2021:Submissions/10 years of Wikimedia RU contests and problems of international cooperation during the pandemic on the example of the WikiUral 2020 contest

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10 years of Wikimedia RU contests and problems of international cooperation during the pandemic on the example of the WikiUral 2020 contest
Building 5 · Saturday, August 15, 21:00 UTC


Speakers[edit | edit source]

  • Co-authors
  • Vladimir Medeyko
    Vladimir Medeyko
  • Stas Kozlovskiy
    Stas Kozlovskiy
  • Dmitry Zhukov
    Dmitry Zhukov
  • Oleg Abarnikov
    Oleg Abarnikov
  • Viktor Moiseikin
    Viktor Moiseikin
  • Nikolai Litvinov
    Nikolai Litvinov
  • Gennady Lipunov
    Gennady Lipunov

Abstract[edit | edit source]

The case report contains statistics of the Wikimedia RU contests for 2011-2021.

Below are the ten most productive participants in Wikimedia RU article contests for Russian Wikipedia, indicating the number of articles for 10 years:

In the first part of the case study, Wikimeida RU and User Group members will discuss our work and answer questions:

  • What % of articles are submitted by our contestants to Russian Wikipedia?
  • What are the most popular WMRU contests?
  • Which competition had the largest prize pool? What is better cash or product prize?
  • What multilingual contests are we planning to hold in the future and what contests are interesting to the participants?
  • How do partners help organize contests?
The Mistress of the Copper Mountain: WikiUral contest and events mascot
Top 10 Editor Articles
(Russian Wikipedia)
1 GennadyL 2 592
2 Qweasdqwe† 2 198
3 DZ 2 100
4 SerSem 1 738
5 Villarreal9 1 627
6 Winterpool 1 579
7 Roman Puzin 1 471
8 Balabinrm 1 448
9 Roman Dementjev 1 388
10 Mark Ekimov 1 352

It describes in more details the WikiUral 2020 competition and the pandemic-related problem that arose during the implementation of this contest.

In the second part of the case study, we will introduce you to the complexities of multilingual contests and answer the questions:

  • How the pandemic affects the conduct of competitions and what solutions we find together with you.
  • How do we join forces to develop wiki projects with Wikimedia partners and Wikipedia editors?

Requests for comment[edit | edit source]

Valuable prizes significantly increase the motivation and the number of participants in the contest. So, for example, when Wikimedia RU stopped taking part in organizing local ru-contests Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments, and the winners lost the opportunity to receive valuable prizes, the failure in uploads and the loss of participants in the WLE and WLM contests amounted to more than 50% since 2019.

In 2017, we presented Russia CityPass Card prizes (two types of prizes in the pictures) personally, delivered by mail or courier. It was very uncomfortable! Today, an email is enough and you have a prize! You will receive the package and the card already in two cities of Russia. A question to all participants and organizers of the Wiki Loves Monuments competition: аre these prizes interesting for the Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 global winners? Please express your opinion:

  •  Support —
  •  Support That's really a very nice idea! I like these prizes! --Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 17:56, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • FYI, WLE-2020 in Russia resulted in 9054 uploads from 698 participants, which is the highest benchmark achieved by Russian WLE so far. WLM-2020 in Russia was comparatively good too, with 25741 uploads and the second best result over the 10 years. Both contests were organized by the (Russian Wikivoyage) community without any support from Wikimedia RU. They featured decent and stimulating prizes that proved to be no less efficient than the so-called "valuable prizes" promoted by the presenters. The problem with these "valuable prizes" is that they typically involve a blatant promotion of their sponsors and have caused a strong dissent in the community. It is one reason why WLM/WLE in Russia have been organized without Wikimedia RU ever since. I think that Wikimedia RU has plenty of other opportunities for organizing contests or giving out their money in different forms. It would be better if they simply do not interfere with the pure community-born and community-driven initiatives, such as WLE and WLM, because the community does not need these "valuable prizes". People join Wikimedia projects to create free knowledge and have fun, not to earn money. --Atsirlin (talk) 16:27, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks a lot for the link (about the act when, with your active participation, the jury from the Russian Wikivoyage awarded almost all the prizes to one representative of our information sponsor and we, as the organizing committee, were forced to cancel this decision of the jury). It's not about money. Wikimedia RU did not receive monetary rewards for organizing WLE and WLM from prize sponsors. All prizes were awarded directly to the winners by the sponsors themselves. It was a great practice and the winners received exciting journeys and a great mood. Volunteering is not about work for nothing, but about work motivated, rewarded (in our case — prizes with a high and very high value). — Niklitov (talk) 08:27, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
Two obvious mistakes here. First, I was neither an organizer nor a jury member of that contest, and I had no influence on the jury's decision. Second, the discussion I linked to is from May 2018, and it took place before the contest started. It was not about the distribution of prizes, but about which prizes and which arrangements with the sponsor can be accepted by the community. The conclusion was that these "valuable prizes" are sometimes bound with the requirements and conditions that the community can not accept. Therefore, the community's choice was to arrange prizes, which are less expensive but easy to handle, and it worked very well, as the 2020 statistics show. --Atsirlin (talk) 09:09, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Note: if the survey is successful, we will start negotiations with Russia CityPass. Thank you for your attention!

Session Outcomes[edit | edit source]

  • Understanding how to apply the experience of Wikimedia RU in organizing competitions
  • Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the VMRU contests
  • Collaborative Wikimedia Movement Solutions in a Pandemic Era for Competition Success

I'm planning to attend this session live![edit | edit source]

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