Contribute to the enrichment of knowledge on a global scale, and even have the opportunity to win a prize: if it seems to good to be true, then you should really partecipate in Wiki Loves Monuments.
Wiki Loves Monuments is a photographic contest wich involves 25+ countries, and whose aim is to increase the documentation on world cultural heritage on Wikimedia Commons.
It’s very easy to partecipate: make a picture of a monument or a place of cultural interest and upload it to Commons during september 2012. And you can use old photos too: you just have to be the one who made them!
Your pictures will be released under a CC-BY-SA license, and everyone who will need them could use them.
Every nation will select and award the best photos made on his land, wich will automatically partecipate in the international contest.
What do you think of this project? Do you think that a contest is a good way to motivate and encourage people partecipation in wiki projects?
I thinks it’s a good incentive to participate to a wiki project.
It also allows to take pride in historical and political events. Monuments are usually about great people who accomplished good things for society.
Public art cpuld probably have been more popular. Monuments are usually not that trendy and loved, we tend not to pay attention to them. The collection created by public participation will be interesting to discover, as a tour of history will be offered for all to see, through the monuments of each country.
I would love to see governments repeat this experience, on a ministry of tourism platform, for instance. It is an easy way to get collaboration with citizens (without getting into fights about politics and policy making issues).
The government of Quebec made a plaftorm for citizens to share their photographs of Quebec (BonjourQuebec, a community platform, launched in january 2010).
This monuments project could inspire more wiki initiatives, and also for governments to set up contests of similar aims.
I agree about the important and “inspiring” role of monuments for society, we should start to better understand and appreciate our cultural heritage, people needs to be ri-educated to the beauty.
I didn’t knew about the project you linked, but it’s very interesting and I think it’s a smart way to promote tourism, because it allows you to see places and experiences from the point of view of a traveller like you, and also can create stronger “ties” between you and the country, by allowing you to share your own experience.
I didn’t understand very well how the licenses for the photos works: are the uploaded pictures reusable?
Does reusable data apply to photographs of citizens, shared on a government platform?
I had not look at the licence previously. Now that you mention it, I cannot find any information about a licence for the Bonjour Québec site. Every pic has a ‘@MTOQ’ mention on it, next to the name of photographer. This web site was developped by someone with no open data background or experience. I might be wrong, but it seems that these issues were not taken into account when this website was created.
Government of Quebec is not yet an open government and does not have an open data platform. It has never tackled these issues yet.
When the Government of Canada launched its open data platform, in March 2011, the licence policy was wrong and nobody was allowed to reuse the data. There was much criticism (Canadian government’s open data portal criticized after launch) and the federal government discretly modified its licence policy, shortly after (about two months) the launch.
I would not be surprized that Quebec did not consider these issues, as the federal government did. And since there has not been any open data initiative, this website has not fallen into the new trendy criteria of openess, which include reusable data.
If you look at the Edgeryders licence, ‘Council of Europe-created (admin) content on this site is the intellectual property of the Council of Europe. Third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.’
'USERS are free:
to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
By publishing content, including photos, videos, stories or comments on the Destination Québec site, you hereby grant the Ministère du Tourisme, free of charge, a non-exclusive and non-transferable worldwide licence authorizing the reproduction and communication to the public by telecommunication of the content for use on the site as well as on the official tourist site of the government of Québec. The copyright licence terminates with the deletion of the said content or, for content rebroadcast on the official tourist site of the government of Québec, 24 hours later.
Moreover, despite the non-transferrable nature of the licence, the content that you publish on the site may require a sub-licence for reproduction and communication to the public by telecommunication to enable the Ministère du Tourisme to use partners where necessary and allow them to host the content under the responsibility of the Ministère du Tourisme.
You guarantee the Ministère du Tourisme and the government of Québec that you have all the necessary rights to publish the content on the site and grant this licence to the Ministère du Tourisme. You also guarantee the Ministère du Tourisme and the government of Québec that all content published does not violate other people’s rights or the Terms and Conditions.»
In short: the author keeps its rights, but gives the government of Quebec a (revocable) permission to use the photos. It is a reasonable way of handling copyright if you don't use free licenses.
As said short time ago, it would be great to have (at least the possibility of choosing) a Creative Commons license, but anyway these are not the “Give Us All Your Rights”-terms of some other websites…
I can be wrong, but it seems to me that this project from Quebec is interesting but misses the (IMHO) most important point of Wiki Loves Monuments, that is, contributing to the common knowledge.
The aim of BonjourQuebec seems only to promote tourism in Quebec, which of course is OK (this is why the minister of tourism exists!), and it is a step toward the spreading of community-driven projects, but compared to WLM is a bit limited. WLM has some other aims:
increase the number and the quality of free (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licenced) photos available;
raise awareness about the free licences;
promote free cultural projects like Wikimedia Commons.
It would be great if BonjourQuebec switched to a free Creative Commons license, or at least gave the authors the possibility of picking the licence they like (if I understand correctly, this is not the case).
What can I say? @laurentius got it completely right.
There is probably some issue with Quebec and licenses. Even their open data portal uses CC - share alike licenses: which is ok, still open licenses, but are criticized by some because they are thought to limit the extent to which commercial services are built on top of open data.
I keep Laurentius suggestions on the ice till Dec2012
Euh, there is no opendata portal in Quebec yet. Such a project was announced on May 2nd, 2012. It is expected to be online, some time in June 2012. Bonjour Quebec was created in 2010, and although opendata was strongly implemented elsewhere in the world, and even in the Rest of Canada, by a few cities, the concept of opendata had not yet landed in the Quebecois land in 2010. As a matter of fact, it just barely arrived now, since the City of Montreal has launched its opendata portal only last November 2011, about 6 months ago. And the province of Quebec announcement occured just 2 days ago.
The issues described by Alberto apply to the federal (Canadian) opendata portal.
I will keep the Laurentius’ suggestions on the ice until the end of this year. The government of Quebec announced a second portal, to be up around December 2012, where citizens are supposed be allowed to propose improvements and ideas. Yet, this remains to be seen…
Until then, it is not worthed to bother trying to propose a thing (as their listening capacities are rather low).
I think that in the worl are a lot of pwople who love taking photos so it would stimulte them to participate at this wiki project.I guess it`s a good way to motivate them.
Annouce me if it will become reality. Wish you luck!
So, Wikimedia won the battle: the Italian Ministry of Culture signed an agreement that legalizes taking pictures of Italian state-run monuments and share them freely. We expect local and regional authorities to follow suit. In Wiki We Trust.
