WLE 2016

Wiki Loves Earth took place for the first time in 2016. When I set out to make WLE work this year after a false start in 2015 one the first issues I identified was that in 2015 too large a group of people step forward to help make it work and that appeared to have been a hinderance. This year I decide that as President of WMAU I would run the whole process as as possible by myself leaving some the organisational and participant by the way side. The upload dtes were that of most other participants being 1st May until 31st May.

Setup

This process was first to indicate we were an interested party in this years event, and start the creation of WLE-au pages on Commons. Copy and paste was my friend following the way 2015 pages were designed, when I ran into some minor issue due to the complexity of templates and the upload tool to sort help from WMAu member Sam Wilson with the creation of these. In creating the pages we had to find Protected areas in Australia fortunately en.wikipedia had this already organised within its category structures, my thanks to those contributors over the years who had made that happen, especially as one the hinderances for WLM has been the lack of heritage register information and the amount of work necessary to get that running.

Next step was to approach the committee with the concept and ensure we have some incentive for those who enter to contribute their best work. The committee concluded that 10 prizes/gift vouchers of $100 each would be offered along with the overall winner getting a print of their image. When I put this to the committee I thought 500 images would be a good target for identifying success, with a stretch target being that of 1000 images submitted.

Submission period

Come the 1st of May the first images start to trickle in, we get something really special the first image uploaded to any WLE national competition was from Australia it wasnt just of any random place it was of Uluru. Seeing this I really felt that something special had happened and was about to happened it just seemed so right. It was nervous start watching the image come in, comparing the numbers to other countries checking out that the images were within scope and unfortunately deleting a few copyright violations. I also was posting to Wikimedia Australia Facebook page promoting and keeping people informed, I shared the program far and wide through every network I could find.

• over 100 images uploaded on day 1
  • from Uluru to fish at Stradbroke Island they were already a diverse
• late on day 4 we passed 400 submissions
  • we had snow on Perisher, not something people normally associate with Australia
• day 5 - 500 image submission success target reached
  • Blue mountains in NSW
• day 8 the number of uploads starts to drop off
• day 10 and the stretch target looks a little further away
  • still surprises being submitted, like the Barnett Range in the Kimberley region which didnt even have an article
• uploads slow down a bit more though 1000 is still looking possible
• day 20 and the stretch target is passed with 1100 images now uploaded

Its around here the ABC take an interest first up is a request to talk to someone in Melbourne, committee member Steve Crossin takes this on. It then followed up a few days later by a live on-air TV interview. As we near the end the ABC interviews tak eeffect with more images flowing in first we pass WikiTaje Waroona 1900 image mark which was our previously largest event contribution. The quickly the upload roll past 2000 twice our stretch target this is looking great. The WLE in Australia finishes with a flurry of uploads on the pen alternate day 3000 is passed. Yet the contributors arent finished yet theres more magic to come when late on the 31st we pass 4000 by the end we have 4126 images submitted time for the judges to do their thing.