Enrico Bertacchini & Iolanda Pensa, Exploring collaborative digital heritage communities: a quantitative assessment of Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy in Rethinking culture and creativity: The role of cultural heritage in the green and digital transition, University of Macerata, 11/11/2022

1. Enrico Bertacchini Iolanda Pensa
Exploring collaborative digital heritage communities: a
quantitative assessment of Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy
Cristian Buda, La Fenice, Castello di Avigliana, WLM 2017
University of Turin, Italy SUPSI, Switzerland

2. Aim
• Much of the digital transition of cultural heritage discourse has focused on
the opportunities and challenges faced by cultural institutions.
• Little attention has been devoted to understanding the role of grassroots
and collaborative initiatives in contributing to this process
• Empirical analysis of Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) in Italy
• Research questions:
• How many monuments have been documented through WLM contest?
• Which regions and municipalities have been most active in documenting
monuments?
• How WLM fosters the production and sharing of knowledge about cultural heritage
on the Internet?

3. From collaborative online communities…
• An extensive body of scholarship research has so far focused on
collaborative online communities exploring several key aspects:
• governance and organizational models (Benkler, 2002; Demil & Lecocq, 2006; Faraj et
al., 2006; O'mahony and Ferraro, 2007)
• profile and motivations of contributors (Malinen, 2015; Begin et al., 2017)
• composition of participants and inclusivity of the community (Hill and Shaw, 2013)
• nature of the decision-making process (Black et al., 2011)
• patterns of user-generated content production (Aaltonen and Seiler, 2016)
• value and impacts of the knowledge produced (Erickson et al., 2018; Vincent et al.,
2018)
• Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects and OpenStreetMap represent some of the
largest and most established collaborative online communities

4. …to collaborative digital heritage communities
• From community of practices of heritage professionals to participatory
approaches triggering audience's involvement, activation and expansion (Roued-
Cunliffe, H., & Copeland, 2017).
• Through digitization and ICTs, communities of people and organizations
participate in defining or revising the representation of culture and territories
operated by museums (through co-design and co-curating of exhibitions), and are
involved in using and creatively reinterpreting the heritage of institutions through
hackathons, storytelling and online campaigns (Ciolfi et al., 2015; Bonacini, 2018).
• Demand of cultural institutions (GLAMs) for active online communities
• Demand of online communities for digitally reproduced documentation
accessible through open licenses or in public domain
• Collaborative digital heritage communities as groups of individuals and
institutions engaging in commons-based production and sharing of knowledge
about cultural heritage in online and digital environments.

5. Wiki Loves Monuments
• International photographic contest since 2010
made by volunteers
• WLM highlight the importance of cultural heritage
sites in participating countries by sharing freely
licensed photographs on Wikimedia Commons
• Not simply a photo contest, but a collaborative
tool for digital documentation of documents

6. Assessing WLM experience in Italy
Angelo Nastri Nacchio, Castello di Levizzano - Castelvetro di Modena (MO) ,WLM 2017
6

7. Patterns in documenting heritage
• We exploit the information on the authorizations
given at municipal and regional levels to analyze
WLM’s patterns in documenting and sharing
monuments and cultural sites in Italian
municipalities. We explore two main analytical
dimensions:
• The rate of participation in the contest through
permissions on the properties
• The level of coverage on the assets in terms of
images taken and uploaded
19.2%
24.7%
6.7%
27.3%
26.8%
23.5%
9.4%
40.2%
40.1%
33.5%
11.1%
33.2%
73.3%
12.7%
8.1%
63.5%
26.1%
23.1%
9.1%
39.3%
% C O M U N I C O N
A U T O R I Z Z A Z I O N I
% B E N I A U T O R I Z Z A T I % B E N I C O N F O T O % B E N I A U T O R I Z Z A T I
C O N F O T O
COPERTURA WLM NEI COMUNI ITALIANI PER
DIMENSIONE E TIPOLOGIA DI VOCAZIONE TURISTICA
< 2000 2001-10.000 10.001-50.000 50.000 + Tuttii comuni
13.3%
24.5%
6.6%
27.1%
24.8%
23.7%
9.1%
38.4%
47.5%
27.2%
10.2%
37.6%
91.7%
8.6%
6.0%
70.6%
26.1%
23.9%
8.8%
36.7%
% C O M U N I P E R
A U T O R I Z Z A Z I O N E
% B E N I A U T O R I Z Z A T I % B E N I C O N F O T O % B E N I A U T O R I Z Z A T I
C O N F O T O
No vocazione Turistici generici Vocazione Culturale
Grandi Città Tutti i comuni
Cultural heritage objects recorded on Wikidata Archive 69.030 in 6.677 municipalities
Cultural heritage objects with WLM
permission
15.908in 2.130 municipalities (27%)
• 23% of all the cultural heritage objects
Cultural heritage objects with at least one
photo shot and uploaded within WLM
contest (2012-2020)
6.223
• 39% of the total amount of objects with
permission
• 9% of all the cultural heritage objects
Number of photos shot and uploaded within
WLM contest (2012-2020)
133.334
• About 21 photos per object with WLM
permission

8. Production and sharing of knowledge
• How participating in WLM improve the the quality and detail of
the information present in Wikipedia entries?
36
52
94
147
38
49
74 68
50
57
79
129
228
79 77
118
372
101
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
< 2000 2001-10.000 10.001-
50.000
50.000 + No
vocazione
Turistici
generici
Culturale Grandi Città
Comuni per abitanti Comuni per vocazione turistica Tutti i comuni
Bytes
per
mese
Variazione lunghezza pagina Wikipedia dei comuni, 2012-2021
Senza foto WLM Con foto WLM

9. Production and sharing of knowledge
Italy France Spain
N. of Photographs 155000 145000 133000
% of photos uploaded by 5 most active users 36% 29% 43%
Number of images re-used 15000 30000 28000
% of images re-used 9 20 18
Number of wikimedia projects 210 247 242
Number of wikipedia pages enriched 26000 107000 84000
% of Wikipedia pages in local language 34% 40% 59%
% of Wikipedia pages in foreign language 66% 60% 41%
Number of views (year 2019) 145 millions 275 millions 207 millions
% of views top 10 images 8% 5% 9%
Gini index 0,88 0,91 0,93

10. Concluding remarks
• WLM as an heritage community in line with the Faro Convention?
• WLM potential in contributing to the cultural promotion of Italian
territories, including tourism?
• Some critical factors:
• Only 40 percent of the monuments for which authorization was obtained
were photographed;
• At the territorial level, there are marked differences in the photographic
coverage of authorized properties between regions;
• Re-use in Wikimedia projects of images taken in the Italian competition is
lower than those taken in competitions in other European countries.

11. Concluding remarks
• Challenges for the community:
• How to incentivize or raise awareness of contest participants to photograph
monuments that have not yet been photographed?
• How to stimulate volunteer involvement and promote the contest in regions and
territories where participation has been lower?
• Is it possible to incentivize more meaningful use of photographs to document
cultural heritage in Italian territories through Wikipedia pages and Wikimedia
projects?
• Authorizations as an hindering factor for documenting heritage by collaborative online
communities through open access licenses
• Small municipalities and those with lower tourist-cultural vocation are those where it
is more challenging to obtain authorizations due to little competencies to assess the
opportunities offered by the free sharing of digital images.
• The number of authorizations in larger cities with a higher density of cultural assets
is relatively higher. However, the fragmentation of ownership over cultural assets
makes the process of applying for and obtaining authorizations more burdensome,
with the result that in these areas the percentage of authorized assets is lower on
average.