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Wiki Loves Monuments Bike-quest�in Moldova: from competition to collaboration

User:Gikü

Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group

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They'll go on their bikes anyway – gamify their rides and get Commons photos!

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organized list (hopefully)
expects uploaded photos
rewards quality

Classic Wiki Loves X format

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focus only on quality
boring places are omitted
so are the inaccessible ones

Shortcomings

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routes are participants’ choice

routes are predefined

hints = the actual monuments

a treasure hunt with hints…

treasure = the journey itself

…and a treasure in the end

participants are in control

all set up by the organizer(s)

reward for each step of the quest

reward for completing the quest

oh yeah, take photos of that school, too

rigid structure

To suit WLM needs, we focus on the journey instead of the destination.

Adapting the quest format

Here’s where the gamification, and specifically the quest format, comes in. We’ve adapted the traditional quest to the WLM needs. The traditional quest involves the organizators setup up some routes, putting hints along it to guide the participant towards an end point, the “treasure”. The reward is usually for completing the course the fastest. I want to stress out that the structure of an ordinary quest is rigid: organizer has to plan just about everything. Applying it without any changes on WLM would not work, given the massive territory this hunt would take place on, and the thousands of “hints needed”. Solution: Let participants decide their own fate. We want the participants to choose any route and go on it on any day they please. Their objective is to gather as many monuments and points of interest on the route they create, and to document them photographically. And yes, not only monuments for WLM. As they travel through towns and villages, they are encouraged to take photos of schools, town halls, wineries, even monuments that are not in the official heritage list. They are already there, and we could use those photos too on Commons.

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Tiers depending on effort
Compensated food & travel
Any number of attempts

Perks

Trying to make the contest more accessible, we give the contestants the following perks. First, to “level the field” so to speak we grade them on different tiers depending on the distance traveled. That way, someone who could only manage 45 km will not directly compete with someone else who did 170. Speaking of distance, we advertise that we return travel tickets to those who decide to go on the bus on or the train to the start of their route (so far nobody has taken up the offer). And knowing from personal experience what it means to cycle tens of kilometers, we reimburse their food and refreshments up to a threshold. Last year we also introduced the freedom for the participants to have as many attempts as they want. Each attempt will be evaluated separately for tiers, but also together for the main prize.

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All Commons photos of this church have been uploaded through the bike-quest, discovered by Victor.

Olly olly oxen free!

Genadii has documented his 2023 participation with his son as a short personal documentary on social media

Social media hype

Contest veteran Vladikh has not only won the 2024 bike-quest, but also took the Moldovan gold in the classic WLM

The unexpected winner

CC0 1.0, VictorCiobanu

Personal archive, Genadii Ganebnyi

CC BY SA 4.0, Vladikh

Recognizing the people

Before I continue I’d like to stop and appreciate the participants and their dedicated involvement. Answering to the need for uncovering obscure places, we get many photos of monuments that had not been illustrated on Commons before – here’s an example on the left, photo by Victor. Any bike trip is an instagrammable event, of course, but you feel you have more to say when you simultaneously take part in a competition. That’s what Genadii did two years ago, when he and his son rode through the Northern part of the country and besides photos for the contest, they took photos of themselves and then edited them into a nice documentary-style montage. And finally, last year the bike-quest exceeded our original expectations when Vladikh won the quest quantitatively but also took the 1st place in Wiki Loves Monuments itself, when the juries recognized this photo of Căpriana monastery in Central Moldova as the best of the best. At this point I’d like to connect to Victor, our returning participant this year. [...] Victor: shortly about your experience of the contest and some improvements that can be made

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Recognizing the numbers

YEAR	IMAGES UPLOADED	OF WHICH MONUMENTS	PARTICIPANTS
2022	341	137 (9%)	3
2023	636	340 (55%)	3
2024	949	449 (44%)	2
2025…	-	-	3*

*more have registered

You now have all the information needed to become participants yourselves. Though until you take your bike for an actual adventure can I interest you in a simple exercise. You have on your tables the crude map of one of Moldova’s districts, located about 130 km or 90 miles from the capital. On the same paper you have the list of monuments from that district. Some villages have monuments, some don’t but you’ll still find POIs like schools or small churches. Suppose you live there, or you take the bus from the capital. As a bike-quest participant, which route would you plan? That’s something you can doodle while I continue. I’m not going to verify your work. Or will I?��The numbers you see on the screen go up year by year. This is not the sole merit of the organizers, I’d argue this is the merit of the participants actually, who when they return year after year learn from past lessons and create more efficient routes taking more photos. Take note how, lately, the photos our participants take make up about the half of the total submissions at WLM. Our weak point in these statistics is the last column over there: the number of participants has never increased. Moreover, these are the same three people participating each year. Sidenote, I promise these are not my relatives :D

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Multiple attempts
Take all our prizes, please!
Group rides

Improvement strategies

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Jamal Nxedlana, from Bubblegum Club, on behalf of Moleskine Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Collaboration�over�competition

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Regular�meetings

What if instead of hiding behind individual winning strategies we can convene and plan together?

2025, July 24 Zoom call

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Wishing upon a 🌠

YEAR	IMAGES UPLOADED	OF WHICH MONUMENTS	PARTICIPANTS
2022	341	137	3
2023	636	340	3
2024	949	449	2
2025?	definitely more	more still	many happy faces*

*on condition they upload the photos 👀

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Wiki Loves X or similar
Befriend a group of cyclists
Be ready to help

Export requirements

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https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BIKEQUEST

Thank you!

I’m User:Gikü

co-organizer of Wiki Loves Monuments Moldova�with User:TotalAnarchy

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Q&A

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Freedom
Justice
Liberty
Absolution
Redemption
Nachos

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Justice
Liberty
Absolution
Redemption
Nachos

Freedom
Justice
Liberty
Absolution
Redemption
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CC0, Francis Akuka for the Wikimedia Foundation

CC BY-SA 4.0, Siphosihle Mkhwanazi

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Meet the Core

Organizing Team (COT)

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