Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2021/Lists

Lists of protected areas

Wiki Loves Earth photo contest is aimed at creating the biggest database of free photos of protected natural sites on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

To make the process of collecting and uploading photos easier, we recommend having list(s) of nature protected areas from your country on Wikipedia.

Before you start with creating lists, the international organizing team some recommendations on how this can be done the best.

What to include in your list(s)?

Make a list of nature heritage sites in your country that have are protected in some way. It includes:

Sites formally protected at a national or regional level (nature / biosphere reserves, wilderness areas, national / provincial parks, Natura 2000 or Ramsar sites etc.).
Sites that have lower protection status but represent protected nature in some way, such as protected landscapes, natural monuments, protected recreation areas, botanical gardens, game reserves etc.
This can also include formerly protected sites that have less strict protection now.

Important: in case a site is not protected and has never been, this object should not be in your list(s). They will likely not be accepted for the international finals. These photos still may be useful to illustrate Wikipedia or Wikivoyage.

If your country has no or poor database of natural heritage, you may accept submissions outside lists, but they should describe the site in as much detail as possible (name, status, location).

How to structure your list(s)?

Format: a table with the following elements:

a name of the protected area and its status (e.g. Anyplace National Park);
coordinates / location;
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);

Please, add these items as well if they exist:

a unique identifier. It can be a government identifier, a Wikidata item Q-id or a code given by local WLE organisers;
a picture of an area;
Wikimedia Commons category;
a link to a Wikipedia article and/or Wikidata item

Also, you can add your types, maps or other information.

Important

Do not make lists too complicated, keep it easily-navigated. If list are too long, split them by regions
It is important having your lists ready before the start of the contest.
Use unique identifiers: each natural monument in a country must have a unique identifier. If these aren't available you can create a system on your own. We recommend you adding these sites to Wikidata.
Enable uploading directly from the monument list: direct link to the upload campaigns makes it possible to pre-fill some information in the upload wizard so that users do not have to fill in much by hand. Wiki Loves Earth uses a customised version of the upload wizard, find out more here — Commons:Wiki_Loves_Earth_2020/Organise#Upload_wizard

Suggestions

Use row templates: build a table with row templates (and a header template), so that you can easy add/remove columns and being able to change the links to an external database when the links change.
If the description used in the upload link contains links, references, etc., you can create a copy of Module:Delink on your local wiki to remove unwanted codes.
Set as extra parameter commonscat in the row template to get images directly uploaded to the right category on Commons.

Examples of good practice

Recording of the training session

Do you want to discover more tips&tricks about creating lists of nature monuments? Check out the recording of our training session for Wiki Loves Earth Community held on May 30th, 2020.

Speaker: Mykola Kozlenko (NickK), member of the international organizing team. Contact us if you have any questions at wle-team wikimedia.org.ua

Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2021/Lists

Wiki Loves Earth 2021

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