WikiCup image

Wikipedia editors are hardworking volunteers who have created the most extraordinary knowledge resource in history. Many contributors have made tens of thousands of edits. Some have made hundreds of thousands. But sometimes, even the most seasoned editor could do with a bit of motivation.

The WikiCup is one such source of motivation, a friendly editing competition developed by the volunteer community with the goal to improve content and make editing more fun.

The Cup runs annually from January to October, with five rounds of elimination. Points are awarded each round for contributing different types of content, including Featured Articles (FAs), Good Articles (GAs), Did You Know’s (DYKs) and Featured Lists, among other article quality categories. Administration of the event is handled by judges, who also resolve disputes and review talk page discussions. This year’s judges are Josh Milburn (User:J Milburn) and Eddie Erhart (User:The ed17), both of whom started judging in 2009.

While a lot of WikiCup contestants are already prolific editors, Erhart believes the competition is still very effective in driving content creation. “[I enjoy] seeing these editors go out and add boatloads of content to the encyclopedia,” he said. “Many would have been doing this anyway, but the Cup provides an incentive for them to do more. I think the idea of a competition is a strong motivating factor to go out and improve content.”

In this year’s WikiCup, Stefano Magliocco (User:Grapple X) led the first two rounds mostly thanks to his GAs about The X-Files and Millenium television series. He says he initially entered the Cup as a means to keep himself motivated. “I had a lot of stuff planned, but I usually find myself losing focus on things over time,” said Magliocco. “I’ve been doing a lot of work for The X-Files WikiProject, and I had planned out a lot of long-term projects. The Cup seemed like a good means of lighting a fire under my arse to get these done.”

Since Magliocco has entered the Cup, he has noticed an increase in not only the quantity, but also the quality of his contributions. “I’ve generally had a strong burst of activity at the start of each round, where my normal work rate doubles or triples,” he said. “From there, it’s really just a case of the Cup motivating me to edit better, rather than more.”

Magliocco feels that encouraging the creation of GAs is one of the main ways the WikiCup accomplishes its stated mission of improving content on Wikipedia. “I think the level of investment versus reward given for the promotion of GAs has definitely helped the project as a whole,” said Magliocco, who likes to keep track of the ratio of GAs to total articles. “At the minute, about 1 in 275 articles are of GA status, whereas it was 1 in 280 at the start of the Cup.”

Last year’s WikiCup winner, Andrew Hink (User:Hurricanehink), agreed that increasing the number of GAs is an important step in improving the quality of Wikipedia. “I think [having 500,000 GAs] is very much in the realm of possibility in the next 10 years,” he said. “As long as it’s all well-cited, all well-written, that’s a good goal to have, and it’s very doable.”

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An empty Hall of Mirrors in the Château de Versailles. Photo by Commons user:Myrabella, CC-BY-SA

If you wanted to recreate today’s Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Day, taken by user:Myrabella, it would not be easy. The ornate hall depicted in the image is the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. It is one of the most famous rooms in the world, and an immensely popular tourist destination, drawing more than 3 million visitors per year. And yet, Myrabella managed to capture the full length of the hall, completely unobstructed by crowds of tourists.

“It is somewhat rare to have this opportunity,” she said.

She was able to get this shot thanks to a partnership between Wikimédia France and the Château de Versailles, which allowed five photographers to document the interior of the Palace as part of Wikimedia Takes the Château de Versailles in May 2011.  Among the many features they captured, highlights included the petit appartement de la Reine, the vestibule de marbre and the Galerie basse. Because the picture was taken for this special event, which was also Myrabella’s first time meeting other Wikimedians, “it is of particular value to me,” she said.

Myrabella took the photo in the afternoon of May 25, 2011, and she was especially struck by the way the sunlight reflected off the “parquet Versailles,” the wooden floors of the Hall. She believes these sunlight reflections “can be seen as an indirect evocation of Louis XIV, the Sun King.”

She is very interested in architecture, and she typically likes photographing cultural heritage monuments. Her other favorite photography subjects include flowers, and cheese, which she refers to as one of her special topics. “For sure,” she said, “I am French.”

Myrabella considers herself an amateur photographer, and she first got started more than 30 years ago doing analog black-and-white photography with a Zenit reflex camera. After getting married, she took photos less often, but in 2009, she resumed her photography, “largely thanks to Wikipedia, in fact!” She started as a contributor to French Wikipedia in 2005, but now she is mainly active on Commons. Myrabella enjoys contributing to Commons because it encourages her to “take and produce pictures for a documentary purpose,” and most of her pictures are intended for Wikipedia articles.

“I am especially proud and happy because this image has received the three Commons labels,” she said, “being a Valued Image, a Quality Image and a Featured Picture.” She is very grateful to User:Tomer_T, who nominated the image as a Featured Picture candidate.

“To me, that nomination by an user I didn’t know illustrates another aspect of Commons that I appreciate very much: Commons is a true international project, with contributors of the various parts of the world, in a generally good collaborative and friendly ambiance,” she said.

(View more of Myrabella’s wonderful photos)

Story and reporting by Elaine Mao, Communications Intern

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Ruben Hilare-Quispe. Photo by Matthew Roth, CC-BY-SA

In English

Among the nearly 90,000 active contributors to Wikipedia, there are many different motivations for editing. For some, it’s a hobby; for others it’s a mission to advance free knowledge. For Ruben Hilare-Quispe, contributing to Wikipedia is a way to promote and protect his language and culture.

“It’s a kind of inward love for your language,” said Hilare-Quispe, who contributes to Aymar Wikipidiya, one of 284 language versions of the free encyclopedia. Aymar Wikipediya has just under 2,000 articles, with 30 active users, many of whom Hilare-Quispe has helped organize.

“You write because you love your language and you belong to that culture, because your family doesn’t have content already on the Internet,” he said. “It happens frequently that when you want content in Aymara, it just doesn’t exist.”

Hilare-Quispe lives in El Alto, Bolivia, where he works part-time for the Bolivian Quaker Education Fund. Like many younger Aymaras, he grew up bilingual, learning Spanish in school and speaking Aymara at home with his family. Aymara is an indigenous language to South America, with 3 million speakers worldwide, primarily concentrated in the Andes. It has been recognized as an official language of Bolivia and Peru.

Hilare-Quispe first started contributing to Aymar Wikipidya as part of the Jaqi Aru project, which he helped establish. Jaqi Aru, which means “voice of the people” in Aymara, is a community of approximately 40 young Aymarans dedicated to promoting the use of the Aymara language on the Internet. Jaqi Aru’s efforts are focused on making Aymara content available online, and their activities include uploading Aymara videos on Youtube, participating in the Global Voices Online Project Lingua as Aymaran translators, and of course, writing for Wikipedia in Aymara.

“We had been looking for some opportunity to write and make content online,” said Hilare-Quispe. “If someone wants to look for information in Aymara, Wikipedia is the first page which appears, so that’s cool.”

Hilare-Quispe says the collaborative nature of Wikipedia sets it apart from Jaqi Aru’s other projects. “Wikipedia can be edited and completed later, or corrected by another person from anywhere, so that’s a big difference from what we do on blogs or on Facebook or even for Global Voices, which is just information–you can’t modify it.”

In the early days of the project, they had to go to painstaking lengths to edit. In-home Internet access in Bolivia is not widespread, so Hilare Quispe and his community went to Internet cafes, where they found articles in Spanish, English or French Wikipedias, and clicked the “edit” button and copied the full text of the article, including the wiki-markup. They saved the articles offline and took them home or to school to translate into Aymara, then returned to Internet cafes to upload the new articles to Aymar Wikipediya.

Now, Hilare-Quispe and the Jaqi Aru team create new articles directly in Aymara on the Aymar Wikipedia. Thanks to workshops from the group of editors seeking to form an official Wikimedia chapter in Bolivia, they understand wiki-markup, including formatting text and uploading images. Hilare-Quispe even has in-home Internet access via modem, so he no longer has to trek over to the internet cafe to download article text.

“I think Jaqi Aru as a team has had a great influence,” he said. “Now many other young people think to create websites in Aymara, most of them write on Facebook in Aymara, and they share information about their communities in Aymara.”

He also said that Wikimedia Foundation initiatives to simplify the editing process would have a positive impact on their work. Hilare-Quispe said the he hopes the Wikipedia visual editor will significantly increase the editorship for Aymar Wikipediya.

“A huge group of people already know how to write on the computer,” he said, “so that could be perfect if Wikimedia works in an easier way to edit.”

Beyond Aymara, Hilare-Quispe hopes Wikipedia will be widely used by other minority language communities to help preserve their knowledge and culture. “The goal is to spread to other native languages in Bolivia like Guaraní, Mosetén, Chipaya, or Quechua,” he said. “We can share this information [about Wikipedia] and strengthen those minority languages.”

According to Hilare-Quispe, Wikipedia has played an important role in helping Jaqi Aru accomplish its mission.

“Wikipedia allows you to participate in the worldwide population with your language, and so that’s really really important for us, for Aymaras,” he said. “When you look for something in Aymara, maybe tomorrow or in the future, someone is going to look for the same information, so when you know something you can write it. It’s just that kind of process, and that’s why I like it.”

Story and reporting by Elaine Mao, Communications Intern
Additional reporting by Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager 

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Colosseo di Roma, a photo by Costa. CC-BY-SA

Today’s Commons Picture of the Day is a beautiful panoramic shot of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, photographed by Paolo Costa Baldi (user: Paolostefano1412). Costa lives and works in Caracas Venezuela, but he took the image while traveling with his sister in Italy. He first became interested in photography at the age of 18, and he has been an avid photographer for almost 10 years now.

Costa took multiple shots on his Nikon D90 and then stitched the individual images together into a single panoramic using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The day he visited the Colosseum was ideal in terms of atmosphere and lighting conditions, says Costa, and the beautiful cloudless sky provided the perfect background for the picture.

There were still challenges to getting the perfect shot. “Panoramic shots are always complicated when there are people around,” he said. “You have to be careful not to show the same person in two different locations at the same time, and not to cut people in half when stitching single images together. The place was packed with tourists since it was August.”

In addition, Costa was working without a tripod, so he had to hold the camera up with his hands, trying to keep the horizon steady and horizontal while rotating the camera through the 24 or more shots that were stitched together to form the final product.

Costa said he and his sister had to wait in line for more than two hours in very hot weather just to enter the Colosseum that day, but once inside, he said, “my camera started bursting shots like crazy.” When taking this picture, he hoped to communicate to viewers the immensity and beauty of the Colosseum. “I want them to feel as I felt there,” said Costa, “to know that the Colosseum was an incredible place where incredible events took place many centuries ago. It still hasn’t lost its magic and overwhelming atmosphere despite the years.”

Costa has been contributing his pictures to Wikimedia Commons for a little under a year, and already 11 of his photos have been selected as Featured Pictures. He primarily enjoys taking pictures of natural landscapes and other natural phenomena, but he also enjoys street photography when he visits interesting cities around the world. “I enjoy showing the world to other people through my eyes,” he said. “I think life is too short, and the world is just too big to visit all the wonderful places.”

Costa’s passion for sharing his experiences and his knowledge is what motivates him to contribute to Commons. “I feel good contributing to the world,” he said, “showing beautiful stuff I see through my pictures, giving other people the opportunity not only to enjoy well-taken shots, but also increasing their knowledge and opening their minds.”

(View a large version of the Colosseo panorama (Flash) and view it here (non-Flash). View more photos by Costa here.)

Story and reporting by Elaine Mao, Communications Intern

Puerto Encantado panoramic, Higuerote, Venezuela. Photo by Paolo Costa Baldi, CC-BY-SA