Commons talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2024/Participating countries

Bangladesh

@Mrb Rafi, Aishik Rehman, and আফতাবুজ্জামান: I see two Bangladesh in the participating countries table. Is this an error you can fix? Thank you! Yiyi (Dimmi!) 14:09, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Yiyi, thanks for pinging. I included Bangladesh on February 12. We haven't received any message from anyone else before the edit yesterday. I am not sure about this matter but the local organizing team is working according to our project schedule. We are already talking to several external entities for local WLM partnerships, our communication guidelines for WLM 2024 is nearly ready, we are contacting donors for funding (yet not sure whether we're receiving funds or not) and our own photographer community is also being prepared for the campaign. Our other WLX campaign i.e. Commons:Wiki Loves Folklore 2024 in Bangladesh (which is nearly at its end) and Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2024 in Bangladesh are also in progress, after several years of inactivity of the WLX campaigns in Bangladesh. I would like to hear from the editors who included Bangladesh in the list yesterday. Mrb Rafi (talk) 14:40, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

@Yiyi

Wikimedia Bangladesh has been organizing Wiki Loves Monuments in Bangladesh from 2016 to 2020. However, in 2021, they decided that they would not be organizing "Wiki Loves Monuments in Bangladesh" for the time being. In 2022, I took the initiative to organize WLMBD 2022 after discussions with them. Since Wikimedia Bangladesh did not organize Wiki Loves Monuments in Bangladesh in 2022, I served as the local organizer for WLMBD 2022. There were discussions held in 2021 with Nahid Sultan, who was the contact person for Wikimedia Bangladesh at that time. Subsequently, in 2023, I continued as the local organizer for WLMBD 2023. Building on this continuity, I made the decision to organize WLMBD 2024 as well, and Aftabuzzaman created the WLMBD 2024 page on my behalf approximately one month before February 12th.

I have been the local organizer for the past two years. Neither Rafi nor anyone else from their team has reached out to me/us indicating their intention to organize this year's event. It seems unusual for someone to step in and organize without contacting the previous year's local organizer, especially when they have been actively involved. Furthermore, to organize this year's Wiki Loves Monuments in Bangladesh, we typically create the Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 in Bangladesh page one month prior. As we are fully prepared to host the local event again this year, it would be inaccurate to assume that we were unprepared, given our high level of readiness established over the past two years.

@Mrb Rafi

When you added the name of Bangladesh to the table, you must have noticed that the link to the project page was blue. It follows that you should have checked the internal information and then communicated with us.-- Aishik Rehman (talk) 15:17, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Aishik Rehman, thank you for your response. We understand your perspective and acknowledge the importance of the prior checking of the existence of a local landing page, we agree that we needed to do that. Additionally, it's crucial to list the local campaign page on the "participating country" page after its creation, so that we can ensure clarity for both local and international organizers regarding the interest from Bangladesh. We've observed a declining trend in recent WLX campaigns in Bangladesh, that motivated us to build capacity within our community to host such events. We would like to collaborate with you to organize WLMBD 2024. We will be assisting you with our capacity, global and countrywide network, our own photographer community of over a hundred members, own graphics and branding wing and our volunteer organizing team. We want this campaign to have the highest impact and we want to achieve that by combining our efforts with yours. Mrb Rafi (talk) 13:00, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Aishik Rehman,

Would it be an option for you to collaborate with @Mrb Rafi in organizing this years WLM competition in Bangladesh? Ciell (talk) 17:04, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Ciell,

We probably need to move on. As I said earlier, our team is completely prepared to organize wlmbd2024. We haven't heard from @Aishik Rehman in the last four months despite several pings on several pages including this one. If Aishik changes his mind, we are ready to include him in the team but we need to start the preparation for the campaign. You should probably remove one row of Bangladesh from the participating countries list and keep the one where I have included myself as the point of contact. Once we do that, my team will gradually prepare the other materials for the campaign. -- Mrb Rafi (talk) 19:39, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ciell I have been trying to remain as silent as possible about this situation. However, I must request both Mrb Rafi and Aftabuzzaman to step down from the organizer roles in this project for the time being. This decision is made with the best interests of Wiki Loves Monuments Bangladesh in mind, as I want to prevent any new conflicts that could endanger the project's success.

Mrb Rafi, you are currently blocked on Bangla Wikipedia (please do not say that WLMBD is unrelated to BNWIKI), and I prefer not to engage in further arguments with the community regarding this issue. I also ask Aftabuzzaman to step back from his role as an organizer due to the ongoing conflict. I am keen to collaborate with those who have successfully organized this competition over the past two years.

Additionally, Rafi, although I cannot work with you as a blocked user, I am open to involving the rest of your team members who are not blocked or accused of any issues in discussions as judges for the contest. Similarly, I will request Aftabuzzaman to remain as a judge.

Please do not extend this discussion any further. Thank you for your understanding. -- Aishik Rehman (talk) 20:23, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, @Aishik Rehman. Though it's extremely late, I appreciate your decision to engage here.

I have a few concerns regarding your latest response.

Firstly, "trying to keep silent" can never justify your four months of avoiding resolving a serious matter like organizing the WLM campaign for an entire country. Especially when you were the one who denied us the opportunity to organize it, despite our readiness to launch within a few hours. This raises questions about your capability to manage this campaign. The international team and others won't be able to rely on you in urgent situations.

Secondly, your rhetoric is anything but cooperative. As a general Wikimedian, like everyone else, you do not have the authority to solely decide who stays and who doesn't. Please reconsider your stance and actions.

Thirdly, WLM is a Commons-based campaign, and Commons is an entirely independent project from bnwiki. Your actions reflect a similar tendency to User:আফতাবুজ্জামান's, defying the autonomy of Wikimedia Commons, which led to the complaint against him on the admin notice board.

Fourthly, joining a discussion after four long months and issuing instructions for others to follow isn't the wiki way to handle things. Additionally, closing the door to conversation by telling others not to extend the discussion is not in line with the collaborative spirit of the wikimedia community.

@Ciell, since Aishik has clearly expressed his unwillingness to continue the discussion and refusal to cooperate, I am requesting the WLM international team to mediate. This RfC against the mentioned block can provide context. Additionally, I suggest contacting the Wikimedia Foundation Trust and Safety team for an overview of the situation.

We reiterate that once this situation is resolved, we are fully prepared to launch the campaign within a few hours. -- Mrb Rafi (talk) 08:29, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

@Mrb Rafi I don't understand why those old debates are being dragged here. I didn't even get admin rights when you were blocked. I do not want the project to suffer due to your ongoing conflict, so I request both parties to step down. I've seen the trouble with various projects in the past, though I didn't comment or be involved in them, so I don't want the same controversies to happen again. For example, since you were involved, everyone objected to showing the site notice of the last Wiki Loves Folklore contest on Bengali Wikipedia. I have to keep these things in mind. Since your problem is not solved I don't think I can cooperate. I don't think it's good to be directly involved until the existing conflict is resolved without insisting. Note, Aftabuzzaman has already withdrawn from this project.-- Aishik Rehman (talk) 10:50, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Again I did not forbid you to discuss, just requested. Aishik Rehman (talk) 11:10, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

While I will bring the topic to the attention of the international team, I think the main concern for me is the agreement of the Bengali community. It is good practice to make sure you have agreement when organizing events where the community is involved (and the social aspect is one of five pillars of WLM), and it is also good practice to have a consensus when using the WLM (or any other) banners to increase the number of participants. Has the community been asked what they think, can I (we) read somewhere what the community perspectives are? Ciell (talk) 15:46, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

(ping for @Aishik Rehman and @Mrb Rafi for follow up) Ciell (talk) 16:22, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ciell Here (ব্যান হওয়ার ব্যবহারকারী কর্তৃক কমন্সে উইকি লাভস ফোকলোর বাংলাদেশ আয়োজন ও বাংলা উইকিতে তার ব্যানার!) is an archived discussion in where the community agreed not to display the WLF banner on Bengali Wikis, as the organizer Mrb Rafi is currently blocked on Bengali Wikipedia. Aishik Rehman (talk) 17:17, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

@Aishik Rehman: thanks for sharing the link. Ciell (talk) 17:19, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Mrb Rafi and @Aishik Rehman,

The spirit of Wiki Loves Monuments is that it is driven by volunteers from the local communities, with the heavy weight on participation through Wikipedia. Collecting photographs of built heritage is only one of several goals of WLM, and amongst others we also want to encourage people to learn from peers about photography and Wikimedia Commons, to built relationships and strengthen to bonds between community members through the social activities in WLM, and especially to have fun together while doing all this.

The community of the Bangla Wikipedia has been clear, both by their previous objection to the WLE banner in May, as well as the indefinite block @Mrb Rafi is under. If organizers are actively blocked on a Wikipedia, they will not be able to collaborate with the community and will simply not be able to organize the WLM competition. Organizers have to take into account their own position when opting to organize WLM: you cannot, should not, do this without the support of the local community.

@Aishik Rehman: if you are still willing to organize, I will list you as the main contact person. The composition of the team in the end will be your decision. Ciell (talk) 14:23, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ciell I am willing and ready to take on the responsibility. I will finalize the organizing team and juries shortly. -- Aishik Rehman (talk) 15:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Aishik Rehman: I have removed the double line for Bangladesh from the table on the projectpage. Ciell (talk) 15:18, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

UAE

I am seeing some red flags on the participation of UAE in WLM. The landing page does not mention the restrictive copyright law of UAE not granting commercial Freedom of Panorama for photographs of copyrighted architecture and public art (COM:FOP UAE is for commercial use by broadcast media only). Moreover, at least one of the listed church buildings is actually unaccceptable here: see Commons:Deletion requests/File:St. Paul's Church, Abu Dhabi.jpg which I just initiated. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:26, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

This list of mosques to be shared here through WLM-UAE 2024 edition contains several mosques that are actually not OK here (being from 1990s up to present day). One of these is the infamous Sheikh Zayed Mosque; infamous for being the most-frequently nominated of all UAE mosques: Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Sheikh Zayed Mosque, Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Balqeesazzouz, and Commons:Deletion requests/Files found with Sheikh Zayed incategory:"Images from UAE in Lens Competition". JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 05:49, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: I understand your point, we are working on it, and we sort the list of monuments which generated automatically by ListeriaBot. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 07:14, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

@ZI Jony if it's automated, then there's the tendency to add non-eligible monuments. I think manual listing prevents the inclusion of non-eligible monuments. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 07:48, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: , the list is automated, we will remove and sort whatever affected by COM:FOP UAE. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 12:58, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

@ZI Jony hello. I suggest removing "United Christian Church of Dubai", since it is post-March 1993 (not P.D. building), listed at Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments in UAE/Monuments/Non-designated/churches/UAE. Regards, JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 15:16, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345, removed. If you have anymore suggestions please let me know. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 17:44, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Sortability

Is there any way we can get the 2nd column sortable? I don't have the technical expertise to do it. It would make it easier to figure out which countries' WLMs are currently active. Bastique ^{☎ appelez-moi!} 16:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)