Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/Organize

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

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Requirements for local teams
• Funding
• Landing page
  • Rules for participants
• Upload wizard
• CentralNotice banner
• Jury & winners
  • How to find jury and organize its work
  • How to submit local winners
• Lists of protected areas

Wiki Loves Earth is a photo contest devoted to local nature protected areas in participating countries. Under Wiki Loves Earth, participants upload photos during the contest to Wikimedia Commons. The international photo contest takes place around the world. It is a federative contest which consists of numerous local contests held in different countries.

A local photo contest takes place throughout May and June; it typically lasts for one month but can last for longer. Local contests organized by volunteers from Wikipedia and/or local Wikimedia association with the support of the international team.

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 in most cases several winners, receive prizes, which are often distributed during an award ceremony. In some local contests, there is an additional special prize category for photos on a certain subject, areas not pictured before, etc. 10 winning photos of a country/area participate in the international round of the photo contest.

In case you have any questions after reading this guide, email them to wle-teamwikimedia.org.ua

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

1. You are a team of Wikimedians willing to devote enough time throughout a few months to organize the contest.
2. You have added your country/area to the page Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/Participating countries + provided information how the international team can reach the local team. Please reach out to the international team via wle-teamwikimedia.org.ua once you have decided to organize the contest.
3. You have created a website or landing page with the required information, and you added a link to it on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019.
4. Translations have been provided for the CentralNotice banner on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/CentralNotice.
5. You have a jury that judges the photos and selects 10 winners, and you announce 10 winners on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/Winners or privately to the international team before 1 August 2019.
6. It is preferable that you give one or more winners a prize because having prizes will help increase participation in the contest; it is not mandatory though.

Although it is possible to organize a local contest without financial means, having some funding for promotion and prizes would help draw attention to the contest.

The international team might be able to send you promotional materials, but it does not have a budget for larger expenses. That is why, there are two ways to acquire funding for the contest:

1. If the contest is organized by a Wikimedia chapter or user group which applies for an annual grant from the Wikimedia Foundation or has other sources of funding, you can include Wiki Loves Earth in your budget and/or look for sponsors of the contest.
2. You can apply for a rapid grant from the Wikimedia Foundation for Wiki Loves Earth in your country specifically. The WMF disburses grants for up to 2 000 USD in this programme.

Important points to note if you are applying for a rapid grant:

• It is better to apply as soon as possible, preferably a few months before your contest
• Make sure that you have completed all reports for the previous grant application from you or your organization. Problems with your previous application, no matter whether it is connected with Wiki Loves Earth, may prevent you from being able to receive a grant for WLE.
• Make sure to follow general guidelines for rapid grants.
• Typical expenses you can apply for include giving prizes to local winners, organizing a photo walk for participants, organizing an award ceremony and/or running an online ad campaign to attract attention to the contest.
  • Before you apply for funding, consider whether free options are available instead (for example, in some case, you can arrange to hold an award ceremony in a local library or museum instead of renting a venue).

Examples of good rapid grants applications — 1, 2.

As landing page you can create your own website (like www.wikilovesearth.xx), a project page on Wikipedia or a project page on Commons (Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019 in Xxx). Creating a page on Commons or Wikipedia.

Requirements for a website or landing page:

1. It contains 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. It contains an English-language page or summary in English for international participants.
5. It contains information about the selection of the winners (jury) and the prizes.

Good examples of landing pages: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019 in Azerbaijan, Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019 in Georgia.

If your main landing page is on Wikipedia or a separate site, create a page on Commons (Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019 in Xxx) with a soft redirect or a link to the landing page (examples: 1, 2).

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 2019 (dependent on the dates of your local contest) 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.

See also: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/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 your contest, all uploaded files will contain a template saying that the photo is uploaded as part of Wiki Loves Earth 2019 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 2019/Upload campaigns.

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

See also: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/CentralNotice

To get attention for Wiki Loves Earth in your country, the international team will create a banner that will be shown to visitors from your country 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 2019/Participating countries and translation(s) of the banner text in your local language(s) on Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/CentralNotice.

We can activate the banner in time only if you have provided us with all the translations and information in time. If provided in time, the banner will be activated in your country within an 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.)

Using CentralNotice banner is not mandatory, but it is the most effective way for the contest to be noticed on-wiki, and that's why we strongly recommend using it.

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

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) and/or 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.

An ideal list is a table which contains the following elements:

• the name of the protected area;
• a link to uploading new pictures of the area (which leads to an automatically pre-filled in the upload form, which makes it easier for participants to upload photos);
• a picture of an area (if exists);
• Wikimedia Commons category (if exists);
• coordinates / location;
• Wikidata item (if exists).

Additionally, local organizers can add their types, maps or other information. But it's not advised to make lists too complicated; participants should be able to easily navigate the list. The purpose is to have a page where a participant can clearly see what and where to upload.

Here's the example of a comprehensive and easy-to-navigate list — Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019 in France/List.

See also: Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/Winners

On 1 July, the contest period ends, and your local jury should start judging the photos that have been uploaded (if your contest ends earlier, you can start judging photo earlier as well). To do this, your jury can choose to use a technical tool as described on Commons:Jury tools (the international team can help you with WLX Jury Tool, please email wle-teamwikimedia.org.ua to gain access and for questions).

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.

The local jury has time until late July for judging the photos (it's better that you set a deadline for the jury at least a few days before August 1st so you have time to check winners and submit them). On 1 August, the international team needs to know which 10 photos are the winners in your country; you can find detailed instructions on how to submit local winners in section "How to submit local winners" below.

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

After your local jury has finished judging the photos, please make sure that:

1. you have double-checked that winning images are indeed picturing a nature protected area from your local contest;
2. you have double-checked these pictures do not violate copyright (pay attention to the size and use TinEye, Google Images tools etc. for checking);
3. you are in contact with all winners: they have activated their emails or you have another way of reaching them (Facebook, some other messenger app, etc.); and you will be able to provide their direct contacts if and when the international team requires them.

Local winners have to be submitted by August 1, 2019. If you do not submit the winners by August 1, the international team reserves the right to disqualify your country from the international competition!

There are two ways to submit winning photos of your local contest: add them to page Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/Winners or send them to the international team via wle-team@wikimedia.org.ua

Important points to note:

• Only up to 10 winning pictures of your local contest will go to the international part. You can select more pictures as winners, but you will need to choose which 10 (or less) will take part in the international part.

  The international jury does not take into account what place a picture has in the local part, so you do not have to specify that if you do not want to announce that before your press-release or awards ceremony.

• If you are submitting local winners openly to Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/Winners, please:

  • Add English description to the pictures (if there is no description in English) themselves on Commons. Please be sure to link the objects pictured to a Wikipedia article (if it exists).
  • Publish your local winners on the page Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2019/Winners. Please be sure to be logged in so the international team is able to verify your edit.
  • Send a letter to the international team at wle-teamwikimedia.org.ua with a confirmation that you have completed all the requirements above (photos indeed picture a protected area and do not violate copyright, and you are in contact with winners).

• If you want to keep the 10 winning photos secret until a press release or an award ceremony, please:

  • Add English description to the pictures (if there is no description in English) themselves on Commons. Please be sure to link the objects pictured to a Wikipedia article (if it exists). You might want to add descriptions in English to more pictures from your contest, so you do not reveal the winners ahead of time.
  • Send links of your local 10 winning photos to the international team at wle-teamwikimedia.org.ua and:

  1. confirm that you have completed all the requirements above (photos indeed picture a protected area and do not violate copyright, and you are in contact with winners)
  2. specify when you are going to publish them openly.