CentralNotice/Request/Wiki Loves Africa winners

Wiki Loves Africa winners

• Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk · contribs · page moves · block user · block log), primary contact (Requested at 16:00, 7 August 2019 (UTC))

Central Notice Settings
What is the campaign duration? 3 September 2019 → 10 September 2019 Which projects will you be targeting? Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons What languages will you be targeting? English Do you wish to show banners to Logged In users, Anonymous Users or Both? Do you want to target users with a specific number of edits or average monthly? Anonymous and, preferably, at a low priority, ten percent, three impressions. What countries will your campaign target? Global Banner/Campaign Diet: To be determined by Central Notice admin

What is the purpose of the campaign? How will you measure the success of the campaign?

Description -

Metrics - Unsure how many clickthroughs to target. We're hopeful that we'll learn more after running a few banners, but the wide variety in topic area and geographical targeting means that these numbers might not be very useful in learning what a 'good' target clickthrough is. That boilerplate aside, I'm hopeful that this banner will be comparable to a hypothetical future banner for the winners of WLM and WLE. (I believe we last ran banners for WLM in 2018, if my memory isn't failing me.)

What banner(s) will you use? What will be your landing page?

Banners - In progress

Landing Page - https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/08/05/lets-play-photographers-capture-the-art-of-fun-for-the-wiki-loves-africa-photo-contest/?pk_campaign=WikiLovesAfricaSept2019banner

Is this project grant funded? Please provide a link

Type of grant -

Link to grant -

Discussion

For what it's worth, the requested date is in September to avoid any conflicts with Wikimania, its aftermath, and the other banner I've requested. Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 16:01, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ed Erhart (WMF): Since you're a central notice administrator, I assume you'll take care of those banners? --Martin Urbanec (talk) 11:43, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Happy to, if that's not a conflict of interest! Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 17:14, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

•  Oppose. The CentralNotice is overused and is generally very harmful to the usability of the site. I don't think using it to announce contest winners is appropriate. --Yair rand (talk) 20:07, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • @Yair rand: I have to disagree here. These photo contests are, as far as I'm aware, the largest sources of new users we as a movement get. Announcing the winners in this way is entirely appropriate—a natural close to the banners that would have asked people to participate. Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 17:14, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
    • @Ed Erhart (WMF): Every single person who participated has an account, as it's not possible to upload an image without one, so this is being broadcast to the wrong audience. But let's do some calculations: Suppose this hits 400,000,000 people, an average of two hits, with let's say 0.5 seconds of disruption each. (It's probably a lot more than that, but whatever.) That's over 110,000 hours, or the equivalent of about 55 years of full-time work, except that in reality a second of being disrupted when you're trying to do something typically costs a lot more than your average second. Not to recruit for a contest, but to publicize the winners after the fact, to the wrong people. (These photo contests, incidentally, have negligible retention rate, IIRC, and the only really large source of new users are the big edit buttons on each page.)
      In any case, use of the CentralNotice requires community consensus in advance. Please follow the guidelines. --Yair rand (talk) 02:51, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
      • Hey Yair rand, I of course disagree with how you're comparing those numbers, which is very much apples to oranges, but we've both made our points and I don't think that we'll be convincing each other. ;-) I'll step back and see if anyone else would like to comment. Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ed Erhart (WMF):, what is exactly the purpose of the banner ? I noticed that you chose English as a language and anon, which suggest "recruitment of new". But then, why "all countries" rather than "African countries" ? Note that IF this is targeting African countries, those receive less banners than some other countries... Anthere (talk)

Hey Anthere, the idea is to publicize the contest through its winners and get the contest name into people's minds for when next year's "submit your photos" banners roll in. I'm happy to limit the geographic distribution if that would be more appropriate. Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ed Erhart (WMF): Then suggested proposition would be 1) one week display with one impression only 2) logged-in and anon 3) only African countries 4) timeline: a bit later in September or in October. Open question: only English ? (what would be your landing page otherwise ?) --> not perfect but better than nothing. @Yair rand:, contrariwise to most other photo contest, WLAf has contributions from mostly new users, so posting to anon makes sense. Anthere (talk)

Anthere, English-only was the plan (see "Central Notice Settings" above), but after seeing the below, I'm going to withdraw this request. :-) Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Ok @Ed Erhart (WMF):. Let's revisit your idea at the end of the year then ! Anthere (talk)

Comment It's hard to see the utility of this banner. For non-English speaking Africa, which I believe is the vast majority of the continent, this would be irrelevant. If the banner and target is not mobile friendly, it will be very problematic as well, as from my experience in many African countries people generally read the Wikimedia projects through cellphone, and generally don't have desktops/laptops (or have them with very limited connection). Also: I don't see how Wikimania would conflict at all with a banner, but September is Wiki Loves Monuments month. Since this seems to directly collide with the Wiki Loves Monuments banner, independently of the utility of this new banner (which seems very limited, anyway), I  Oppose it.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 11:45, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

•  Oppose Please avoid using it at the time of Wiki Loves Monuments. This will likely create confusion among potential participants: we invite them to participate in Wiki Loves Monuments in Africa and announce them winners of Wiki Loves Africa. There is little point in attracting attention to the past photo contest when there is a new one going on — NickK (talk) 14:03, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks to you both, DarwIn and NickK, as I hadn't taken WLM into account. I'd be fine with archiving this. :-) Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
    • @Ed Erhart (WMF): I believe this idea could actually work if the banner is mobile phone friendly, is IP directed to cover Africa (not just English speaking Africa, and adapting language(s) using the IP ranges) and is run in the month before Wiki Loves Africa showing past year winners (and prizes) as a tease for the incoming contest.--- Darwin ^Ahoy! 18:08, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
      • That's a very interesting idea, DarwIn! The banner I'd be using would be modified from a mobile-friendly template designed by Seddon, so that part is good. On languages, the blog post is currently available only in English, although we could probably get a translation into French and Arabic, which the Foundation's site supports. On timing, assuming WLA's organizers keep to a similar timeframe, a month before the contest would be January of next year. Assuming such a banner wouldn't conflict with any more direct outreach efforts, I'll keep this in mind for 2020. :-) Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Central Notice admin comments

 Declined Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2019 (UTC)