Wikimedia organizes the largest photo contest in the world

A great idea came from Wikimedia to increase the public domain of photography. According to the terms of the Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 contest , participants must take pictures of “monuments of historical and cultural significance”, upload them to the Wikimedia Commons warehouse under a free license and allow them to be used on Wikipedia. The judges will choose the best photos, and by mid-October they will determine the top ten finalists. A mobile application has been created specifically for the contest , so you can shoot and upload photos from an Android device.

The competition is held for the third time, but now with maximum scope. In 2010, it was organized as an experiment in the Netherlands, in 2011 it was distributed to Europe and Russia, and now - to other countries of the world, including the USA.

The organizers hope that up to 10,000 photographers will take part in the competition on September 1-30, 2012, who will upload hundreds of thousands of photos to the warehouse. In this case, the event will become the largest photo contest. This is a very realistic forecast, because last year 5,000 participants uploaded 168,000 photos.

Interestingly, 80% of the participants in the last year’s contest were new to Wikipedia, but after that many of them remained in the project and began to edit wikis even more actively than regular editors.

Judges' business cards

Authors of the ten best photographs in the world will receive prizes from 50 to 2000 euros . In addition, there are separate prizes in thematic categories, as well as awards for each country.

Eligible countries for the 2012 contest.