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Llann started discussing possibly off topic submissions for outlierson the challenge talk page.
I can imagine that interpretations of this theme will also vary due to language problems, as apparently Outlier is difficult to translate in some languages (e.g. Spanish and Portuguese) - even though the explanatory sentence and the sample pictures should be clear... (and I'd really like to know the reasoning behind the submission of some of the images Llann selected... ;->)
--Anna reg (talk) 13:24, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, may be it's not really clear as I said when we picked up this theme (don't find back) and wanted more explanations. Can we summarize "Outlier" as "One different of the others" or "Exception" (as I translated in French)? If I opened a talk about that it's to refine the theme and because I think these pics don't match but if some says they're OK they're OK...
So what do I see on this pics? Nothing looking like what I think I understood about "Outiler" but may be I'm wrong. Comparing the other images where I see 3 or 4 (or more) similar things and 1 or 2 different,
on Prag-8 00008 (2) I only see 3 lights on in a dark street and none off;
I think Le combat des titans is only a montage of 3 pics of the same things in 3 different steps;
Llann Wé² I think the "Le combat des titans" is valid. I don't see the odd one out in the first photo (of the street lights) but perhaps if you ask the nominator he has an explanation. Perhaps the ant odd against all the white hair? The last three don't seem relevant. -- Colin (talk) 14:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Navajo Generating Station, Arizona, United States.
Auf der Pressnitztalbahn Jöhstadt - Steinbach. Sachsen. Erzgebirgskreis. Sachsen.Deutschland. Foto wurde aufgenommen in Schmalzgrube bei Jöhstadt. 03.10.2010
Many thanks to everyone who voted for my picture. My thanks also go to all those who sacrifice their time for this project. Without your commitment it would not be possible. Best regards and have a nice day Lesekreis (talk) 07:53, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
Hello,
just wanted to tell all those also active on the German Wikipedia that the Christmas Foto challenge there is now ready for voting. You can help decide the finalists here if you have an active account on the German Wikipedia or participated in the challenge...
Best wishes, Anna reg (talk) 19:02, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
February themes
And once again it's time to think about new themes... Lesekreis and Myrabella, as the November winners you'd perhaps like to decide on one topic each?
If possible, it would be great if we could start translations a few days before the end of the month...
Best wishes, Anna reg (talk) 10:46, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
As Fasching also means ball season, I could easily imagine including every form of dressing up - that should also open up possibilities to regions were Carnival isn't important... Anna reg (talk) 12:00, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
i agree, then we just need some additional photos and maybe need to replace some. Do we need two new topics in February? Lesekreis (talk) 14:27, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Great - and thanks for the fast response, Myrabella! Any comments regarding the four suggested themes, @Colin, HelenOnline, Llann Wé², El Grafo, and Lesekreis: ? After all, we should still narrow those four suggestions down to two (at the most three) themes... (and perhaps start the descriptions)
Here are the links (I added curves and spirals - feel free to change/remove pictures I found for the sample gallery!)
Yes, those two look good. I'd caution against fancy theme names like "Fine feathers make fine birds" rather than "Dressing up" because it is hard enough translating and making the themes clear without adding idioms. -- Colin (talk) 15:20, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm a bit undecided here, as I do agree that all four themes sound interesting (and Curves and spirals was clearly chosen before up and down), but I do prefer the connection the Dressing up theme has with February (not exclusively, thus giving options to everyone) to Black and White, which probably will be chosen again soon enough, as it is a classical theme... I'm asking Lesekreis to decide, as both themes were her suggestions...
Could somebody else prepare the new challenge pages this evening (you can use one of this months challenges or User:HelenOnline/sandbox/Photo challenge template as a template) and give our translators the links for the new themes? I'm not feeling that well at the moment and probably won't be much in the internet in the next few days... sorry - I'll ping them to this discussion and give you their names in one go (af: HelenOnline, de: El Grafo could probably do it, es: Ganímedes, fa: Ormazda, fr: Llann Wé² - probably noticed already, hu: Einstein2, it: Pottercomuneo, pt: Teles, ru: Okras, sv: WikiPhoenix, uk: Mykola Swarnyk) Best wishes and good luck! ;-> Anna reg (talk) 13:43, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
If we're going for the "fine feathers" theme (I'm fine with that as well as it might give me the chance to shoot a roll of film before the B&W challenge ;-)), I think we should listen to User:Colin and choose a simpler name like "dressing up". I should be able to do the German translation, but I'm pretty busy irl atm so I won't promise anything. --El Grafo (talk) 17:34, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
super - then we can start with the translations for "Dressed up" and "Curves and spirals". I have changed the name of my favorite subject. Looking forward to the new challenge and certainly hope that you also enjoy it. Lesekreis (talk) 18:18, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
I've just prepared Curves and spirals and Dressing up as the new challenge pages. The links for the February Watchlist notice in Helen's sandbox should be (mostly) correct - the translations still have to be done.
I'm unable to post images to this month's theme - Curves and Spiral. Its giving me an error - You tried to edit a section that does not exist. It may have been moved or deleted while you were viewing the page. It would be great if someone can look into this. -- Kiran Ravikumar06:45, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
@Kiranravikumar: That happens for some reason when you click the "edit" button next to Challenges open for submission. Just scroll down a bit and use the edit button next to "entries" or just click here. hope that helps, --El Grafo (talk) 09:32, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
I tried also, it's the same message, I want to modify (no import photo) the title for the section 4.2 2015 because it is written in french « Courbes et spirales », it's the same title as above for the section 4.1 2015 . Regards --Doalex (talk) 09:38, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
Oh, sorry - I know what the Problem is... the link changes with each translation realised (as we also translate the title, thus creating new sections). One more reason why it's problematic if we start the translations only when the page is already used. The link works for now, but I'll change the link on the image to the whole page, as I think that at least one more translation will be done... Anna reg (talk) 11:48, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
Hello Anna, obviously the section "4.1 2015 – Februar – Kurven und Spiralen" was damaged. The link [Bearbeiten] is missing (see "Bold text====Entries===="). IMHO is this the cause why you can not submit images. LG --F. Riedelio (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean, F. Riedelio, but perhaps the problem was solved before I saw the page. But as I do think that there won't be further translations, I changed the To submit pictures please follow this link-link back to editing the selected section. Oh, I think I just saw what you mean - the edit link doesn't appear on the translated pages, which is very strange - but I have no idea if the problem is new or not... (as you say 'broken', do you know if the German page had the 'edit/bearbeiten'-link?)
Should we let users submitt dressed-up "dummies" (I don't know the right word) : this one or this other ? I don't think the topics allows that ; only for people should be better : a dummy coud be dressed-up in a store just to sell some clothes so it's not the festive view of the theme.
As we added accessories (masks, headgear, hairstyles, wigs or make-up), I'm not sure if people are necessary to fit the theme... I'd be fine with them - it doesn't seem as if we'll get too many entries in this one...
In the sample images we don't have dummies... It's easier to shot storefronts (happyly some are awsome) then chasing cosplayers... Let's see the numbers of entries but that doesn't please me. --Llann .\m/ (Lie 2 me ...)02:46, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
I still don't think we have anything to fear - as most seem to post images of people (and some of them are really impressing), the few pictures of dummies and store fronts really don't bother me... Anna reg (talk) 11:24, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. de m'avoir signalé cette fausse manœuvre... Le fichier n'était pas supprimé, il s'est juste retrouvé dans la légende de la photo du dessus quand j'ai supprimé le doublon du sessous. Désolé.
Well, on the one hand this is a photo(graphy) challenge, not a post processing challenge. But on the other hand, we can't completely prohibit post processing, because smaller amounts of post processing are often necessary. So where to draw the line between acceptable/necessary amount of processing and too much processing? At the moment I'd tend to just leave it up to the voters to decide for themselves. --El Grafo (talk) 15:35, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
I take care, not alone of course, of similar archives of some selection procedures in my local wiki and I have always used the chronological order. First of all, the titles we use are quite random/arbitrary and I suppose that in some year we will search for a theme using ctrl+F in any case. Secondly, when more entries will be archived, we will have to split them in subarchives and by year is the easiest way to be consistent and linear, instead of creating subdividion with the alphabetical order that become more and more specific over the time (first "A-M", than "A-E", than "A", than "AA-AM"...) . In addition to that, I suppose that when I want to suggest a new theme the one key piece of information I need is if something similar has not been proposed in the very recent past. For example if I want to suggest "car" I should look for "trasnportation" or "wheels" or "road" or "accidents" but the easiest way would be just to check if the previous approved theme don't have any superposition with my "theme" simply scrolling them. IMHO proposing the "same" theme after 3 years is not as bad as proposing a very similar theme after few months.--Alexmar983 (talk) 00:52, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
thanks for your comment - I'm still not sure I totally agree, but I have no problem if the order is changed (I have to admit that I'm not sure I'm convinced enough to change it myself ;->), as the archive you mentioned doesn't include all previous challenges but only those proposed on the themes page - all previous challenges can be found either on the main page (and I'd be all for creating a chronological archive for them) or in the table of already used themes commons:photo challenge/themes, which is a sortable table and includes the challenge names (+link), date and some statistics (restriction, number of submissions/contributers/voters).
If we are creating more (archive) pages, we should probably think how to better connect them in order to create a system that is readily understood what can be found where - I just added the links to both list of previous challenges (both chronological) to the archive page.
Ganímedes just asked me, if the discussion for the March themes is already opened - it is now. And this month we don't have any winners to decide (as there were no challenges for voting in January).
I'll thus open the discussion by reminding you of the last not chosen possibilities and add the suggestion E.mil.mil posted on my talk page yesterday. I would further like to ask that somebody else prepairs the challenges this month, as I'm a bit occupied at the moment and fear that I won't have much time to help with the organisation of next months challenges... (it will be better after the 5th, but that's a bit late... ;->).
Black and WhiteLesekreis' second suggestion for February, which was highly favoured and passed over only because Lesekreis and I both preferred the more seasonal 'Dressing up')
Lodges (wooden hut, hiking hut, mud hut, mountain hut, doghouse, refuge...) F. Riedelio's second suggestion for January
As Anna, I won't be vacant for the next weeks because of work (on the road all week long) and I'm not sure I'll have enought time during the wekends (my watchlists will be full!). I'll see... --Llann .\m/ (Lie 2 me ...)18:58, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
@Colin, HelenOnline, Lesekreis, and El Grafo: Some comments? Should we go with Ganímedes decision - as he was the only one to propose one? Ganímedes, do you think you could manage to set up the new challenge pages? I'll try to help, but I really don't know if I'll find the time...
Both themes sound good. We need to clarify if b&w means the photo is literally a b&w photo or is a colour photo of something with black and white (such as one's cat). My preference would be a b&w photo. I'm quite busy with User talk:Jkadavoor/campaign to raise funds for photo equipment for on of our best butterfly photographers, so can't guarantee much free time before the end of month. But ping me if you want me to check anything or help. -- Colin (talk) 21:41, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
I was thinking in black and with pictures, but I don´t know what was the idea of the original proposer. Anna reg: I can do it first week of march, but I'm not sure if I can with the responsability :( Regards. --Ganímedes (talk) 11:21, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm not clear what you mean by "in black and with pictures". Also is colour tinting (e.g. sepia, platinum) allowed (I would say yes, as the image is still fundamentally just tonal). @Anna reg, HelenOnline, Lesekreis, and El Grafo: I can set up the English theme pages tonight I hope, but can someone else manage the translations? -- Colin (talk) 12:28, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm both busy and a bit sick atm, but I'll try to do the German translations if no one else can do it. Concerning the b&w question ... I'm fine with both options. --El Grafo (talk) 13:06, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
The German translation is ready. Hope it 's right. I would love to help more, but unfortunately I lack the technical knowledge :-( many greetings to all Lesekreis (talk) 10:29, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
Just 2 questions before validation of translations :
Black & white : B&W pictures (turn your camera on B&W mode) or black & white things on a colored picture (as we had "Primary colors on handmade objects") or colored pics turned to B&W with some program after shooting?
Do we include ladders, rope ladders, stool, footstool or just stairs in "Stairs"&Co?
I just have saturday to complete translations before going back to work (won't have any connection during the whole week). Without answer it'll be "Black & white pictures" and "Stairs, ..." with no additional possibilities.
A picture with colour removed (either in-camera or in software). Not a colour picture of a black & white subject. I would allow ladders, etc. They all have a sort of step. Particularly "step ladders". But, overnight I started worrying that b&w would be overloaded with images. It is simply too easy to take an existing photo (of any subject whatsoever) and convert to b&w. So I think we need to make this one restricted to photos taken this month (March) and also place a limit on entries of 3. Otherwise the number of entries could be unmanageable. Could our translators cope with this late request? I'll make a change in English and then try to ping some people, but I don't know all the translators. -- Colin (talk) 10:03, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
French transaltion is ok. Please check B&W new sample galley "BAD example" and delete if you think it's not OK or ad more bad sample images. --Llann .\m/ (Lie 2 me ...)00:11, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Ganímedes, the clarification on what b&w means is in the main text of the theme description. The restriction on dates "taken in March 2015" is in the later language-switch section. Btw, I've removed the "bad example" -- interesting idea but I think it just complicates things. I hope with a wikilink (if suitable for other languages please use) then what we mean by b&w should work. We can swiftly remove any incorrect images. Btw, I would allow a b&w image that had a colour tint applied (e.g. sepia, platinum) because they are still fundamentally a tonal work with no colour information. But of course, whether such an effect is a good idea is up to our reviewers. -- Colin (talk) 08:51, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Btw, Llann Wé², one reason I removed the Bad Example is that people are terrible at reading instructions. For every person who reads that carefully, there will be another who sees a colour picture of a black & white mountain and so uploads another... -- Colin (talk) 12:52, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Btw, User:Llann Wé², if you ping someone but forget to sign, or you add a ping to a message with an existing signature, then the ping doesn't work. It needs to be done in one go. -- Colin (talk) 18:32, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
@Anna reg, HelenOnline, Lesekreis, and El Grafo: , I think the voting pages are ready as are the submission pages. I'll check later tonight if the translations look complete (unless someone else can please). The we can do with the watchlist notice. I'll also do the vote counting for last three challenges, though there may be delays if some votes are incorrect... -- Colin (talk) 20:30, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
I had a quick look and there are some languages that haven't been updated. I suppose it is better to remove them (and default to English) then have a wrong/blank translation. If they aren't done by tomorrow then we can remove the unfinished ones. -- Colin (talk) 21:23, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Btw, there are quite a lot of incorrect votes to fix so it will be tomorrow at least before we get winners of the three previous challenges. -- Colin (talk) 21:23, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
I've posted a watchlist notice. I removed the languages that hadn't been done. But in the submission pages for the two challenges, I left the other languages in but put English text in there. I'm guessing that the adding/removing of languages on those pages caused problems. Please review what I've done to make sure it looks ok. -- Colin (talk) 22:51, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
I've seen no way to update "Retos abiertos a la presentación de fotografías", "Retos abiertos para votación" y "Retos previos"'s sections in this page. Do you know where I can find it? Regards. --Ganímedes (talk) 23:38, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
Colin, thanks for all the work you did this month! I'm just now checking the pages... to clear something up: the only problem caused by additional languages is that removing the <!-- --> changes the order of sections in the document (as those hidden between brackets aren't counted) and therefore the link provided in the picture at the end of the gallery. Changing something between the brackets is therefore not necessary - as long as those aren't removed, the translation doesn't exist.
Stairs right after spirals? That seems like a strange decision because there's quite an overlap. – b_jonas15:48, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
I really sorry. I did de proposal without think in the previous choice, and no one opposed. Besides, not all spirals are stairs and no all stairs are spirals :) Regards. --Ganímedes (talk) 15:11, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
b_jonas, while I also remarked on the overlap (see my first comment) I really don't think that's a problem - it's up to all contributers and voters to make something different out of the theme which does include everything with steps (and ladders have nothing to do with curves and spirals... ;->). On the other side, I was really glad that you wrote your preferences, Ganímedes - you were the only one to do so and thus helped a lot with the decision making process. No need to be sorry! ;->
But I did write to the December/January winners today in order to have the themes for April ready a bit earlier - and Pierre Andre Lecoercq already posted his favorites - everybody is welcome to comment!
I also tried to rewrite Helen's tutorial to be easier understandable if somebody helps with setting up the new challenges - perhaps somebody can have a look and see if it's easier to follow now...
Question about the votes. I seem to recall (though I may be mistaken) that the early challenges explicitly disallowed voting for one's own image. That doesn't seem to be included in the current batch. Has that been changed, or never happened, or? Not that I'd vote for myself anyways, but clarification would be nice. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:32, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
From what I can recall, when I was reading the rules for Dec/Jan, it said you can't vote for your own photo. -- KTC (talk) 01:50, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Somehow I can't imagine that - all voting pages should include the Voting header, where the second (in German third) sentence is that you can't vote for your own pictures... did you miss the sentence? Do you think it should be more prominent? --Anna reg (talk) 13:28, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Colin messaged me to advise I had incorrectly voted in a recent "challange" - I had made two 1/3 and one 2/3 votes. Unfortunately, and quite rightly, my votes were disallowed. But it highlighted to me how the layout of the page makes it difficult to me to correctly vote. I don't know how others do this, but I open every image I like in a new tab, and whittle it down till I have 3 remaining images. This is a bit tedious and for me, prone to error.
The recent round of POTY made me wonder if would be possible to adapt the POTY page code. But instead of having the one "Vote Now" button as in POTY, have four buttons: with the 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3 buttons greying out when clicked once, (and of course, the ability to un-click to remove the vote).
I know this would be a lot of work, and clearly from how I've described it, not something I could remotely consider doing myself. I don't even know who would be tasked with this, or even if this is the right forum to suggest it. However, I feel it would make the voting far easier.
Actually, for this month's three challenges, I decided to relax the final rules a little. Although I sent a message to everyone who voted "incorrectly", and many fixed their votes, in the end there was still a vote like two 1/3 and one 2/3 remaining. I decided it did no harm as it didn't exceed the numbers anyone could vote for. In other times, we've had people award two 3/3 votes, which is more than anyone else can award. So I may actually have let L-Bit's vote pass -- I can't remember the precise details now. If everyone is OK with that then I may modify my vote-counting program. Let's still say everyone just had three votes, but for each of these votes, one can be as much as 3, another can be as much as 2 and another can only be 1. If you vote less than this, I don't mind. After all, if you just award a single 3/3 then I don't mind. I'm not proposing we change the printed challenge rules with this additional complication, just the unofficial ones I use to check.
But I fully agree that the voting is hard to do and hard for you to check -- since the votes are hidden. Also, vote counting completely relies on me doing it every month. Not only is the adding-up non-trivial but the various checks have to be automated too (can't vote on your own image, rules about voting numbers, rules for new users). And we only discover people have made mistakes at the end of the month rather than when the voter (tries to) makes them. This delays the award often, and well, I might not always be around.
I think the Photo Challenge has been around long enough to be considered an established feature of Commons. So I'm going to ask if WMF can spend some developer time on it. It might be the volunteers/staff who crafted the POTY can do the same for PC but perhaps they are too busy. From what I know of Javascript/HTML making an automated challenge would not be rocket science. It would also help to have Javascript for image submission (checks image is valid (date-wise), adds it to a category) and for creating the voting pages. Does anyone know who to ask? (While we're at it, someone could automate reviewing at Quality Images, which is practically impossible to do without an edit conflict) -- Colin (talk) 09:45, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for your response Colin. I feel even more appreciative now that you even take the time to message those who make errors in voting, let alone vet the voting. I hope something comes of your query to WMF as I have never felt so engaged with Commons as I have since I found the photo-challenge. Maybe it's just me, but I see the challenge; as good as, if not more so than POTY, as a way to encourage people to contribute and be part of this incredible resource that is WM. L-Bit (talk) 09:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Too many submissions?
Hello, my name is Mateus, I am participating in these challenges monthly, and I really enjoy them. I tend to submit many images to the challenge, about five or so, but I take care not to add pictures similar to one another. However, I do not know how other people feel about one person submitting so many images. I know that for one side, the Commons Project benefits from the uploads of new material. On the other side, I do not want to ruin the game for any one else.
I noticed that this month's Black and White has a limitation of only three pictures per person, and I thought this was a good idea. However, I wanted to know if you feel I should slow down and submit less images, even for the other challenges, or if it is okay to submit five or six of them. Hope to hear your thoughts about this topic. Thank you. Mateus S. Figueiredo (talk) 02:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Hello Mateus,
I think 5 diverse pictures should be okay in most challenges - if a theme draws lots of contributions, it's perhaps a bit on the high side, but without restrictriction I'd say that it's still fine. And if there aren't a lot of contributions (say, less than 50), it can be even a bit more than five submissions per contributor. I think the ideal number of contributions for our voting system is somewhere between 40 and 90 pictures for a theme - if there are a lot more, voting gets tedious...
Hello Anna, obviously a section was damaged again ("4.1 2015 – März – Schwarzweißfotografie"). The link [Bearbeiten] is missing. IMHO is this the cause why you can not submit images.
The line "eurozapp.com--Eurozapp (Diskussion) 07:11, 16 March 2015 (UTC)--Eurozapp (Diskussion) 07:11, 16 March 2015 (UTC)====Entries====" is faulty. --F. Riedelio (talk) 11:21, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
Done Thanks for the notification. But feel free to edit the page yourself if you see an obvious mistake - it's after all a wiki! ;->
Than I'm happy I could help you. For further reference: the 'Abschnitt nicht gefunden' pages should normally include a small link to the whole page (commons:photo challenge/2015 - March - Black and White - e.g. like that), which can also be reached through the links provided in the watchlist message (I stopped marking that message as 'read' in order to have easier access the challenge pages), where the whole page can be edited. Hope that helps you to reach the page even if there's a problem with the edit link...
For the March 2015 challenge(Black and White) , I've found out that quite a few of the submitted photographs have been photographed before the contest date(which is a violation of the rules). 2 of them is and (taken in 2009 according to metadata). I also notified the talk page of another.
Thanks for pointing them out - I'll have a look today and notify the contributors to verify that there submissions were taken within the restricted period (we rely on the contributors' fairness as we have allowed conflicting metadata in cases were the uploader assured us that the camera time wasn't correct ;->). Best wishes, Anna reg (talk) 10:07, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
thanks for your input, but we started a discussion for the April themes a few weeks ago (see here) - perhaps you could help us with our decision there... at this point I'd rather not introduce other ideas, as I'd like to have the pages ready for translation as soon as possible... perhaps for May? --Anna reg (talk) 15:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
For May (or later) would be fine. Thanks for pointing out the April discussion. I have weighed in. BD2412T17:30, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Actually, I see that there is already a proposal for "Wheels", and I see no point in proposing a relatively minor variation of that. BD2412T12:52, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't understand what you are talking about... can you give an example? Ideas for improvement are always welcome... ;-> Anna reg (talk) 16:45, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
Also "Previous challenges" are in English. This is not a big problem because it is just a list of dates and month names. But the text of the section "Challenges open for voting" is important because it contains the rules for voting (if you can't understand maybe you can decide to not voting at all!). I hope you can understand me. Thanks again and again ;-) --FRacco (talk) 13:25, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi, Pierre, exactly how is the proposal? Take photo with analog and then... scanning? Take a photo of the photo with a digital one? Other? Thanks. --Ganímedes (talk) 09:20, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Anglais: Hi Ganímedes I made two proposals for topics.- 1° photographing equipment analogue photography.-2° Take an analog picture theme and do something different and attractive. Thus scanning the photo is required, either a scanner or a digital camera. In all cases it is necessary to rework the image with a photography software. Sincerely yours.
Français: Bonjour Ganímedes j'ai fait deux propositions de thèmes .- 1° photographier les équipements de la photographie analogique. -2° thème:. Prendre une photo analogique et faire quelque chose de différent et d'attrayant . La numérisation de la photo est donc nécessaire, au moyen d'un scanner, ou avec un appareil numérique. Dans tous les cas il est nécessaire de retoucher l'image avec un logiciel de photographie. Cordialement à vous.--PIERRE ANDRE LECLERCQ (talk) 10:00, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Info I've started a quick survey on the main village pump to see if there are people interested in this at all. Currently it seems that some people would consider scanning old images, but no one is really fond of the idea actually shooting new stuff on film. Unless we want to make this a scan your old stuff challenge, we need at least some people who would enjoy this kind of thing. --El Grafo (talk) 16:58, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Proposal 1: steeples and cupolas (German: Kirchtürme und Kuppeln)
As the end of the month is getting closer, I think we should decide the April themes in the next few days. [[Pierre was the only winner to reply - but it seems as if El Grafo's survey didn't get much response... (see here).
Themes proposed up to now are:
Undocumented species (little documented species, cultivars and breeds - e.g. less than 3 or 5 pictures at the beginning of the month?) Anna reg (I'm hoping for pictures of identified crocus, hyacinth, daffodil, tulip,... cultivars ;->)
I have put in a third vote of support for 100 years later, although this might be better waiting another month, since there will be some setup time. I also endorse Back side. I am a bit skeptical about the value of Diagonals, since anyone can take a level picture and then turn and crop it as a diagonal in processing. I would be happier with that proposal if the subject was truly diagonal compared to a level background. BD2412T
and I'd still like comments what you think of 'undocumented species' - perhaps renamed in Documenting Life, as in illustrating little documented life forms - animal & plant species/cultivars/breeds with less than 5 pictures on commons - as a two-month (spring) challenge.
I just can't get excited about projects that exclude people based on their access to equipment or subject matter. I haven't owned any analog camera equipment in years and suspect that many younger editors are in the same boat, and would not know where to start finding rare cultivars. By contrast, anyone can find an object with a backside to photograph, and most people probably live within a reasonable distance from a subject for which a 100+ year old photograph can be found somewhere to be replicated. Not that we shouldn't look for pictures of the other things, but the desire for specific images should be balanced against the ease of acquiring them for the typical editor. BD2412T00:05, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
The reason I'm pushing the documentation of cultivars is that it is often easier to photograph than people think - you can find named cultivars in botanical gardens, flower shops, flower shows, rarity markets (which will be taking place now in spring), sometimes even parks - and commons has comparatively few pictures of named cultivars. I am no flower expert - my interest in cultivars comes from categorising pictures on commons, and I'm often astonished where you can find cultivars and what's still missing... I can imagine that it's similar for breeds, as dog shows etc. do exist - but I have to admit that I don't know much about the situation there. As I know that it's a difficult theme, I'm suggesting it as a third (additional) theme - for two months, to give people time to take the pictures.
Analog photography is actually a bit similar - I know my parents still have their equipment and probably my grandparents too. I can therefore find opportunities to take picture if I take the time to look for them... ;-> (and that's not so different from the 100+ theme, which also takes quite a lot of preparation)
But as I'm trying to moderate the discussion - and probably will be the one to prepare the pages, as it doesn't look as if anyone else will do that - I don't really want to decide that it should be the third theme. Probably the main reason I haven't prepared the pages yet. Any comments? Colin, HelenOnline, Ganímedes, Lesekreis, BD2412, El Grafo?
Two concerns. First that the uptake may be low - but if we have that as a third theme then that may not matter. Second about the "less than 5 images on Commons". How do we check that? By category? Categories don't have a history - each of the files themselves have history that include/remove them from categories. What if someone adds images to the category that were already on Commons and now the category is too big to meet the threshold. It would be tedious to check each file in the category to see when it was added, and impossible to find if any were removed. I would imagine there are images that are wrongly categorized and that are in unspecific category that could be identified. How would we know the person had identified the image correctly (may ruin the image if we require a little plant label in each shot)? -- Colin (talk) 11:50, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Well, I was just thinking that if we agree in Back side I could change my vote to another one. In the other hand, I don't think 100 years could be best since we already choose "Black and white" and can overlapp. However, I'll support any decission you have, in order to move forward. Thanks. --Ganímedes (talk) 15:55, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Black and white can overlap with anything - one can take a black and white picture of the backside of a rare cultivar. Maybe cultivars don't have backsides, but they can certainly be photographed in black and white (which would probably not be the best use of anyone's time). All that said, however, I do think "100 years" should be pushed to May, just to give people time to find original photos and plan the steps needed to take a new picture from the same vantage point. However, I have added a support vote to Mother Nature strikes back. BD2412T16:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Actually, I wouldn't change Analog photography equipment, as that's one of the two themes Pierre A. Leclercq (winner of Household objects in use) proposed. (This is the third time we asked previous winners to help with/decide the new themes; in this case the other two didn't react). As one difficult topic is okay as long as the second one is easily accessible for everyone (if we think it very difficult, a third theme is an option), I don't see any reason why we shouldn't stick with his decision.
I will prepare the pages for Analog photography equipment and Back side (I wasn't sure, everybody agreed on back side ;->). We can still add a third theme if there's one we really want to run this month.
Anna reg, I've done the voting pages. I haven't managed to do much with the results from last month tonight, so that may take a day or two. Should be able to run the watchlist notice now. -- Colin (talk) 22:11, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, FRacco! I saw that you worked on the templates during the last days and appreciate your input! For the challenges since June 2014 it should be possible to add translations from the 'previous' list in Helen's sandbox... I'll try to help with that (just tried June & July 2014).
When I edit e. g. the entry Commons:Photo challenge/2015 - April - Back side, there is a text saying <!--Please insert images at the top of the gallery. ...--> But on the Commons:Photo challenge page there is a text saying "To submit pictures, you edit the gallery of the contest and add your candidate(s) to the bottom of the challenge page." So where should the pictures go, to the top of the gallery or to the bottom? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:56, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
I've fixed the text (in English anyway) to say to add to the top of the list. It was the bottom when this was first set up, then it got changed to the top. -- Colin (talk) 21:37, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
With my new working hours (on the road all week long, no connexion during the week) I'm not able to give a hand to the next challenges. I was lucky to be at home Wednesday night to take a little time to translate those last challenges but next time you'll have to find some one else to translate or be patient to wait for the first weekend of each month to let me translate in French. And if only Anna (thank you Anna to thank me for what I do -you're the only one to thank me and I appreciate) thanks me I'm not sure to have the motivation to continue... Let me be an anonymous contributor... --Llann .\m/ (Lie 2 me ...)21:17, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
As someone who doesn't speak any language other than English, I am grateful for all the translators and for those who help coordinate them each month. Thank-you all. -- Colin (talk) 21:34, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
sorry to hear that - but thanks for the time you did spent on this project during the last 12 to 15 months! Just tell me if you'd still like to be notified of the new challenge themes when they are ready for translation or if you get all the information you want via this talk page.
As I wrote above I'm on the road all week long and don't have any internet connexion so if I have to translate something it only could be done during a weekend. You can notify me but I won't reply as quick as it'll be needed. I keep a eye in the pages but I won't spend so much time as I did.
I am sorry I have not been able to help as much as before, my online activity has been severely disrupted over the last couple of months due to inter alia holiday visitors, power outages and computer failure. Today already we have had two hours of load shedding (rolling power outages due to national electricity rationing) followed by multiple internet outages (even though we have power now, places where our signals are routed may not). My computer died last week and I am still busy setting up and getting used to a new one. A project like this needs lots of volunteers, we should not be relying on the same people all the time. Perhaps the upside is that other people will be forced to get involved (hope so). Thanks to everybody for their ongoing efforts. HelenOnline11:25, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Proposal for modification for current April challenge
The requirement "including the location of the subject" is imo not appropriate for the April analog photography challenge, as the objects usually belong to a private person. So this sentence either should be dumped or extended with the words "if suitable" Cheers, --CEphoto, Uwe Aranas (talk) 09:52, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
As the sentence starts with Ideally..., I'd say the sentence is more a request/reminder to provide the 'location of the subject' when uploading a picture than a requirement. How exact that is done is always the uploaders decision. In my opinion the country should always be possible (and even that can be interesting) - in most cases probably also the city - nobody is asking you to give GPS-coordinates for every image you upload. Hope that answers your fears - but suggestions are always welcome if you think the formulation could be improved! (Did you read the 'rule' in English or in a translated version?)
I added that section to inter alia remind uploaders to include a meaningful file description (especially new users who may not have much experience here) so that the images can be categorised properly and will be more useful, and it has since been translated into several languages. The whole paragraph is a duplication of information elsewhere on the site and is therefore a summary. I linked Template:Information which does in fact say "if relevant" regarding location. Some say the rules are already too long and the longer they are the less likely people are to read them. I wouldn't want to make them any longer, also making more translation work in the process, when people can just click on the links and easily find the information elsewhere. HelenOnline05:56, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
"It blooms" (inspired by the old adage "April showers bring May flowers": both literal flowers and things which "bloom" or "grow", be it love or whatever)
Growing off that, I really do like "Mother Nature Strikes Back"; would be fun to do in spring/autumn, when new growth or old leaves take over whatever human artefacts are left out.
Estoy de acuerdo, y considero que pudiera estar acompañado, (como segundo reto del mes de Mayo), del tema: 100 years later, que es uno de los propuestos con mayor cantidad de votos a favor. ––Ivan2010 (talk) 12:13, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
As we are nearing the end of the month, I'll once again try to find the decisions... ;-> Crisco suggested
It blooms (very open theme, title a bit abstract, which can be difficult, though it is a common image and thus hopefully is translatable to other languages),
Panoramas (a suggestion I like, as I think it's a good idea to focus on techniques as well as content - should there be any restrictions, or is Panoramas fine as a theme name?).
If I had to decide now on the themes for May, I'd pick Mother Nature Strikes Back and Panoramas. If everybody is fine with that, we should prepare the pages and start translating...
That sounds good to me. I am fine with putting "100 years later" off for another month or two, since some planning is definitely required to fulfill that one, and it makes sense to move Wheels back for several months in light of recent similar contests. BD2412T12:32, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
Clarify panorama
I've amended the English description to clarify what is meant by a panorama, which traditionally requires a narrow aspect ratio of 2:1 or greater. I see the "little planet" 360 panoramas are also included as an example. Please can we fix the other translations, otherwise we'll get into arguments over whether an image is "panoramic" -- some might just include any wide-angle view or an image stitched from multiple frames, which aren't really panoramic. Ping Anna reg, WikiPhoenix, FRacco, HelenOnline, Polda18, Okras, Mykola Swarnyk, Llann Wé². -- Colin (talk) 10:43, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
I've translated "Panorama" to Panoramique which means a wide view with (or without) pasting 2, 3 or more pictures to make a very wide photograph.
I created a new template and I think it can help us with watchlist notice for photo challenges. You have to compile it with English values (theme titles and month names are then auto translated). Example:
{{WatchlistNotice
|id = 00000000
|text = {{Photo challenge watchlist notice
|page voting_1=2015 - April - Analog photography equipment
|theme voting_1=Analog photography equipment
|page voting_2=2015 - April - Back side
|theme voting_2=Back side
|month voting_1=April
|page submit_1=2015 - May - ...
|theme submit_1=...
|page submit_2=2015 - May - ...
|theme submit_2=...
|month submit_1=May
}}
|type = photo_challenge
|from = 2015-05-01 00:00:00
|until = 2015-05-31 23:59:59
}}
Thanks a lot for working on making translations easier (and the watchlist notice could be automated a lot more - the scheme remains the same from month to month, and adjusting the links is always troublesome). But I think I need a bit more explanation for your new watchlist template... How should the auto translation of the theme titles work? And does the template work if there are three challenges for a month (one two month challenge)? And what should translators check in Helen's sandbox?
I'll prepare the new challenge pages as soon as possible and notify the translators (I made a list here) - I can easily link your two posts here or even include the gist of it (but perhaps I should understand the watchlist template a bit better before I try to summarise it... ;->).
I just found the template {{Photo challenge watchlist notice}} you listed in the post below - you want to try that template out in Helen's sandbox this month before using it on the watchlist page? The template explains the title translation and answers my questions (I see that you included the two-month possibility) - the only thing I'm not sure you included is the possibility of having three challenges in a given month.
At the moment watchlist template works only with 2 challenges (1 or 2 monthes long). When we will need a third challenge, we can change the template and add this option. Here it seems working fine, I think we can use it just now! --FRacco (talk) 11:15, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
I updated/created new templates for photo challenge translations. If you agree, we can use this plan for translations:
Every month create a page for each of the new challenges, following the scheme: "Commons:Photo challenge/yyyy - Month - Title" (translators can translate it in their languages every month)
Also create "Template:Photo challenge theme/i18n/Title" for theme titles translation - for example see: Template:Photo challenge theme/i18n/example - (translators have to translate also it in their languages every month). This is used by {{Photo challenge theme}} for auto translation on the following pages:
On "Commons:Photo challenge/yyyy - Month - Title/Winners" use auto translated template: {{Photo challenge winners table}} (translators, please check and add your languages)
For winner images use auto translated template: {{Photo challenge winner}} (translators, please check and add your languages)
And one more question - can the template be included into the headline of the current challenges? The changing number of sections when a new translation is added is a problem for the link in the last picture...
@Anna reg: Of corse, I use it also for the headline of the current challenges. So the "entries" section is now the second section (no depending on the number of translations).--FRacco (talk) 12:27, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
if we need to go to this caterogy we need to sort it by month or in another way to know what is the current theme we need to translate. Yona B. (t) 13:36, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
FRacco, I generate the voting pages using a program I wrote. Has some of the work you did on templates affected what I should use to create that page? Perhaps you could edit the current voting pages to use the templates properly and let me know, and I'll look to see the changes you make are incorporated into my program. -- Colin (talk) 10:45, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
Ah, I haven't finished counting the vote and announcing the winners. I started last weekend, but there were a few incorrect votes that I waited for people to fix. Then I forgot all about it. There has been a rather big election here in the UK. Got distracted :-). I'll try to get it done today. -- Colin (talk) 13:52, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
Last year, during the month of June, Commons held an LGBT-related photo challenge in conjunction with Wiki Loves Pride, a campaign to improve LGBT content on Wikimedia projects. Apologies for such short notice, and perhaps challenge subjects have already been chosen, but I was hoping we might be able to do the same this year. This is a great way to promote the Commons photo challenge at English Wikipedia. See Category:Photo challenge/2014 - June - Wiki Loves Pride 2014 for last year's Commons challenge. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns, and thanks for your consideration. -Another Believer (talk) 07:38, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Please remind my complaint from last year, that the Gay Prides in Europe take usually place in July. A challenge for June would again deprive the photos of Germany, Nertherlands etc. to join such a challenge. --CEphoto, Uwe Aranas (talk) 07:43, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I think we should think about a more specific theme related to Wiki Love 2015. The same generic theme every year isn't a good idea in my opinion. For example, something about LGBT flag colors:
I think it wouldn't be a problem to let it run over two months, but we don't usually re-use themes. That's because a) we want to keep it interesting and b) we're far away from running out of ideas. I like the idea of supporting Wiki Loves Pride again, but I probably wouldn't be a fan of the June/July challenge turning into a periodic WLM-light for LGBT. Hence, agreeing with FRacco I would prefer a more specific theme of a LGBT sub-topic this time (if possible). Themes are usually fixed quite shortly before the new challenges begin, so there's still some time to brainstorm ideas. --El Grafo (talk) 11:43, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Last years's Pride theme was the least successful Photo Challenge (see stats below). There were only 7 contributors and 15 voters. The theme wasn't even restricted by when the photo was taken. Subjectively, the quality of images offered (viewed for artistic or technical merit) wasn't particularly high. And one wonders if some of them would have been taken and uploaded anyway, by those seeking to record Pride events for Wiki Loves Pride. In other words, did it really offer an inspiring photographic challenge to photographers, or interesting images for reviewers?
Commons is generally weak on images of people, their lives and beliefs, their struggles and their achievements. If the photo challenge can address that, then there is no shortage of possible themes. Disability, race, religion, nationality, health and sickness, immigration, culture, language, media, love, hate.... the list is endless. All these have advocates for their cause [well, hopefully not "hate"], though they may not have Wiki project to campaign on Commons. I find it hard to make the case for repeating a theme concentrating on the celebration of one sexuality, when there are so many aspects to humanity worth photographing. -- Colin (talk) 12:32, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
You have a point there. And based on that, making a more specific theme may prove to be counter-productive. On the other hand, if Cccefalon above is right, extending the challenge into July may open up more possibilities for shooting. Just an idea: What if instead of making it more specific we take the opposite direction and make it much broader? Call it "Minorities" and include everything you mentioned above? --El Grafo (talk) 07:27, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
I suspect "minorities" is too broad a scope, that would lead to entries that are hard to compare as a set. And one doesn't have to be (or be viewed as) a minority group to be interesting. Many aspects I listed above are not minorities, or affect us all at some point in our lives. I think challenges involving photographing people are especially hard as many are shy about photographing strangers or don't wish to upload their family to Commons. The Traditions theme also attracted small results, which is a shame. So one lesson is to consider such themes carefully to ensure there are enough people interested in order for it to be successful. Although I hope the challenge encourages people to take photographs they might no have otherwise tried, we have the community of photographers we have, so we can't magically turn still-life or landscape photographers into gifted street photographers. -- Colin (talk) 10:31, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for your consideration and discussion. Your points are valid. If something more specific is required, perhaps Pride events is best? I think running from June through July is a great idea, because that would cover both North America and Europe. But, I understand if two months is too long. Regardless of what decisions are made here, I do hope an LGBT-related collaboration is possible in some capacity since LGBT culture and history spans the globe. -Another Believer (talk) 12:08, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
What do you think about this? The message at the top of the page is shown only if the winners page exists. If you like it, I can add it to all previous challenges. --FRacco (talk) 08:37, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
@FRacco: why not just transcluding Commons:Photo challenge/2015 - March - Steps, Stairs and Staircases/Winners at the top of the page? Once a challenge has finished, the most relevant information are the winning pictures. A "See also" template is easy to be ignored with so much information and pictures below. On the other hand, "See also" refers to a related concept which is not quite the concept of the current page, but the winning pictures are completely part of the challenge page.--QuimGil (talk) 06:49, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Una observación para todos//// An observation for all
Hola a todos, he estado mirando y me ha llamado la atención que hoy siendo ya día 30, las votaciones en: “Analog Photography Equipment”, estén tan bajas, la foto con mayor numero votos en total solo tiene 12, y en otros momentos para estas fechas ya las votaciones eran mucho más. ¿Pudiera esto ser algo normal? No sé cual sea la causa, pero quizás haya algo que aún se pueda hacer: ¿Sería posible enviar un aviso, (al menos a los participantes que no hubiesen votado), para que efectúen su votación? No estoy seguro de que es lo más correcto que se deba hacer, y es por eso que pongo a la valoración de todos ustedes esta observación, en busca de sus comentarios. Un saludo a todos. --Ivan2010 (talk) 15:32, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Would feedback be appropriate?
Hello, the Panoramas challenge is the first time I participate in a photo challenge here. When reviewing the entries to cast my vote, I found that quite a few images that at first glance I really loved have technical shortcomings. Now I am aware that this is a contest and not a discussion forum. Nevertheless I wonder whether there would be an appropriate way of feedback. -- KlausFoehl (talk) 13:10, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, you can add some praise or constructive criticism between your vote and your signature. However, the vote counting software really expects each line to be a vote, some text and a signature of the voter, so if the comments span several lines, or include other user's name (to ping them) or responses, then it could get very confusing for the software. So keep it to one line and if you want a discussion then perhaps best to write on the photographer's talk page. -- Colin (talk) 14:20, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
June themes
To kickstart the discussion on the next month challenges: how about utilizing the fact that many animal/bird species have cubs/chicks by June (at least in the Northern hemisphere)? Young ones could be the theme, and there is a chance to get submissions of decent encyclopedic value. Alternatively, Families of all shapes could be a broader and more inclusive topic. — TheJerboa (talk) 19:49, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
As useful as it sounds, I'm a bit skeptical because of ethical reasons. Many species are very sensitive against humans intruding their breeding area or approaching their offspring. Some may even abandon their children completely, leaving them to starve to death. Afair, there's even controversy among birders on whether it is OK to publish pictures of nests with eggs even if the birds were not disturbed. The reasoning behind that is, that if "professionals" who can take photographs without disturbing the animals start to publish those pictures, "amateurs" will be encouraged to try the same. They won't be aware of the issue, and even if they are they won't be able to avoid disturbance. In analogy to that, I don't really feel comfortable with idea of encouraging our users to go on a hunt for young wildlife. --El Grafo (talk) 12:09, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
TheJerboa, you don't have to chose from the list, but it can be a good idea to develop the themes there (it helps with the implementation if there already is a description and a sample gallery). As we already have the 27th, we should decide on the themes quite soon...
I'll therefore try to list the themes suggested/discussed so far:
I'd love to see an LGBT-related challenge in conjunction with Wiki Loves Pride. Whether the challenge is general (LGBT) or very specific (pride parades) makes no difference to me, but anything related to pride or LGBT culture would be great. -Another Believer (talk) 04:36, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
The themes Lesekreis chose sound fine. I'm opposed to re-running a LGBT-related theme for reasons given in the section above. Sorry, Another Believer, but PC is not a political tool with which to repeatedly advance/celebrate one cause, no matter how worthy. -- Colin (talk) 14:48, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
BD2412, I don't think that we have ever considered when a proposal was submitted when choosing themes - and I don't think that it would be a good idea to do so, as there are too many other factors. One of them is that we decided in November/December to ask challenge winners to help with the decision making process (in this case Fotomatt & TheJerboa; which is why I'm all for Eyes) - others are the discussions here (new ones as well as old ones), the season, the themes run during the last months,...
I could imagine Parades as a third two-month-long theme (probably necessary, as it's a people-related theme ) - which can include LGBT but is not limited to it.
There are so many possible themes that the problem is simply one of coming to a decision, rather than process. So I say to those picking this month's themes: choose what you want as a theme (the listed ones are just ideas to inspire) rather than what someone else wants or someone else is campaigning for. Pick something challenging by all means, but make sure it stands some chance of being popular enough to encourage people to get their camera out and take and upload photos; interesting and high-quality enough that people will enjoy reviewing the results; and different enough from previous themes that we encourage diversity. -- Colin (talk) 20:24, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
@BD2412: I understand, but I would counter by saying that the order in which themes are suggested does not necessarily correlate with the best time to photograph certain subjects. This could be due to weather limitations, lighting, calendars, etc. I think we should consider when people can participate based on access. -Another Believer (talk) 22:30, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I've got the voting pages done for May's themes. However, there are 185 panoramas and 242 "mother nature" images, which is probably too much to review comfortably. There were 59 and 91 photographers for these challenges, respectively, which shows a healthy increase in participation. However, quite a number submitting more than "a handful" of images. Taking an arbitrary threshold of 10... For panoramas, Chris ALC 19, Raymond 13, Jarekt 13, Poco a poco 13 and GabrielleMerk 10. For mother nature, E.mil.mil 17, Shanomag 13, Hamzaacheema 10. Those submitting that many images are reaching 10% of the images, which isn't really fair on the many dozens of other contributors in my opinion. Plus it makes reviewing more of a chore. So I think we should consider applying one or other of the throttles we can use.
Restrict the number of entries per person to four, say. If anyone submits more than this, the vote-creation software will just take the first four. This would have reduced panoramas from 185 to 124 and mother nature from 242 to 189 (still both quite a lot).
Restrict the challenge to photos taken during the challenge period. This doesn't prevent users flooding the challenge, on its own, but does reduce the image count. For example, of the 185 panoramas, 44 were taken during the challenge, and of the 242 mother nature images, 116 were taken during the challenge.
Before we do the translations, could we agree if we are going to apply one or both of these measures to this month. My suggestion would be to apply the "Maximum of four images" to both and make the "Eyes" challenge for newly taken images as that sounds like a good one to actually get people to think about what they might go take a picture of. But we could just apply both restrictions to both themes and see what happens. -- Colin (talk) 07:27, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I've updated the voting list, but don't plan to make any more changes to the lists now voting has opened. Let's concentrate on future challenges. -- Colin (talk) 09:54, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, forgot to answer earlier: I'm fine with the restrictions. Maybe we should make the 4 images maximum a fixed rule for all future challenges, as it seems that just asking people to restrict themselves doesn't really seem to work. --El Grafo (talk) 21:24, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Colin, thanks for deciding. I just notified the translators and put the new challenges on the photo challenge main page - with FRacco's template, the translations don't change the links anymore... ;->
Best wishes, --Anna reg (talk) 23:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Anna once the watchlist notice goes up, I may send an individual message to previous participants to see if we can get the voting numbers up (I know I forget myself) and encourage participation this month -- some of the new users may not see a watchlist notice. -- Colin (talk) 07:36, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Votes in May
Calculating the votes for May may be delayed this week. I suffered a hard disc failure and although a lot was recovered from backup, the programs I used for the challenge were lost. I've redone the vote-creation program, but still need to do the vote-counting program. -- Colin (talk) 20:19, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Have backups of most of them, but the backup strategy wasn't as completed as it could have been. -- Colin (talk) 07:36, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Hello Colin, the watchlist notice is up - no idea if you'd still like to write individual messages. I also wanted to ask how things are standing with your disc failure. Do you think you'll find the time to do the counting or should we try to find help?
Update: I have the vote counting and score-page generation implemented. Still need to do the validation and the results-page generation. Should find some time Friday/Saturday. -- Colin (talk) 21:53, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
Stats
Statistics for number of contributors, number of voters and number of images for the photo challenge to date.
Period
Theme
Contributors
Voters
Images
New Photo
December
Silhouette
35
44
57
December
Coloured light
27
51
62
January
January
23
31
29
*
January
Bunch of stuff
30
40
91
Feb
Two of something
30
36
57
Feb
Newsworthy
12
33
15
*
March
Surface textures
25
27
66
*
March
Proverbs and idioms
14
24
22
April
Food and drink worldwide
22
32
60
April
Four Elements
21
32
39
March-April
Traditions
9
25
20
*
May
Bridges
39
35
105
May
Flowers and insects
20
29
43
April-May
Politics and politicians
20
22
47
June
Ruins cemetries and ghostly places
39
37
88
June
Wiki loves pride 2014
7
15
50
May-June
Time for sports
25
21
54
July
Tools of the trade
26
33
64
July
Primary colors in manmade objects
36
38
88
August
Hair
19
43
39
August-September
Holidays
32
47
54
*
September-October
Big and small
48
41
132
September-October
Light on the move
44
45
94
November
Smoke
34
55
72
November
Leaves
56
51
158
*
December
Bad weather
55
36
132
*
December
Household items in use
35
31
90
January
Outliers
43
37
105
February
Curves and spirals
50
51
136
February
Dressing up
21
31
59
March
Steps, stairs and staircases
52
45
133
March
Black and white
61
57
100
*
The challenge is increasing in popularity both in terms of contributors and images, and is attracting new users to Commons (I will try to get some statistics on this last fact). The mention on the Main Page is helping. -- Colin (talk) 12:09, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I was about to post this as a reply to @Colin: in the #Request from Wiki Loves Pride section above, but I don't want to drift too far off-topic, so I'm putting this here instead:
It seems that all themes that involved shooting people have a below-average number of participants, if you account for the overall increase over time. Not only Wiki loves pride 2014 and Traditions but also Hair, Dressing up and to some degree even Household items in use. People being shy about photographing strangers may be one factor (for me it certainly is), local laws may be another. For example, afaik in the US you are free to take photos of anyone in public space. In Germany, you theoretically may do so as well, but you are not allowed to publish those images without explicit consent of the depicted person (exceptions may apply). --El Grafo (talk) 11:26, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps we need a new section to discuss issues that affect themes involving people and see if we can resolve any of them. -- Colin (talk) 11:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
A specific section/subsection of the main page called "statistics" should be created, it should also include the lists of winners, IMHO.--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:49, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Unusual voting patterns on the Panorama competition
I noticed an unusual voting pattern on the panorama competition. Over the last two days, five users (Brabim Bhandari, Santoshpudasaini, Sudan Shrestha, Anil Simkhada) have voted on candidates 86, 87, and 88, which are all from Nepal. No votes have been cast on any other candidates in the competition, Prior to their edits beginning June 11, none of the three Nepalese nominations had received any (point-giving) comments from any other voting user. All users, except Santoshpudasaini declare on their user page that they are citizens of Nepal. The latter user has by the way given ★★★ on all three pics, which is not valid. I have to be honest that I find this voting behavior very remarkable if it is 'a coincidence'. Now, I have nothing against the Nepalese pics or Nepalese users, I would just like to ask these five users, if they see the notification, if they have been encouraged by an announcement or by private communication to vote for the Nepalese nominations? Thanks, -- Slaunger (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi Slaunger with respect your opinion above concerning the voting system as I'm a citizen of Nepal, a wikipedian and a photographer I used my voting right to boost up the good pictures to a good level and by the way i observe lot more pictures after you concern; many pictures have been voted by the user of the same country where the picture lies from, so i don't think its a personal issue it's just a matter of patriotism. Regarding the concern to other users as well may be the reason is same or i request respectable users (Santoshpudasaini, Sudan Shrestha, Anil Simkhada, Raju Journalist to explain their personal opinions too, nothing personal. Also regarding the way given ★★★ on all three pics i'm going to correct it on mine vote.Thank you-Brabim Bhandari (talk) 17:12, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi Brabim Bhandari, thanks for taking your time to reply. As I understand your vote is not triggered by some kind of agreement, announcement, or correspondence urging a group of users to vote for Nepalese nominations in the contest. I am happy if this possibility can be ruled out. I do hope you understand that I felt it would be appropriate to ask about it given that six mostly self-declared Nepalese citizen users over three days gave their support to the exact same three pictures from Nepal and nothing else. It looked like something which was not a coincidence.
I agree that there is probably a tendency of 'cultural' bias in what different voters vote on. If I look at my own votes, although none are cast on nominations from my own country, I do find that my three favorites are all from the same continent I live in. It is the three pics I find are the best, and I acknowledge that other users have other preferences, and that my particular choice may be flavoured by my cultural background. I do hope though that all users here vote on what they believe are the best candidates and do not favour nominations from their own country just because it is from their own country (the patriotism you mention). Best wishes, -- Slaunger (talk) 18:38, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Comment -- With the current voting system we are basically defenseless against this type of canvassing, which can ruin this competition. I think we should stop and think before resuming Photo challenge. Alvesgaspar (talk) 15:20, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Alvesgaspar I assume your comment is influenced by your displeasure at how a single disruptive voter at FPC was dealt with. No need for any such action here. I'll check the voting but am minded to do little unless it appears the winning three images are influenced by canvassing or over-patriotic enthusiasm. -- Colin (talk) 15:40, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
A quick glance through the votes indicates that the bias from the Nepalese voters is very strong. Without these votes, none of the Nepalese pics were high up in the ranks, but with them the three Nepalese nominations are currently positioned as no. 1, 3 and 4 in the competition if I am not mistaken. -- Slaunger (talk) 06:49, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Surendra Poudel, I have removed the image as requested, and informed those who voted for it that they may wish to change their votes in the light of this. -- Colin (talk) 22:20, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Limiting the number of entries per user: quick poll
Since this might go unnoticed in the above section, I thought I'd make a new section for this: Recent challenges have shown that the request for the participants to restrict themselves to just some of their best images doesn't really work. Having too many entries makes voting difficult. Also, since the number of votes per user is limited to three, adding more than just a few images may actually decrease you chances of winning. I therefore propose to adopt Colin's new restriction for the June challenges into our general rules at the main page. Let's have a quick poll to see how everyone thinks about this. --El Grafo (talk) 08:31, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Oppose I do not see the need. If I have several images that meet the criteria of the contest than I do not see the point of forcing contestant to choose his best 4. However I would suggest one photograph per scene/subject or the entries should not be multiple similar shoots of the same thing. Jarekt (talk) 16:36, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
Comments on restricting the number of entries per user
I am, on principle, opposed to opening polls rather than discussion, so won't vote. I agree that an informal request for restraint hasn't really worked. Partly deliberately ignored and partly that new people join and nobody reads instructions anyway. Some numerical limit is easy to enforce in software, though I suspect if we don't warn people during the month, then they might get upset at the truncated list of entries that make it into voting. I'm certainly not going to muck about with entry lists once the voting pages have been created if someone would have preferred a different set of 4 were chosen from their 19 entries. It is great that so many new images are uploaded and that so many new users are taking part. But voting requires too much effort imo if the numbers go far above 100. If that level of entry becomes normal, then we'd certainly need an improved UI and a different voting system like POTY. The disadvantage to limits, is that PC doesn't then inspire the as many images to be uploaded, which is Commons' loss. -- Colin (talk) 11:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Having a look at current (15:29, 8 June 2015 (UTC)) number of June submissions (6 and 4), it looks a little to me as if the wealth of "Panorama" contributions was somewhat exceptional. -- KlausFoehl (talk) 15:29, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
Panorama wasn't as big as Mother nature (over 240 images) and the previous month's themes had over 140 images. Themes that require "newly taken" images do tend to start slow and are probably also more affected by how inspiring they are as a theme (vs. "have I got any images that match the theme in my existing photo collections"). One solution to that may be to run 4 smaller themes vs 2 huge ones (there's no shortage of theme suggestions) which would give more variety for participation in any given month. My biggest concern is that with only 3 votes that have any points, people will struggle to do a good review of ~200 images and narrow that down to just three "best". That's an awful lot of images to look at in detail. We'd probably need a different point system if we had to regularly review 200+ images. -- Colin (talk) 16:52, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
I recently had an idea for the point system: Keep everything as it is, but once an image reaches – say – 10 hearts count those 10 hearts like 1 star. No idea if that would change anything, just thought I'd mention it … --El Grafo (talk) 13:55, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
I saw that some people give hearts e. g. to pictures, which do not illustrate the theme very well (and so they do not give them any points), but which they really like for some other reasons. I personally think that it is a good use of the heart symbol. Therefore I would not support changing hearts into points, it is better the way it is. Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:32, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
I think the hearts should have small weight. I would propose giving 30/20/10 points for 3, 2, 1 stars and 1 point for a heart. Even if the heart is given by some to show they like the pic even if it is not spot on the theme, it still gives an encouragement to get on the score board. It will give som nuances in the results, but is very unlikely to significantly alter the result. Maybe it could also encourage more voters to give hearts for images which are noteworthy, but did not reach the personal top three. -- Slaunger (talk) 21:36, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, that's basically the same as I proposed above ;-) Personally, I never really warmed up to the current voting system, as I found it very hard to narrow it down to my 3 favourites. I would very much welcome the possibility to give a comparably small number of "points" to an unlimited amount of candidates in addition to the big three. That might encourage me to participate in voting more often. --El Grafo (talk) 15:17, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
(outdent) With a 3* vote having 30x the strength of a 0* heart, well I'm wondering when I ever saw 10 hearts never mind 30. What I have done, when I rewrote the voting software for May's winners, is to use the number of votes (not the points, so same for 3/2/1/0) as a secondary sort field in the ranking. If you look at the score pages for Analog photography equipment and Back side you see a new "Support" column in addition to the "Score". So when there's a tie on the score (as happens quite often) then overall the level of support is used to rank. In this way, three people voting 2* is worth slightly more than two people voting 3*, and extra hearts count too. You can see the consequences for third place in the Analog photography challenge. Does that help? There's quite a long-tail to the scores once you get past the top 5, say, so this helps sort them somewhat better. -- Colin (talk) 15:45, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree that finding a top 3 is hard with very many entries. Unless there are clearly exceptional images, it can make the voting rather random. Most contests that deal with large numbers of entries have two stages. Perhaps choose using a "top 10%" in the first stage then narrow down to top 3. However, without clever software support, I don't really propose making voting any more complex than it is at present. There are fewer voters than nominators. -- Colin (talk) 15:45, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Wiki Loves Pride and the SCOTUS June 26 ruling on marriage equality
Apologies if this is the wrong venue to post this comment. I know it was decided not to run a Wiki Loves Pride / LGBT-related photo challenge during the month of June, which is totally fine, but I do want to invite contributors to add (or even just keep an eye out for) images related to the U.S. Supreme Court's June 26 ruling on marriage equality. We are collecting images at Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Pride 2015/June 26, as part of the Wiki Loves Pride campaign but also just because it would be great to have a gallery dedicated to images related to the ruling (there is not a Commons category for this yet). Obviously, this was an historic ruling that sparked reaction throughout the U.S. and around the world. In addition to local celebrations, and possibly even protests?, many famous buildings and bridges around the world were illuminated by colorful lights to commemorate the ruling. Please consider uploading or transferring from Flickr images and contributing to this gallery. Thank you. -Another Believer (talk) 17:13, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
Since there is such strong interest in this area, we could set up a monthly LGBT photo challenge. Of course, we could do this for any topic (a monthly biology-related photo challenge, a monthly sports-related photo challenge, etc.). There is no rule restricting any editor or group of editors from setting up a WikiProject-based contest, either as a one-time event or as a repeating event with varying themes over time, and to select contest winners and memorialize their work in Commons. BD2412T02:23, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
I think the "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" theme is too confusing. The meaning is that outsiders adopt local culture while visiting, yet the example photographs are of local culture. So I don't think that one's been thought through, and I think (for reasons of translation) that our theme names should be simple rather than rely on some idiom or phrase that may not translate well (or be misunderstood). I'd prefer a theme of "local culture" that was simpler.
The 100 years later is quite a difficult challenge and may need running for two months. One problem might be that people just submit their holiday photo of the Eiffel tower or Big Ben and nothing original has been created. Do we really think that several dozen people will go out and find an old photo + recapture it?
I'm not sure it will be easy/possible to restrict "Earth Science" to specialist geo topics -- what is to stop someone submitting any picture of a river or mountain or moorland or arable land -- in other words, any landscape photo -- and claiming it falls under the category.
This month's themes (eyes, collections) have not had strong numbers. I don't think the restriction on number-of-entries has had much detrimental effect (I still wouldn't want to see 10 photos from one person) but sadly the requirement for newly taken photos probably has. Perhaps these themes were more difficult or failed to capture people's interest? I suggest we keep the number-of-entries restriction but only use the newly-taken restriction if we are very sure the challenge will be too popular otherwise.
okay - I have changed the title in "local culture". For me "Local culture" and "Windows" are the favorites. Colin, please can you take a look at the current "eyes-nominations", many have been photographed before June 2015 ;-( nice weekend... Lesekreis (talk) 11:55, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Oh, dear. I will look tonight. If neither challenge produce enough images to be interesting to review, should they be extended, or do we just admit they haven't been successful? -- Colin (talk) 12:05, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
Opps I did not see the restrictions to "newly taken photos" only for this month challenge, and will have to withdraw all my entries. Can we skip those restrictions in the future? I do not see much advantage to it and it is so easy to circumvent by changing date in EXIF. Another problem we seem to have is that many of this month entries are tagged for deletion as "out of scope" or "derivative copyvio" --Jarekt (talk) 17:57, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
For a fun challenge like this, with no financial reward, it would be a sad person indeed who fiddled with their EXIF in order to submit an entry. I prefer to think our entrants are honest. Most photo challenges on the internet require newly-taken photos, otherwise where is the "challenge"? We have had this restriction for some challenges, but sometimes it is perhaps too limiting. -- Colin (talk) 16:41, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
For me a challenge can be met in in several ways: I can go and take new images (as I did with analog cameras or collections), or I can search through my vest collections of photographs I took, for photographs meeting the challenge criteria. I am one of those people that takes much more photographs than have time to process and upload to Commons. So many photographs I take, especially the ones not readily useful for some Wikipedia article never get uploaded. I find Photo challenge a pleasant excuse to browse threw them in order to rediscover images that fit some theme. For example my cat photos: we already have hundreds of unused kitten photos and I would not be uploading more of them if not for the challenge. But I also understand the "where is the challenge" argument. --Jarekt (talk) 14:00, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
For the record, Day and night should wait until September, when the Equinox is near, so there will be approximately equal lengths of day and night for people in both hemispheres to work with. BD2412T22:12, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
ok for Day and night in September. For the choices of July, I would like to see at least one useful theme, i.e. a theme with a direct and clear use for a lot of articles missing pictures at the moment. Things like Diagonals or Windows will never be my first option for this "subgroup". So Earth Science and Food production are my favourite, the first one has more votes and it has been already suggested at the beginning so I will go for Earth Science. Food production is also dependent on the season, an intermediate month like September is probably the best option (first plants in greenhouse in the South, early harvesting in the North, it should work). And in September the EXPO in Milan is still open and if someone has visited it in the summer, (s)he can upload the pictures.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:02, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
Let me summarize some repeated themes:
Earth Science: got a few mentions. Colin has a valid point about how to restrict "Earth Science" to specialist geo topics and prevent any landscape photo to be submitted. May be we can request at least one link to "Earth Science" article in wikipedia in the description. Otherwise we can hope that people judging the photos will keep in mind the theme of the challenge and not vote for off theme photographs.
Wiki Loves Pride / LGBT theme was proposed last month by User:Another Believer (see also next discussion). I would support that one as well. The theme might be challenging for many contributors who do not interact with LGBT, but might also bring new contributors to Photo challenge and that is always good. The subject is very much in the news so if we going to do it now seems like a good time. --Jarekt (talk) 14:00, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't, to be honest, think that "Earth Science" is going to produce the kind of images the proposer wants. Look at the article Earth science. Just about any photo of the natural world (including a completely blue sky) could be linked to an article on that huge subject.
I appreciate LGBT rights is an important campaign for some people, but other worthy causes exist too and Commons is not here to promote any one agenda. A legal ruling in the US is not in itself photogenic. There are lots of things in the news and most of them are in the news because they have happened already. Can we please look beyond the agenda of some vocal users. An inclusive, diverse and outward-looking community celebrates all aspects of life. I don't see why this topic should be promoted any more than "disability" or "ageing" or "education" or "religion" or "terrorism" or "financial crisis" or any other aspects of humanity that are in the news today. If you believe in equality... -- Colin (talk) 15:12, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
Jarekt, User:Sir James, these are all good themes. Vehicles I think will be an easy photo challenge, as the topic is wide and there are few problems finding subjects (vs eyes where people may be reluctant to be photographed for Commons), and Commons is well served already for photographs. I might have suggested restricting that one to "taken this month" but you're not keen on that and it probably didn't work well last month. Can you think of a restriction that might make it more of a challenge? For example "Unfamiliar vehicles -- not your average family car, bus or train, but vehicles you don't see every day or that have been modified." Or "Vehicles close up - photographs showing part of a vehicle in detail rather than the whole". Or something else? Well, you two decide which two themes you want this month and we need to get on with preparing the pages. -- Colin (talk) 07:16, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
For me the the additional restrictions come naturally as the only way to succeed in a challenge and have your images noticed, is to find something new and unusual. For example I doubt any of the current images in Category:2010 Ford automobiles would win "Vehicles" challenge. Restriction of 4 images per person should help with the numbers. However if we need additional restrictions than I like "Unfamiliar vehicles" theme. "Vehicles close up" is also good although they might be less useful for wikipedia needs (not that it is the only objective). I would also vote for Local culture or local color elegantly defined in wikitionary as "Aspects of a location that distinguish it from neighboring communities; the collective customs, mannerisms, fashions, artwork, accents or traditions of an area." I would also like to propose that all images in those and future challenges should be required to be properly categorized and described, with proper identification of places, objects, vehicles, plants or animals. I did not observed many problems in the past with descriptions and categorization but in case we draw some new users, it might be good to remind them about Commons "local color". --Jarekt (talk) 12:41, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm just not finding the time to help this month... and thanks a lot for involving yourself so much into the decision making proces, Jarekt! The next step is to create the theme pages for two themes - I think Unfamiliar Vehicles and one of the other two - say Food production and processing (to have a decision - if you prefer the other one, please say so; we can try to remember the remaining one as a favourite for August). Here is a step-by-step explanation how to create the pages if you are interested in trying - otherwise I'll try to take the time to prepare the pages tomorrow (I really have to get some sleep now... ;->)
Once again, thanks for your help and all the best, --Anna reg (talk) 22:51, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Looks great! I made one major change, as I understood the discussion here that 'vehicles' should be restricted either in time or in topic. As the topic is now limited to 'unfamiliar', we probably won't need an additional time restriction. (I also changed the sample gallery a bit as I wanted to add some special cycling vehicles and the gallery shouldn't be too long - rule of thumb is something between 5 and max 20 pictures).
I'll check/help/set up the other page/notify the translators this evening! There just has to be the time to do that... ;-> --Anna reg (talk) 06:05, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
I may have some time tonight to help. Jarekt what is your choice of the other one? "Food production and processing"? In terms of sample pictures, I'd personally prefer fewer e.g. a dozen at most. It is a bit embarrassing where there were more and better sample pictures than the actual challenge. We just need enough to clearly describe the topic, to avoid any misconceptions, and to spark a few ideas if required. -- Colin (talk) 06:52, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Ok lets go with "food production" for the other challenge and I am OK with trimming down the sample gallery on the "Vehicles" page. I was aiming at sparking ideas and had "the more the merrier" approach, but I am often told that my ideal number of images per article is much higher than for other people. As for sample photographs being than the actual challenge entries - that is quite likely since most of them were "featured images". --Jarekt (talk) 13:29, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
I have created voting pages for 2015 - June - Collections, Collecting and Collectables and 2015 - June - Eyes. After removing some invalid entries, they had 41 photos from 30 users and 56 photos from 35 users. So actually not too bad a number of submissions or number of participants. Once the translators have done their stuff, we are good to go. I've done the awards for Panoramas, still have to do the ones for Mother Nature. Hopefully today! -- Colin (talk) 16:04, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
2015 Earthquake in Nepal-Pashupatinath Temple Area
L'albero non gradisce il divieto
Few Karts in the amusement park in Pripyat - Chernobyl (Ukraine)The Park was abandoned 5 days before the Grand Opening planned for 1st of May Celebration and all the City of Pripyat Evacuated.
I've asked last month's winners to help make a selection. We'll see if they respond. If not, we need to come to a decision soon. Btw, I think it should be "local" rather than "locale". -- Colin (talk) 16:06, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
I like "reptiles, underwater or birds" as any of then is likely to produce images valuable to the project. Hats might result in many images off lesser encyclopedic value unless we restrict it to unusual, historic and/or job/activity specific hats. Colin thanks for inviting last month's winners to the discussion, fresh perspective is always good. BTW I corrected "Locale". --Jarekt (talk) 13:31, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Nabin K. Sapkota and Poco_a_poco, we need you to help make a decision, not just add more possibilities :-). This is Commons, so "encyclopedic value" isn't so important, as long as it has an educational use -- more important for us photographers and reviewers is whether the subject can be well captured to make interesting pictures. Perhaps you two want to pick a theme each. I'm a bit concerned that "underwater" may require some expensive camera housings, or visits to an aquarium, so may not be very accessible as a subject. Not all of us have easy access to reptiles, outside of a zoo. Anyway, it is your choice. It may be possible to run three themes, to give some variety of choice. We just need a decision ASAP. -- Colin (talk) 18:46, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
It isn't really about votes or suggesting yet more possible themes. There are lots of possible themes. Just pick two you think will be good. -- Colin (talk) 18:17, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Sorry for the late answer, I am traveling in areas where there is very limited connectivity. My suggestion was not "reptiles, underwater or birds" but rather 3 different suggestions. I'd be fine also with "reptiles and amphibians". I agree that underwater is a too spezialized type of photography that I just tried out. I don't know who takes the decision but that would be my favourite. Poco203:17, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Ok. Lets go with Personal Protective Equipment and Reptiles and amphibians. Can someone help create the theme pages (I think there are instructions on this talk page/archive somewhere). I won't get a chance till this evening at the earliest. Once we have some pages then we can get the translators working on them. -- Colin (talk) 07:29, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
I've create the second challenge page. I added the "4 images" restriction to both for now. Changing the rules template isn't trivial and needs to be done in a way that doesn't re-word previous challenges. Perhaps the template needs to be versioned and we use "...-2" from now on? There's a problem with one of the previous challenges, where I'm waiting on two people removing some entries where they submitted too many. -- Colin (talk) 13:38, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
I've posted the watchlist notice. The actual challenge pages only have three languages so far, but we can't really delay any longer. Have a good challenage month! -- Colin (talk) 18:59, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
September themes
It's time again...
I just wrote to the winners (quite late, I know...) and I'd like to start the theme discussion by bringing up
If Day and night is going to be done at all (and I definitely think it should be done), it has to be done in one of the equinox months (either September or March), so that participants anywhere in the world have the same opportunity to take both the daytime and the nighttime picture. That's why I have been holding it off for September. BD2412T18:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Undocumented personalities or 50 years later might work, but don't put those two in the same month. We need some simpler topic where people can participate more easily. – b_jonas08:43, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Since Wingerham52 was one of the winners last time, we should go with one of his suggestions. Insects is a huge topic, and we had "Flowers and insects" before. So if we do something insect-related, I think it needs to be similarly narrowed in scope. Perhaps the insects need to be multiple rather than single specimens? Or we could simply do "fossils". Llann Wé² is possibly away on holiday so hasn't commented. We need one other choice -- and as always, we need to make a choice rather than offer up yet more suggestions!!! Btw, I don't really understand "Undocumented personalities". It seems almost a contradiction, if one considers "personalities" to be a person notable for their interesting character but "undocumented" to imply a lack of notability. Perhaps Chris Woodrich can explain. -- Colin (talk) 08:53, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't spot the nomination page. Perhaps the word "undocumented" isn't helpful, since I think of text. How about "New faces - photographs of notable individuals for which Commons has no existing portrait". -- Colin (talk) 14:16, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
If we have the time and people giving their input, a discussion can help with the decision... and while Wingerham52's choices should of course have more weight I wasn't sure how final to take his question on my talk page if we already used those two themes. I'm therefore giving the two winners and all others till this evening/tomorrow during the day, as I think we are well in time if we decide on the topics tomorrow - giving us the weekend to prepare the pages (I'm not sure I remember when we last managed that... ;->) - and I promise that I will organise the pages and translations this month.
I also think that 100 years later, Undocumented personalities and Day and night shouldn't be combined (too similar and all of them rather difficult). I'm not so sure about fossils for September, as it seems to overlap quite a bit with Reptiles and amphibians. I prefer insects, even though we had a variation of the theme more than a year ago. I'd tend to keep a rather broad scope and add a time restriction (pictures from September), but making it necessary to depict more than one animal would be fine with me (please clarify for me if I understood that correctly: multiple specimens can be from one species).
I don't think the fossils is that close to reptiles/amphibians. If we kept "insects" broad then I agree a time restriction for "when taken" would be useful, otherwise we might be inundated. We could run three challenges and/or have one run for longer, if you want to try a difficult one. Anna reg, would you be prepared to make the final choice if our previous winners are either absent or not bold enough? -- Colin (talk) 14:16, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Hello all. I'm not on holydays, just working all week long on the road without connection and I don't have time for these challenges. I give my voice for the more popular topic . Have a good weekend. --Llann .\m/ (Lie 2 me ...)19:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Sorry for not commenting earlier, I was off-line over the weekend. I've been looking forward to the 100 years challenge for quite some time now, great to see it finally got launched. --El Grafo (talk) 11:41, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
The Churchill Red Arrow was built as a unique specimen for the Swiss National Exhibition in 1939. On this photo it is in the train station in Basel, Switzerland.
Late as usual.... we need to pick a couple of themes for October. I'll ask last month's winners but in case they aren't active/willing we need to have some suggestions ASAP and decide on two by the end of this month. -- Colin (talk) 12:42, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Themes discussed/commented were Beer culture, Light Painting, Mirroring (Reflections) and Rock faces. Themes with at least three Support-votes are Action verbs, Earth Science, Mailboxes, Undocumented personalities and Windows - of those, undocumented personalities ("New faces - photographs of notable individuals for which Commons has no existing portrait") was discussed last month. In my opinion it's a very difficult theme that probably needs two months (overlapping with 100 years later??) - and could be combined with something like mailboxes or windows.
I think Windows is a good topic that allows for some variety and technique. Virtually every building has at least some, of some kind. I understand the desire to cover Beer culture in October, which is a month to celebrate beer in many places, so I would go with these two (remembering that 100 year later is running to the end of October). We have some really great pictures for that theme, by the way. We must remember to keep paired pictures together for the voting. BD2412T16:07, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
Is somebody going to check the dates of the photos?
When you look at the entries for the photo challenge "fountains", there are many among them which have been taken already long before September 2015 and nevertheless they were uploaded for the challenge. Is there someone who insures that all the conditions for taking part in this challenge are kept?--Maimaid (talk) 14:59, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I've remove them from the challenge. The program I used to prepare the voting pages can check the images to make sure they were valid for the challenge (when taken, when uploaded, own work, etc). There were an awful lot this month that were not valid. I think next time we run a challenge with a "when taken" restriction, we need to make it much more visible. Perhaps someone can create a "Get your camera out! This challenge requires you to take new photos this month." cartoon/icon/graphic + text? -- Colin (talk) 20:17, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
@Colin: Dear Colin, so why didn't you remove this one (no. 2 in the challenge)? The description clearly says that it was taken in August 2006!--Maimaid (talk) 15:14, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Oh argh, I thought I checked that this challenge didn't have this restriction. It does, it already had the restriction when I uploaded the phot. In that case, please remove that photo from the challenge nominations. Sorry, everyone. – b_jonas17:15, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
As a correction- I am the author of the Taricha picture, not Animalparty. Animalparty transferred the picture from my original upload on Wikipedia, but it's my picture. -- Connorlong90 (talk) 06:05, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
For one reason or another, we lost momentum in October and didn't manage to launch a new theme or organise one for November. It is getting late so I'm going to suggest we go with the following two themes unless anyone has strong objections:
Should be fairly easy and popular themes, though the second one requires a bit more planning for anyone going out to take photos. If someone wants to create the pages for these then let us know; otherwise I'll try to find time tomorrow to create them. We'll also need some translation help for this and the watchlist notice.
hi Colin, unfortunately, I can´t create a new page, but in the translation I like to help. With the topics I agree. "Day and night" I do not like so well because again two photos must be uploaded, but it's definitely a nice challenge. Get well soon LW² \m/ . Greetings Lesekreis (talk) 08:50, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Llann Wé², were you offering to set up the pages? That would be a help, if you can. Standard rules about "upload during challenge", though with day-and-night we need a pair of photos, so the limit on submissions should be 4 pairs. -- Colin (talk) 09:22, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
It's that time again. Anyone want to suggest some themes for December? Volunteers for translation would also be welcome. Thanks. -- Colin (talk) 21:31, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Sorry for being largely absent in the past few months, I'm pretty busy IRL … Quick idea for a theme that fits the holiday season without excluding anyone who doesn't participate in that for some reason:
I've created the challenge themes and posted a watchlist notice. If anyone can translate that would be great. Thanks. -- Colin (talk) 23:05, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
For various reasons, I am taking a long wikibreak so will no longer be organising the Photo Challenge for the foreseeable future. I will be happy to share the two programs I use that create the voting pages, do the vote counting and check for various rule violations. Send me an email if interested. Hope you all have a merry Christmas and a very happy new year. See you again some time in 2016 I hope. -- Colin (talk) 15:26, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi Colin, I'm very sorry about your decision and I will miss these challenges. But I can understand very well that the support of this project in the long term is simply too time consuming. Thank you again for your recent application here - all the best Heike (talk) 14:09, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
I am also sorry about Colin’s leave. Thank you, Colin, for starting and long-time managing this Photo Challenge! The challenge has been great stimulus for several people to try to make better pictures. Hope to see you here again! -- Maasaak (talk) 19:06, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank-you for your kind words, Heike and Maasaak. Nobody has volunteered to take on the organisation of the challenges in my absence. So a prolonged break is likely to see the end of the photo challenge. Which would be a great shame as it has grown to be quite popular (nearly 100 people entered the Windows challenge) and attracts a lot of new people to Commons. So I'm drawn back early! Perhaps you two would be good enough to help me pick a couple of themes for January. -- Colin (talk) 22:25, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Colin I hope your last message means that you've reconsidered your long wiki-break... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE (on my knees begging) keep the challenge alive! I would volunteer to help but I'm already wrapped up in too much stuff, and at the start of my IEG project "Wikitherapy". Today was my first session, read this and I'm sure you'll understand why I so desperately need the monthly challenge! As for themes, I really like Local culture (and it would work beautifully with my group!), and if it's not inappropriate to suggest my own idea, how about Inside / Outside? Thanks, have a great holiday season and keep up the great work! --Saintfevrier (talk) 21:30, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
It is great, Colin, that you are back! Yes, the Photo Challenge is positive place. Conflict is not programmed into the challenge, as we can only kindly vote for the pictures (support), but not against the pictures (oppose). About the themes: I fully support the Heike’s theme diagonals. The theater (and) opera houses theme is also good, but maybe not for this January. At least in the Northern Europe, days tend to be too gray to get impressive new daylight-pictures of large outside objects now. I propose the theme signs of global warming. The recent Climate Change Conference in Paris makes this theme especially actual just now. The global warming - the increase in the mean temperature of air is still a fact, though the suggestions about the main reasons of the warming are conflicting. The pictures of this theme would be about the visible signs in nature (or in cities) noticed by us, e.g.: spring flowers, green lawn etc. in winter in the areas (such as Estonia) that usually have been covered with snow in winter; the consequences of rise in ocean water level (flooding etc.); people, plants, animals and other creatures which are suffering because of unusually high temperature, harder droughts, etc.; invasion of species; etc. I think that pictures of climate conferences, demonstrations and activists would be let out, to avoid too big diffusion of the theme. I made the theme section into the ‘List of themes’ page. Yet, I found only few pictures for the ‘sample pictures’ row from the current Commons archive at first sight. Therefore I tried to describe the theme more here. The shortage of the sample pictures points to the need of the theme in Commons. Greetings, --Maasaak (talk) 00:15, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Perhaps in the new year we can start a discussion on ideas for any changes we want to make. The Challenge has been running largely unchanged for two years so we have some data to use to see what works and doesn't work. I certainly hope we can change the user-interface to make it easier to take part, and to organise, and to establish a team of translators. We probably also need to get better at arranging the coming months challenges so they can be translated well ahead of launch.
Anyway, about this month. The "Diagonals" one sounds popular and a good abstract theme. I agree that photographing buildings (the "Theatre" and the "Inside-outside" challenges) is harder in the winter months (though night photos can be spectacular, taking good photos in these conditions is quite technically challenging, requiring tripods, long-exposure and HDR software). I do like the inside-outside challenge, but perhaps run that later.
I agree that global warming is a serious issue for our time (and I'm sad my own government talks-the-talk while at the same time cutting back on the things that might help and subsidising the things that don't). However, I have in the past argued against using Photo Challenge for campaigning purposes [I think Commons should be completely neutral], so wouldn't support doing that here. Daffodils flowering in December may well be caused by global warming, but also by an El Niño event. So there's a danger the challenge could end up a conflict by people disagreeing as to the cause, or taking photos of things that are actually quite normal. It could get messy, and I don't know any climate scientists who might adjudicate! :-)
The "local culture" theme is certainly one that should be both popular and important on an international project like this. But I think it is better if made more specific. For example, we've had "Food and drinks worldwide" and "Traditions". Could we think of some more focused aspects of local culture and use the themes page to divide that into several possible challenges?
Since "Windows" was very popular, I wonder about another challenge on a common object. My suggestion is Jarekt's Wheels theme. Both this and the Diagonals should be quite suitable for people suffering from dark winter days, or enjoying summer heat. That's my suggestion. As always, the problem is too much choice rather than not enough ideas. Unless there are good arguments or alternative ideas proposed soon, then I'll set up these pages later today, to give us some time to translate them for January (as people may well be away at times). Perhaps we can do a focused local culture theme for February. -- Colin (talk) 09:13, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Two January challenges are ready with the theme of Diagonals and Wheels. It would be great if they could be translated in advance, and checked for any mistakes. Also, could any users who are willing to help translate the challenges/watchlist notices each month please list themselves here so we can ping you. Thanks. -- Colin (talk) 18:06, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
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Support B&W + Curves & spirals. --Llann .\m/ (Lie 2 me ...) 12:29, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
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French transaltion is ok. Please check B&W new sample galley "BAD example" and delete if you think it's not OK or ad more bad sample images. --Llann .\m/ (Lie 2 me ...) 00:11, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
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(taken in 2009 according to metadata). I also notified the talk page of another.
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Info I've started a quick survey on the main village pump to see if there are people interested in this at all. Currently it seems that some people would consider scanning old images, but no one is really fond of the idea actually shooting new stuff on film. Unless we want to make this a scan your old stuff challenge, we need at least some people who would enjoy this kind of thing. --El Grafo (talk) 16:58, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
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oder .... --E.mil.mil (talk) 19:09, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
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Comment -- With the current voting system we are basically defenseless against this type of canvassing, which can ruin this competition. I think we should stop and think before resuming Photo challenge. Alvesgaspar (talk) 15:20, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Oppose I do not see the need. If I have several images that meet the criteria of the contest than I do not see the point of forcing contestant to choose his best 4. However I would suggest one photograph per scene/subject or the entries should not be multiple similar shoots of the same thing. Jarekt (talk) 16:36, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
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. Have a good weekend. --Llann .\m/ (Lie 2 me ...) 19:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
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