Grants talk:Project/Rapid/InFormAzioni/Wiki Loves Earth Italy/Report

Report accepted

Hi, CristianNX, thank you for submitting this final report and your expense documentation for this grant. Thank you for preparing such a thorough, detailed, and organized report. I have reviewed and accepted it and the expense documentation. Congratulations, this grant is now complete! Here are some thoughts and questions for you to reflect on when you have time:

• I'm happy to hear that the first edition of Wiki Loves Earth in Italy was such a success! The photos uploaded during the contest are very beautiful, and it is impressive that you had the third-most photographers even though this was your first time.
• It's wonderful to hear that you were so easily able to attract supporters and sponsors to help with the prizes. Will those same organizations be supporting this year's WLE contest?
• It can often be hard to attract media attention to projects. Do you feel that this project was hindered in any way by not having as much media coverage as you would have liked?
• Since you submitted your report, the amount of images used has grown to 7%! Are there things you could have done differently, or would do differently in future years, to help meet your goal of 10% usage?
• Thank you for sharing your observation about the pros and cons of running a regionally focused WLE. In a country that has as much geographic diversity and as strong regional identities as Italy does, it's understandable that only focusing on one region would upset some people. I'm sure other grantees will appreciate learning from your experience as they plan WLE or other contests. What advice would you give to people who are considering planning a regional contest?

Thank you again for all the hard work you put into this grant, and for sharing what you learned with WMF and the community!

Warmly, LSmith (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi LSmith (WMF), thank you for accepting our report. To answer your questions:

• We contacted our previous supporters again, and someone will support also this year contest; we also asked to new organizations, and we also moved from the local to the national level with some institutions that last year supported us with their local sections.
• It was difficult to attract media attention on the project, but I don't think it concerned specifically the nature of the project but rather our strength/capacity to attract media of such a wide and various area. It did not help having to give up the CentralNotice in the second half of June (we were the only ones) for the tax campaign of Wikimedia Italy: this has greatly distracted the attractiveness of possible participants but also of journalists.
• We have some ideas to improve the image usage. First (and we will work on it already on this year contest) we will work more on Wikidata, discussing with Wikidata's and Commons' communities about some automatic system to add the first uploaded image to the relative WD item. Second, we would like to propose a writing week on Natural heritage areas, to involve more users on writing articles and, indirectly, to use more images.
• I would like to suggest to organize a finite regional contest if you:

1. have strong motivations and are ready to stick up for these motivations;
2. are ready to grow and to move to a bigger area in next years;
3. can work together with an existing national team, that will be happy to be helped from local teams.

Warmly, CristianNX (talk) 13:29, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi, CristianNX, thank you for those thoughtful responses! The idea of a writing week on Natural heritage areas sounds like a great way to increase use of the photos collected, and to involve people in the movement who might not participate in a photo contest. Please feel free to let us know how it goes! Thank you also for those insights into organizing a regional contest. I'm sure they will be valuable to other people in the community! Warmly, LSmith (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 17 April 2019 (UTC)