Wikipedie:Wikiexpedice/2022/Wikiexpedice Jihozápad/Report/en
This final report is created as of March 1, 2023, i.e. at a time when all photos have not yet been uploaded and added.
Introduction[editovat | editovat zdroj]
Wikiexpedition South West (in the Czech language W. Jihozápad), which took place on Easter 2022, continued the tradition of organizing wikiexpeditions as outing several-day photo events in the Czech countryside; their goal is to photographically document villages that are not photographed or that are photographed poorly, and then add the photos to articles. The idea is that an illustrated article is more interesting, thus making Wikipedia a more popular source of information.
The selected region overlapped with the region of the Wikiexpedition West (Západ) held in 2017, because during the preparation of materials for the Wikiexpedition West, it was not possible to retrieve all the settlements, so some of them escaped our attention at the time. In 2022, we no longer retrieve settlements from Wikipedia categories, but from Wikidata, so we could get all of them in a certain area and then manually go through and filter them. After manual filtering, it became clear that there are still many settlements in the Pošumaví region in the Klatovy district that need to be photographed, which is why another expedition was planned to this region.
Results[editovat | editovat zdroj]
Over the course of four days, we photographed 81 objects, especially villages, and uploaded 2,400 photos so far. Some photos still need to be processed. Of this number of photos, roughly one-third are placed on Wikipedia (cumulatively for all language mutations), which is the long-term average for Wikiexpeditions. So far, we have improved the illustrations for 71 articles on the Czech Wikipedia, but we have also added photos to articles on other language mutations. In addition, we newly established 24 articles, mainly by translating and adding to the English Wikipedia, adding 68,000 bytes of information.
The price per photo in this expedition rose to 11 CZK, which is higher than in previous expeditions when the price was around 3 CZK per photo. These are the reasons: First of all, the price of accommodation in the Czech Republic has risen significantly. Second, one participant apologized at a time when accommodation had already been paid for and two cars had been secured (one was even borrowed because our one broke down). We estimate that if there was no waste of money for one extra participant, the price per photo could have been around 6–7 crowns. The total costs of this expedition were covered by its own resources.
This year, we once again managed to attract a new participant to Wikipedia, or in this case to Wikimedia Commons. We'll see if she continues to work on Wikimedia projects. She would definitely need more care from us, but we cannot offer her at the moment (due to time constraints). We think that if we regularly engage with her and if we also regularly motivate her, she would eventually form a habit and contribute to Wikipedia herself.
Conclusion[editovat | editovat zdroj]
Even after this expedition and the Šumava expedition, which took place in a similar location about two months later, there are still villages in the region that need to be documented. The reason is the fact that it is a large region in the mountains, but there is a large number of villages – Klatovy district is the biggest Czech district with about 220 villages. It would therefore be advisable to repeat the expedition, perhaps this time it will be possible to photograph the entire area.
At the next event, a possible last-minute excuse of the participant/s will have to be resolved in some way so that there is no excessive waste of resources. The performance of last year's Wikiexpedition was also negatively affected by problems with the uploading software PattyPan and VicuñaUploader (VU), where various functionalities alternately failed. We are trying to solve this problem by maintaining at least the VU software, but it is not an easy job because we do not have the expertise to do it.
At the same time, after more than ten years of photo events, it appears that photos on Wikipedia are not a sufficient attraction for their expansion. Although there is a certain shift in that some articles have expanded over this long period, a large number of stubs still prevail and are almost untouched, in the form in which they were created. It is therefore worth considering whether or not to create some targeted activities to change this state.
For Wikiexpedition participants (Art Jarka, Juandev, Makrelacz, MIGORMCZ) and online helpers (Petr35571) Juandev (talk) 03/01/2023, 00:35 (CET). Translated and localized from Czech version by --Juandev (diskuse) 23. 4. 2023, 10:41 (CEST)