photography competition

What were your motivations to upload images to Wiki Loves Monuments?

Motivations to participate were more or less similar for both first-time and seasoned participants. For seasoned participants, the feeling of easy to participate had also been crucial, compared to first-time participants.

What were your motivations to upload images to Wiki Loves Monuments? - Other

A nice project for my six-year-old son and me.

A safe, positive activity during the COVID pandemic.

Creating historic records that will hopefully last through the ages.

I has become an annual tradition :-)

I think everything's so fragile and my pictures might be valuable just because next moment these monuments may cease to exist.

It was also a way to review my old photos.

It was an excuse to go on a nice walk outdoors.

J'ai beaucoup de photos ... elles sont probablement inutiles si elles sont conservées sur l'ordinateur Je pense que les publier pour le bénéfice de la société est bien mieux que de les stocker sans aucun bénéfice

pour illustrer mes articles

To revisit some favorite sites, where I haven't been for several years.

How many photographs did you contribute to Wiki Loves Monuments 2020?

While the majority of the first-time participants (~36%) contributed between 2-5 images towards the competition, the majority of the seasoned participants (~24.3%) contributed between 6-25 images. The percentage of seasoned participants who contributed 25+ and even 100+ images stands substantially higher than that of first-time participants. This demonstrates that seasoned participants contribute more number of images on average, as compared to first-time participants.

How was your journey with the following processes of Wiki Loves Monuments?

Creating an account

This question was asked to first-time participants only.

Majority of the first-participants (~65%) found the account creation process on Wikimedia easy. ~12% of the participants mentioned that they did not need to create an account, which indicates that these participants had already been contributing to Wikimedia projects, but participated in WLM for the first time in 2020. In other words, ~88% of the new (first-time) participants had contributed to Wikimedia projects for the first-time through WLM.

Finding out general information about the competition

Finding the lists of monuments for the areas you were interested in

Finding the monument identifier number for the monuments you were interested in

Uploading a photograph

---

While most the processes were easy for a decent percentage of participants, in both first-time and seasoned categories, it can be noted that participants who might have found them 19 difficult, especially very difficult, which was also a considerable percentage, might not have participated eventually or had a successful upload. Also, of all the steps, the most difficulty is reported at monument identifier number for the monuments of all the steps.

If you used the national competition website (landing page) of your country, how helpful was it?

Compared to the previous year, there has been a shift to the positive side (i.e. bad to neutral & neutral to good) by ~5% for first-time and seasoned participants.

How can the national competition website (landing page) of your country be improved?

Did you contact any organizer or a Wikimedian if you had faced any problems?

Did you contact any organizer or a Wikimedian if you had faced any problems? - Other

A bit of time and reading through the help pages solved the issues I had.

I didn't contact anyone, but it was difficult to navigate the map since everything was lagging and loading very slowly. To move within the map you have to wait a minute or so for it to load and that's not something you want to do while walking and searching for monuments.

I faced problems, but didn't try to contact anyone.

— similar cases reported multiple times.

I faced problems, but solved them myself.

— similar cases reported multiple times.

I faced problems, but was unaware there was someone to contact.

— similar cases reported multiple times.

Did you participate in any real-life events, such as photo-walks?

A majority of participants did not any participate in any events, though given the pandemic, this can seem obvious, it is interesting to note that percentages were almost of the same that were reported in 2019.

How was your overall experience with Wiki Loves Monuments 2020?

How was your experience compared to previous years?

This question was asked to seasoned participants only.

What aspects of Wiki Loves Monuments 2020 did you like?

Extended content

Découvrir des monuments que je ne connaissais pas autour de chez moi, qui plus es sans photos sur wikipédia avant le concours. Finding and visiting interesting sites that I was unaware of before and taking a couple of days out to get out of the house and see the full beauty and splendour of the Adirondacks in autumn colours. Gave me a reason to get my camera out, go for a walk and explore. I probably wouldn't have thought to do so or bothered otherwise. In addition to being something positive for me, I can also help others by providing some (hopefully) good quality images of local heritage. Win-win! Getting acquainted with monuments in my country, an occasion to look at some really good photos, an occasion to learn something new (I mean e.g. uploading, making proper descriptions to photos and so on, learning about templates, categories... It was all new to me). I could contribute photos of my favourite charity. It was possibly a way to promote this charity. I appreciated the personal responses to my questions, although they did not completely answer my concern. I like everything in Wiki Loves Monuments 2020 because it is fun to share my country's culture with the whole world. It is also an experience in photoshoots, Then, it helps to discover the monument's histories. I'm happy because I learn many new things about my country. I liked how there were a lot of alternatives to choose from and how a lot of them were very close. Also, I love the time of the competition: During the fall for all the lovely leaves. I liked the feeling of satisfaction that came from helping make your resources more rigorous. I liked the feeling that my photos can help someone in the study of the national heritage. I liked the idea of the competition and the easiness of uploading photos. I liked the guide on how to make a good picture too. It gives an open platform to all the people out there to share their own personal experience of the heritage they have witnessed through their eyes. It also has an opportunity to share the knowledge and photographs of those places where people have been or not. If it gives someone a will to travel, I think my participation will be worth it. Thanks for the opportunity. :) I'll keep posting from now onwards. La possibilità di far conoscere bene tutti i posti meravigliosi del nostro paese e di dare la possibilità a chi non può raggiungerli di vederli tramite foto. That every country can participate and that even amateur photographers could participate and not only professional ones. The fact that it exists. For some reason, it is not as easy to come across as Wikipedia encyclopedia items, perhaps because it's exclusive to tourist sites and/or heritage information. Also because it is a child of Wikipedia Commons, which I had never heard of before. Additionally, being a contributor with the bonus potential of winning a prize made it a more enjoyable exercise. Можливість поділитися пам'ятками культури мого міста. І не хай вони не відомі за межами мого міста, я рада що таким чином можу поділитися ними з усіма зацікавленими особами

What would you like to improve in your overall experience?

Extended content

A bit more of a friendly user interface would have been good as a first time user. It seemed a little clunky trying to establish where there were gaps of images for certain sites. After I had uploaded my photos I received numerous email messages which I didn’t really understand, about the entries having been edited by various members. I didn’t know if I was supposed to do anything because of these messages, and couldn’t find any information about that. Also, I wasn’t certain that the photos had been accepted until I was able to see them up on the relevant pages. That part of the process was a little mysterious to me. Decide the distinction between the competition and Wikimedia Commons. Make that clear to participants. When the competition finished I couldn't find my photos, they weren't showing on the competition map so I assumed they had been deleted. In fact, they had been published on Wikimedia Commons. Make it clear that when the competition has finished, photos will be published but you can't use the competition map to find them. directly after uploading my picture with the upload wizard I got a lot of "missing" messages like "Category: Images from Wiki Loves Monuments missing SDC location of creation", I didn't know if I have to fill in the "structured data" manually? The problems went away themselves after a few days?! I have a lot of photos, but not all the details to fill out on the uploading page. It requires time and effort to look for all the details such as title(currently not in use on Wiki), monument ID, name etc., It would have been a lot easier by just uploading the photo and then the system identifies the necessary details, somewhat like photo search in Google images. That way, one could easily upload many photos. Filling the details was rather a tiresome process. It wasn't too difficult finding the monuments, but it would have been easier if items could be searched with a search engine (as it can be done with Wikipedia articles or Commons photos). Je n'arrivais pas à tourner les photos une fois uploadées car sous windows 10 les photos sont automatiquement tournées si elles sont verticales mais wikipédia les upload telles quelle du coup j'ai du éditer chaque photo dans paint pour conserver la rotation correcte car il n'y avait aucun outil de rotation dans la partie upload. Ca a été très long et fastidieux. Making the process of uploading and sharing photos taken much easier especially when it’s so simple through most social media outlets. There were times when I couldn't find the page with the identifier numbers. That seemed a bit less intuitive than everything else in the process. при загрузці фотографій є доволі незрозумілі проблеми, коли фотографії не запамятовує і при новому заходжені виявляється що вони вже відсутні, це забирає доволі багато дорогого часу, для людини яка цігує свій час це недопустимо, і як висновок є багото нової інфотмації по замкам і історичним памяткам про які у вас немає фотографій та складнощі з загрузкою відбивають бажання ними ділитися.

Do you contribute to Wikimedia Commons outside Wiki Loves Monuments?

This question was asked to seasoned participants only.

Majority of the seasoned participants of WLM also contribute to Wikimedia Commons apart from the competition, and about 20% reported they only participate through WLM.

Did you contribute to any Wikimedia projects before your first Wiki Loves Monuments participation?

This question was asked to first-time participants only.

This indicates the impact of WLM in bringing new volunteers to Wikimedia projects. ~75% of the first-time participants started contributed to Wikimedia projects for the first time, through WLM.

In the future ...

Are you planning to continue contributing to Wikimedia projects further?

This question was asked to first-time participants only.

Are you planning to participate again in Wiki Loves Monuments?

Would you recommend participating in Wiki Loves Monuments to your friends?

Would you like the organizers to get in touch with you to organise further iterations of the competition in your country?