Posted on October 7, 2012 by Lodewijk

Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 was a very successful contest, with more than 350,000 submissions by more than 15,000 people in 33 countries! We would like to thank all volunteers and participants for helping to organize this contest and submit pictures. The winners of the national competitions will are known and each country has submitted up to ten nominees for the international finale. A dedicated jury has judged all these nominated pictures, and after long deliberations, we know the winners!

Wikipedia is working through the year to bring together the sum of all human knowledge, and share it with everyone on the world. And the cultural heritage nearby you is part of that knowledge!

Therefore, we hope that even though you will not win any prizes with it, you will remain active in submitting content to the Wikimedia projects. You can help by submitting photos the same way you used to do during the contest (the upload forms will remain active) or by improving the text of the articles directly by clicking ‘edit’ at the top of the page.

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Lodewijk

10 very diverse images have been selected as the Colombian nominees for the international Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 finale. But one thing all images have in common: they offer a special perspective on the monument. Churches, towers and castles: there are many ways to look at them and illustrate.

Sometimes the perspective is all in the symmetry (the tower of Herveo), or by showing the full depth of a deteriorating building (Bello railroad station), but sometimes it is all about oh-so-familiar action (the pigeons at the church of Veracruz). A wonderful set of heritage, and a promise for more next year!

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Posted on January 3, 2013 by Lodewijk

Andorra was the smallest country participating in the 2012 Wiki Loves Monuments competition, but that doesn’t mean that there are no beautiful places to photograph! Being located in the Pyrenees mountain chain between Spain and France, photos of Andorran heritage are almost guaranteed to offer a stunning view in the background. In the 2011 competition it was already accomplished that every monumental building in the country had a photo on Wikipedia, this year the goal was to provide different, more and better pictures to document them as well as possible.

Because of the smaller size of the country, it may be not so surprising that several people won multiple prizes in the top-10 of Andorra. Congratulations!

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Posted on December 29, 2012 by Lodewijk

In the past year, we’ve often had the question “why are you doing this?”. Many people outside the Wikimedia movement assume at first that this must be a professional job for me, as one of the organizers – and when you explain that we’re doing this almost fully by volunteers, and hundreds of them, people are often flabbergasted.

Wikipedia is written by volunteers, and Wiki Loves Monuments is primarily organized by volunteers. In that sense, both are very much the same. But Wiki Loves Monuments doesn’t stand on itself as a project, like Wikipedia does. So when people think about why volunteers are working on organizing this mega photo contest, they first assume that it must be about all the photos we’re collecting – because we all love photography.

And of course, that plays a role. But there’s more to it. For example, it is a great way to develop more skills and enthusiasm in our chapters. Wiki Loves Monuments is a well documented initiative, which makes it easier to organize. Some infrastructure is already in place, and it is a good excuse to get in touch with potential partners who are into cultural heritage in their country. The combination of promoting local cultural heritage, a competition element and Wikipedia has proven to be a golden one.

But more importantly, as a movement we have been working to get more people involved in contributing to Wikipedia and its sister projects. And that is just what Wiki Loves Monuments is: an easier and nicer way to contribute content to Wikipedia! You can upload photos which you know will be useful, and you can see the result of it rather quickly. The interface is simplified and if you get the hang of it you already know a topic you can move forward. We get in touch with people we’d normally hardly meet: people who love cultural heritage you can find on the streets: houses, churches, temples, castles or other tangible heritage. Some of these people, often a bit older than the average Wikipedian (27 year old man), might become more interested in editing on cultural heritage topics on Wikipedia.

But maybe the key reason why we’re doing this all is awareness. Making people aware that Wikipedia is run by volunteers. Making people aware that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. Making people aware that they have much valuable material that can be shared under a free license. Making people aware that they can choose for their photos and writings to lie on the shelf, unused, or to be published under a free license, be re-used by others and built upon. Working, step by step, to that world where every person can share in the sum of all human knowledge.

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Tomasz

We are happy to announce that the results of the public vote for the GLAM category prize organised by Europeana on Facebook that we wrote about last month are finally known!

Out of 2,300 nominations from the 35 countries participating in Wiki Loves Monuments 2012, the winner that was chosen by Europeana’s friends on Facebook is this amazing picture of a cross near the Bran Castle in the vicinity of Braşov, Romania, more famously known as the “Dracula’s Castle”, taken by LibertinaGrim.

You can read more about LibertinaGrim’s story on the Europeana blog; for now, please enjoy the atmosphere of this beautiful shot!

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Tomasz

In our original announcement about the winning pictures of the 2012 competition that was also posted on the official blog of the Wikimedia Foundation and reposted by several media from around the world, including BBC News, we wrote that we were not able to reach Pranav Singh, the author of the winning Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 picture of the Safdarjung’s Tomb (above).

After multiple unsuccessful and time-consuming efforts to contact Pranav—including Facebook, Twitter and other social media as well as e-mail—the international organising team decided not to wait any longer with announcing the results, and the news was spread out on December 3, quickly reaching even the most distant corners of the world.

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Posted on December 12, 2012 by Lodewijk

While the international jury results have been published, it might still be worth while to look into the national jury decisions still! Therefore today a blog post about the Russian winners. Last year only pictures from St.Petersburg could participate, this year the scope has been extended to a large part of the country. Text by Rave.

The Russian jury presents 10 photographs which were selected in the Russian part of the competition and represents the country in it. The photos which depict churches, castles, and street views, are not only of a high technical and aesthetic quality, but will perfectly illustrate encyclopaedic articles.

More than 16,000 of the 360,000 photos of architectural monuments submitted during the contest came from Russia; the 9th highest number of submission from amongst all participating countries.

The Russian part of the contest expanded its range from the single region in WLM 2011. A substantial number of suggestions related to the database of monuments were received, and the Russian contest organisers hope that this will lead to Russian photographers surpassing 2012′s numbers in the 2013 competition, which is planned to be expanded to cover the entire country.

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Posted on December 3, 2012 by Lodewijk

We are happy to announce the winning pictures of Wiki Loves Monuments 2012! A little less than a year ago, volunteers from all over the world started working on the 2012 edition of Wiki Loves Monuments – the largest photo competition in the world. More than 350,000 images have been submitted by over 15,000 people for the 2012 competition in countries all over the world. From 33 participating countries 324 images were submitted for the international finale and considered by the international jury.

The photo that received the highest ranking by our international jury is a photo from the Tomb of Safarjung in New Delhi, India. The photo plays with the light and gives a wonderful contrast between the darkness of the room and the lighted tomb, giving it a dramatic effect.

Below you will find the rest of the top selection the international jury has made. We’re very proud of this beautiful and diverse selection of monuments – showing the diversity of the cultural heritage in the participating countries. It is especially interesting to see that most of the top-15 prize winning photographers are users that did not participate before which confirms that adding photos is a low threshold way to participate in Wikipedia.

All prize winning photos are placed in a special context or looked at from a special perspective. The photographer of the Aquaduct of Segovia has shown, for example, that this aquaduct can be photographed from multiple angles very beautifully (see his other submissions) but this one clearly came out in a special way.

And while some monuments may be smaller, and some haven’t been in use for ages – there are also living monuments, such as the rice terraces of Batad. While they were built more than 2,000 years ago, they are still in active use and being maintained that way.

All monuments are special in their own way, and we invite you to enjoy the full selection. You will find more great images in the jury report with the 42 best photos from the international competition. Also you can indulge yourself in cultural heritage from all corners of the world on the page with the winning pictures in all national competitions.

 

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Posted on November 26, 2012 by Tomasz

As mentioned in a previous post, Europeana, an Internet portal gathering over 10 million books, paintings, films and museum objects digitalised in the member states of the European Union who is also one of our partners this year, is sponsoring an award in a special category for pictures depicting GLAM monuments — that is, photographs of gallery, library, archive or museum buildings from all the participating countries.

We are now happy to announce that after tirelessly working on picking the best 50 photos out of 2,300 nominations from the 35 countries participating in Wiki Loves Monuments 2012, Europeana have started an open vote on their Facebook page.

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