Talk:Wikimania Awards

hmmm, where is the book category this year? :o

6 Megapixel minimum?

Do I understand correctly that any entries have to be at least 6 MegaPixel in size? In other words, are all the photographs I ever took with my Ixus400 (4 MP) and Coolpix5400 (5 MP) unacceptable? DirkvdM 11:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

No, the comparison table showed that 4 Mega Pixels is minimunm, but 6 Mega Pixels is recommended. Brock ^contact... 14:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Brock, please, you are not in the jury group, do not help to answer the question because you do not know what jury has discussed in the past and in tonight. If you answer any further more questions or modify the award page again, I will block your account immediately. --H.T. Chien (Talk / Contributions) 17:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Why are all the measurements in megapixels, instead of the pixels wide and pixels tall, which is what Wikimedia Commons itself uses to describe image quality. -- Zanimum 17:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The original idea to set the image as 20cm x 30cm, no megapixel measurement. The megapixel measurement was added by Brock and he is not a member of the jury. --H.T. Chien (Talk / Contributions) 17:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

20 x 30 cm is good, but what resolution? At 72 dpi, 20 x 30 cm is 567 x 850 px. At 96 dpi, it is 756 x 1133 px. At 150 dpi, it is 1181 x 1771 px. At 300 dpi, it is 2363 x 3542 px. -- Zanimum 18:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

One category per project only?

What does "One category per project only" mean? DirkvdM 11:17, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

It means one picture should be participated in one category. Brock ^contact... 15:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I thought that might be it. But you and Alvesgaspar have placed more than one photo in several categories. Are you then disqualified? DirkvdM 17:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

If the judges follow the rules, yes, that should mean those pics are disqualified, further reducing the number of entries. -- Zanimum 17:24, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, the jury has some discussion tonight and we decided to change the rule to include more entries. All categories will be mixed into 1 category and the jury will choice winners amount these pictures. I will modify the page later. --H.T. Chien (Talk / Contributions) 17:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Commercial use

For the Chung-Hwa Telecom Share Award the note states that "the attendee must agree to release the graphic for commercial use". But aren't all photographs uploaded to Wikipedia free for commercial use? I believe that Jimbo has even specifically stated that they should be (although the reasons elude me). DirkvdM 11:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've been chipping away at the text of this page, to try and simplify it all for native English speakers. The text many similar inconsistencies in it, even "the awards are for text, sound, video, and images" later "this year we're only awarding images". Any image uploaded to Wikimedia Commons after the entire Wikimedia Foundation passed the licensing policy on May 23 of this year must be available for commercial use, and must follow a score of other distinctions listed on this page of "Freedom Defined". -- Zanimum 17:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help on improving the text, I really appreciated. We stated "for commercial use" in the note for Chung-Hwa Telecom Share Award because our sponsor Chung-Hwa Telecom has specifically requested the winning picture must allow to be used for commercial use, and we wish the attendees to be aware of it. --H.T. Chien (Talk / Contributions) 17:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Entries from 17:14 UTC and later

For some reason, the Wikimania Awards page and its daughter templates were all locked at 17:14 UTC, well before the 23:59 UTC deadline. I will be submitting the following images, should the page ever be unlocked. -- Zanimum 17:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• 
  Robin Wong: Hilary Duff appears at MuchMusic for a MuchOnDemand episode. (for the people category)
• 
  Robin Wong: Avril Lavigne at the 2007 MuchMusic Video Awards. (for the people category)

Hi Zanimum, I'm going to modify the rule due to jury discussion tonight. I will unlock the page in about 1 hour, please be patient, thanks. --H.T. Chien (Talk / Contributions) 17:37, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Why are the templates for adding new images locked? You can lock the rules without locking the images. -- Zanimum 17:51, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Because we will merge all submission templates into 1 template, according to the jury discussion tonight. I will list the details ASAP. --H.T. Chien (Talk / Contributions) 17:53, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

How to Participate

"Edit the award templates to add your graphics (see the description for each award below)." But I can edit this because of "This page has been protected from editing, because it is included in the following page, which are protected with the "cascading" option turned on: Wikimania Awards " How can I do this? --Beyond silence 18:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

See above. They're apparently making some last minute changes to the rules and structure of the page. -- Zanimum 18:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I inserted a few images 10 minutes ago that are not included in the complete list at the page right now. I'd be happy if someone could fix this, because I'm offline soon. -- 62.117.6.106 18:53, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for fixing!--Beyond silence 00:05, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarification about publication date needed

So the picture must be taken within this past year to qualify or do you mean that the picture must be uploaded within this past year to qualify? Allentchang 23:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Winners of all themes

So far the winners of 4 themes have been announced. What about the other categories? - Alvesgaspar 13:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, the jury decided to announce 4 winners only. There will be no winners for other categories. Thanks for asking and sorry for the late reply. --H.T. Chien (Talk / Contributions) 02:35, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• • That is a weird procedure to alter the rules after the contest has started (as a matter of fact, when the contest is already over !). Not only the juri decided 'a posteriori' not to consider some of the categories, but the winning picture does not belong to the "Share" theme! I'm sorry for the comment, but this doesn't look serious at all! - Alvesgaspar 09:05, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• • I concur that changing the rules a posteriori is not done! Changing the rules during a competition, is not done neither. It is not worthy of any Wikimedia endorsed event.
    The Globe is not in accord here. Lycaon 09:51, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• • For the sake of Wikimedia's credibility I think that this issue should be thouroghly clarified. The juri should show his face as soon as possible and explain the reasons for his extraordinary behaviour. By the way, how were its members chosen, by election? At the minimum, I believe that apologies are due to all the wiki members who have submitted their pictures, in good faith, to the contest. I'll wait for some time before posting my comments here. - Alvesgaspar 10:44, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• I don't get it, either.

1. Why do you start a competition with seven categories, but only 4 Winners? This is a bit fishy.
2. The winner of the "share" category is not even nominated in this category. Maybe he's getting an iPod now, although he didn't want one!
3. Most of the good photographers on commons were not aware of this "competition", so the winners can't really be said to represent the best photographs. -- א (Aleph) 12:14, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• ---- Discussion copied to Talk:Main Page ---- - Alvesgaspar 23:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Deleted from there, as talk:Main page is for people to discuss the main page. This has nothing to do with the main page. -- Zanimum 14:02, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I thought that the Main Page talk was ment to discuss the event! Forgive me if I am wrong and if I can't stop thinking that your action is just a crude way to avoid the problems with Wikimania Awards to be known. - Alvesgaspar 15:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Is the main page of Wikipedia the place to discuss specific articles, or suggest changes to policies? No, not unless those articles are linked to from the main page. Looking down the sidebar, I see "Community portal", which has a forum and a "lounge". Either would likely be appropriate to post to, pointing people to this talk page, to get their opinion. Duplicating discussions simply means things are harder to keep track of, and later archive. -- Zanimum 15:58, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow...

..I completely missed the boat on this. Was I sleeping for the last few weeks or was the PR for this contest a little on the small side. Looking at the participants (just a handfull of people) I guess the latter... --Dschwen 11:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I almost missed it too. I saw this on the Administrators' noticeboard‎ and nowhere else. The deadline was really tight and the setup of the submission page was pretty bad too. Digon3 15:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Boo to that. :-( --Dschwen 12:03, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

It was also on the notice bar of every page on Wikimedia Commons. -- Zanimum 14:00, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

But only for a few days (and I never pay attention to those anyway). Digon3 23:46, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I only noticed this on the last day and at that moment there were just a few lousy photographs. The winners are last minute additions. This should have been advertised more clearly. I, for example, am rather into photography and have added many photos to Wikimedia commons, but I hang out mostly at Wikipedia, because that's what I upload the photos for. DirkvdM 06:39, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia itself as organizer?

Would anyone object to the Wikimedia office, or one of the Wikimedia committees organizing the Awards in future years? That would provide a level of consistency between annums, and lessen the organizing load of the host country. -- Zanimum 16:00, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

It's just a question of decency not discussing the future until the complains about the present remain to be answered. As a contestant and a wikimedian I feel insulted by the attitude of organizers and juri of Wikimania Awards. Identifying themselves and explain the reasons of their extraordinary decisions is the minimum they should do. The load on the host country's shoulders shouldn't be invoked to excuse what happened especially when the organizers insist in maintaing an absolute silence on the issue. Alvesgaspar 20:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, it would be nice to have answers. However, I would be suggesting this even if there wasn't disagreements over the handling of this year's awards. It's simply a responsibility that the local organizers don't need to have. -- Zanimum 15:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I am of jury team. You don't have to feel insulted. After the conference, some of us needed to manage the daily matters which had left during the conference, others were just traveling abroad without good net connectivity. I myself was back home just one and half day ago and busy to fix my apartment left for 10 days and unpack my luggage. I assume others were in a similar situation, so it seems to me natural no response was available until now. As already you notice, Craig commented the situation well, and I think he did it well. We are open to criticism and proposal for improvement, but I hope fair one. Not responding to a comment submitted when we couldn't be online is not fair, in my humble opinion. --Aphaia 13:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

A comment from a jury member

Hello, I was one of the people on the jury (the other three were Aphaia, Cary Bass and Nic Hill (not sure why we were not listed on the page an oversight maybe?)). We were informed the night before that we did not have prizes give out other then the iPod and some cups. We decided at this point our choices were either to cancel the contest or consolidate the categories. We were left with a choice of having prizeless categories or redefining the categories. We were at this point going to make it all one category, we were later told that we had to keep at least the news and society categories separate. The page was supposed to be updated to match this change; however there appears to have been some misunderstanding on who was going to make the change or what the change was going to be.

The end decision was to have four categories, with the share category to be redefined as the best photo award.

I am not sure what we can do next time to promote it better, but I am very much open to suggestions.

Though no one asked, the jury judged it with usernames off screen, so we ended up with two photos by the same user. We may want to have a rule about this next year or we may just want to let the “best photos” win.

I only became involved with the contest on the first day of Wikimania, so I was unable to prevent some of the problems that occurred. Next time around the jury should be selected prior to the contest start and this jury should help define the rules. Categories should not have been added until we have prizes (ideally in hand). --Cspurrier 15:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

While material prizes are nice, just to be able to say "I rocked with my camera!" would be good enough for many people, the peer acknowledgment.

I think blind judging, as you did, is best. So long as the jurors have no knowledge of the images creators, then I see no reason not to acknowledge greatness over multiple categories.

I feel the rules should be proofread by a few people native to whatever language they appear in, before the contest, to assure there isn't any contradictions like this year. Especially inherent suggestion that CC-NC images are A-OK in all but one of the categories.)

Cspurrier, do you feel there would be any harm with a committee of the Foundation taking this project over permanently, as to make sure it's given due attention? I feel there's too many critical, convention site-specific things for the local Wikimania organizers to worry about, and this becomes too much of a distraction to be given enough time to do properly, in due time. -- Zanimum 23:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure how the foundation taking it over whould differ from the current situation. Could you perhaps explain what you are suggesting? --Cspurrier 21:21, 14 August 2007 (UTC)