About the Contest
Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photo contest for monuments, organized by Wikimedia in September and October. Wikimedia is the movement behind Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – a global collaboration authored by volunteers.
Cultural heritage is an important part of the knowledge Wikipedia collects and disseminates. Everybody can contribute images as well as write articles. An image is worth a thousand words, in every language at once and local enthusiasts can (re)discover the cultural, historical, or scientific significance of their neighborhood.
Each year in more than 50 countries all over the world, a national contest will be organized with their national monuments, partners, rules, events and winners.
Every national contest will be able to nominate some of their winning pictures for the international contest. These nominated pictures will be judged by the international jury, which will then award extra prizes to the best images from all participating countries.
The contest is inspired by the successful 2010 pilot in the Netherlands, which resulted in 12,500 freely licensed images of monuments that can now be used in Wikipedia and by anybody for any purpose. Since then, the project helped to illustrate items and articles on about 1 million monuments − with more than 3,2 million pictures submitted by over 100,000 participants from 100 countries, adding to the sum of all human knowledge gathered on Wikipedia.
Any support is welcome: from uploading a single image, spreading the word about the contest, to becoming a partner or sponsor. This September and October, cultural heritage will be in the spotlight on Wikipedia – from Brazil to Malaysia, from Norway to South Africa.
Rules
There are a few rules for photos to participate in the international contest. Most of these rules are also adopted as rules for participation on a national level. Every submission should be:
- * Self taken and self uploaded;
- * Uploaded in September-October of the year of the contest;
- * Freely licensed;
- * Contain an identified monument;
- * Nominated through a national contest
Next to that, there is a practical requirement:
- * The participant must have an activated email address on Wikimedia Commons. No email address may result in your submissions being disqualified.
If necessary, the rules can be adapted via the international coordinators (such as the upload timeframe for some countries).
