18 thoughts on “Welcome to Wiki Loves Monuments – USA”

1. I would like to participate in the “WIKI loves monuments U.S.A.” promotion. I am a partially disabled vet with a passion for photography and live in the greater Phoenix, AZ area. I also have two children who would love to take part. Their job would be to get photographs from a child’s perspective for this event. Let me know if you need assistance from this area, thanks.

   • Fantastic!! Probably the best thing you can do is to start taking photos right now (and upload them in September). You’ll also need to get a log-in at Wikimedia Commons. Just go to the Commons homepage, click log-in and follow the directions. Please look at the NRHP lists at National Register of Historic Places listings in Phoenix, Arizona and National Register of Historic Places listings in Maricopa County, Arizona on Wikipedia.

     Getting your children involved also sounds wonderful! I’ll request that you help them with the uploading process to make it a positive experience for them. If they want to be able to win a prize in their own name, they’ll need their own user accounts (log-in names) on Commons. If (or should I say “when”?) they win a prize, there may be a special form for you to sign to give proper permission (assuming there are no local legal restrictions).

     Thanks for getting involved and I look forward to seeing your photos among the winners! Better yet, I look forward to seeing your children’s photos among the winners.

     • I adore photography and scavenger hunts. I think this is a fantastic idea and a wonderful adventure. I would love to do anything I can to help/promote and participate in this fun and creative idea.

       • Start taking photos of NRHP sites! You can do the rest in September.

2. I am from Germany and have quite a number of old color slides I am digitizing at the moment from two extensive trips to the United States in 1979 and 1981/82. I don’t have any problems locating the cities I visited and where I can, I would try to pinpoint the NRHP site. But after 30 – 32 years I cannot pinpoint each object exactely. Is there a possibility to upload the unclear cases and have them screened by local experts if they match a present NRHP site. I wouldn’t be amazed, if some of my images show monuments that were torn down in the meantime and perhaps never made it to become a NRHP site, some others, where I could do research with Streetview, have altered their appearance in those years. So what is the rule on uploading unsure, but possible sites?

   • This looks tricky. Certainly anything you can identify as a current or delisted NRHP site, you should upload and include in the contest. If you can’t identify the exact location, but can identify the city or neighborhood, I’d upload them with as much information as you can, but they wouldn’t be included in the contest. It’s of course possible that other people might identify them, but we can’t count on that for sure.

3. I would like to do this and was wondering if I get to keep the credit for creating the photographs and get to have my metadata within the photograph as well the applicable tags.

   • All your metadata will be kept, but if the metadata conflicts with the CC-BY-SA license, the file may have to be deleted.

     Quick intro: the metadata is just a description of the file. Professional photographers and others often have a copyright statement in the metadata.
     The CC-BY-SA license SHOULD “override” the copyright statement – you are allowed to release your photo under several licenses, and any user may choose the CC-BY-SA license and use the photo in any way they’d like, as long as they attribute you as the photographer. Unfortunately, if the copyright and the license appear to contradict each other, some editors at Commons may delete the photo in their enthusiasm to protect your rights, or under the belief that the uploader is not the photographer.

     To avoid this situation, please change the metadata to reflect the CC-BY-SA license. If you can’t do this, please leave a message at Commons User talk:Smallbones and I’ll get you a formal release to send us.

     Thanks
     Smallbones

     • Does that mean that if i upload the photos using a picture taken from my iPhone would it conflict with the license?

       • I don’t see any reason that it should.
         If you took the photo, you own the copyright unless you sold it to somebody, and so you can license the photo as you best see fit.

4. This was called a contest – does that mean there are winners, and if so, how will it be judged.
   It looks like fun – but to be honest a real contest always makes me more motivated.

   • See the tab “Prizes” for the prizes you can win.
     See the tab “Judging” for how the photos will be judged.
     Though we are getting a huge number of entries, we can promise that every entry will be reviewed. Experienced editors at WikiProject:NRHP do the preliminary reviewing. After the preliminary reviews, we will have reduced the number of photos to be judged by the jury down to about 500.
     We are extremely proud of the jury that we have assembled for the final judging. Please see their bios under the “Judging” tab.

     • I missed it too, because the main page text doesn’t mention judging or prizes anywhere so I figured it’s “Let’s have a contest to… upload pictures because it’s fun and worthwhile.”

       Prizes and Judging are in the navigation bar, but this feels like a blog post so most people will never read the HOME ABOUT ME MY CATS OTHER STUFF links , let alone click on them.

5. So basically if all of the places listed on in my county have pictures… there’s nothing else I can contribute then?

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Volusia_County,_Florida

   • There’s lots you can do! You can take photos of any of the sites, we would especially love photos that are better than the current ones. It may be a challenge – but you’re up for a challenge, aren’t you?

     Also, there are about 15 historic districts in your county. Many of those only have a single photo representing them (see their articles). Why not take a photo of every significant building in each district?

     Best of luck!

6. Do you know what wordpress theme you use? I really am excited to take part in the contest, but I also saw that you had an awesome theme for your site.

7. I’m not very happy about the recommendation to “save your photos for next year’s contest”. I don’t want to see people uploading their photos only once a year; this is a year-round project!

   • I agree – it’s better to upload them as soon as you can properly take, sort, and edit them. I did say “Better yet, just upload your photos directly to Commons now.”

     But some folks are motivated by contests. Maybe, I’ll put in something like “If you’d like …”