Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017/Organise

This page explains what local organisers should do to organise Wiki Loves Earth in their country/area.

Introduction

Wiki Loves Earth is a photo contest in what we ask the public to take photos from local nature protected areas in participating countries, and upload them during the contest to Wikimedia Commons. The photo contest takes place for one month in May or June. The local contest is organised by volunteers from Wikipedia and/or local Wikimedia association.

After the contest period, a local jury judges the participating photos and chooses the 10 best photos of that country/area. At least the number one winner, and mostly more winners, receive a prize, often reached out during a prize ceremony. In some local contests there is an additional special prize category for photos on a certain subject, areas, not pictured before, etc.

The 10 winning photos of a country/area participate in the international round of the photo contest.

Requirements for local teams

Requirements for organising a local Wiki Loves Earth in your country/area are:

1. You have added your country/area to the page Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017 in #Participating countries + provided information how the international team can reach the local team.
2. You have created a website or landing page with the required information, and you added a link to it on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017.
3. Translations have been provided for the CentralNotice banner on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017/CentralNotice.
4. You have a jury that judges the photos and selects the 10 winners, and you make the 10 winners know publicly on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017/Winners or privately before 1 August 2017.
5. You give one or more winners a prize.

Landing page

As landing page you can create your own website (like www.wikilovesmonuments.xx), a project page on Wikipedia or a project page on Commons (like Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in Xxx).

Requirements for a website or landing page:

1. It contains the contest rules, see below.
2. It contains a link to the international Wiki Loves Earth website: http://www.wikilovesearth.org/
3. It contains a link to one or more of these options:
   1. A link to the upload form of your country/area; and/or
   2. A link to the protected sites list(s) (with the eligible nature areas) that contain a direct upload link; and/or
   3. A map where participants can find a link to start uploading.
4. The website or landing page contains an English page or summary in English for international participants.

The website or landing page must also contain information about the selection of the winners (jury) and the prizes.

• Good examples: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in Azerbaijan, Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in Bulgaria

Rules for participants

There are a few rules for photos to participate in both the local and the international contest. Every submission should be:

1. Self taken and self uploaded;
2. Uploaded in May and/or June 2016 and available on Wikimedia Commons;^{1, 2}
3. Freely licensed;³
4. Contain an identified nature monument;
5. Participating in a national Wiki Loves Earth contest.

If your country/area has nature protected areas with unique identifiers (IDs), this identifier must be provided on every participating photo.

Participants can participate in the contest with multiple photos.

To be eligible to win a prize, participants in the contest must provide a way to contact them. It is recommended that the participant has an activated e-mail address in his/her preferences and has the receiving of e-mails enabled.

If no way of contact is provided or known to the organisers, or no reaction is given, the photo(s) stay part of the contest, but the uploader can't win a prize. In case no way of contact has been provided or no reaction is given after contacting, it is up to the local team to decide if a winning photo stays in the top 10 of winning photos or not.

1. The contest should last one month, eg. 1-31 May, 15 May — 15 June ore 1-30 June.
2. The local time in the country counts. If a country is situated in multiple time zones, the contest starts when the first time zone is in 1 May, and ends when the last time zone has left 31 May.
3. This can be CC BY-SA or any other free license, including CC0.

Upload wizard

See also: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017/Upload campaigns

Wiki Loves Earth uses a customised version of the upload wizard to have participants upload their photos. By using the customised upload wizard for your country, during the month, all uploaded files will contain a template saying that the photo is uploaded as part of Wiki Loves Earth 2016 and automatically will be added to the category of images in your country.

For countries/areas where nature heritage monuments have unique identifiers (IDs), the upload wizard will automatically add a template to contain the identifier.

If the local team would like to have a check category added to every uploaded photo, we can have the upload wizard add this category for you.

We will create a customized upload wizard for your local team, but you need to provide some translations and information. See for more information at Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017/Upload campaigns.

For existing campaigns see the wle-xx links in the list of participating countries.

CentralNotice banner

See also: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017/CentralNotice

To get attention for the photo contest Wiki Loves Earth, the international team will create a banner that will be shown on top of page on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons during the month. This banner will link to your website or landing page. The banner will be activated only if you meet the requirements, and have provided a link to the landing page on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017 and translation(s) of the banner text in your local language(s) on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017/CentralNotice.

We can only activate the banner in time, if you have provided us all the translations and information in time. If provided in time, the banner will be activated in your country within the hour after the start of the contest in your country. (In the IRC channel #wikilovesearth at Freenode live status updates will be provided with the start of the contest.)

Jury & winners

See also: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016/Winners

On 1 July the contest period will be finished, and your local jury will start with judging the photos that have been uploaded. To do this, your jury can choose to use a jury tool as described on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016/Tools.

The local jury has the full month of August for judging the photos.

On 1 August the international team needs to know which 10 photos are the winners in your country. You can publish the 10 winning photos yourself on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2017/Winners. If you wish to keep the 10 winning photos secret until a press release, or prize giving ceremony, etc., please send the 10 winning photos to the international team with the date of when they will be published.

The jury should determine the winners of the contest taking into the consideration the criteria (in no particular order): technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective, etc.), originality, and usefulness of the image for Wikipedia.

Lists of protected areas

Wiki Loves Earth has been set-up to have all the nature protected areas in the world visible on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Therefore it is highly recommended to have also list(s) of nature protected areas from your country on Wikipedia. In some countries, it takes a lot of time to obtain the information from the state register(s) or it takes much time to create the lists on Wikipedia. We recommend to have the lists ready on Wikipedia before the start of the contest, but we understand that this is not always possible.

If you have created lists as we recommend, it is possible to automatically add a direct upload link with some information automatically pre-filled in the upload form, so it is easier for participants to upload their photos.

Tools

Familiar tools from Wiki Loves Monuments will be adapted for Wiki Loves Earth. In Ukrainian WLE 2013 we used our own tools, which can also be available internationally. This paragraph should be extended.

For reporting issues with wikilovesearth.org

phabricator:T124753

Sample press release

See Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2016/Press

Selecting winners

See m:Learning patterns/Selecting winners of a large photo contest