Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Organise

Wiki Loves Monuments is an annual photo contest where we ask the public to take photos from local heritage monuments in participating countries, and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. The photo contest takes place in September, when in many countries activities are organised in and around heritage monuments. The local contest is organised by volunteers from Wikipedia and/or a local Wikimedia association.

After the contest period, a local jury judges the participating photos and chooses the 10 best photos of that country/area. In most countries, the number one winner, or more winners, receives a prize (sometimes during a prize ceremony). Based on local desires, special categories can be introduced - for example to give special attention to a theme.

The 10 winning photos of a country/area are nominated by the national team for the international finale of the photo contest!

2021 Timeline edit

In 2021, we're dealing with a pandemic that is ongoing in many parts of the world. This makes it particularly hard to organize Wiki Loves Monuments. The international team has therefore published an altered timeline:

September, October: National organizers can choose a month (30 or 31 days at most) in this timeframe to organize their competition.
October 31: Last day of submission permitted
December 5, 2021: Deadline of submission of national winners to the international jury. Please contact the jury coordinator for a submission link.
December: International jury process
January 2022 announcement international winners

Make sure that your competition dates do not conflict with the fundraising timeline.

Requirements for local teams edit

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

You have added your country/area to this page: Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Participating countries + provided information how the international team can reach the local team.
You have created a website or landing page with the required information, and you added a link to it on Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Landing pages.
Translations have been provided for the upload wizard on Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Upload campaigns.
Translations have been provided for the CentralNotice banner on Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/CentralNotice.
Publish your jury rounds and respective jurors at the earliest possible at Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Juries
You have a jury (at least 3 jurors) that judges the photos and selects the 10 winners, and you make the 10 winners known publicly or privately before 31 October 2021 (midnight UTC), see Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Winners. NOTE: this is different in 2021, you have some more time. See the timeline for more information.
You give one or more winners a prize.

Also, if you have lists of monuments on your local Wikipedia, make sure they are linked at the continent page of Commons:Lists of monuments.

Landing page edit

When people click on the banner that invites them to participate, they will be sent to a 'landing page'. For this purpose, you can create your own website (like www.wikilovesmonuments.xx), a project page on Wikipedia or a project page on Wikimedia Commons (like Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 in Xxx/Participate).

Requirements for a website or landing page:

It contains the contest rules, see below.
It contains a link to the international Wiki Loves Monuments website: http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/
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 monument list(s) (with the eligible monuments) that contain a direct upload link; and/or
3. A map where participants can find a link to start uploading.
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.

For more information about what constitutes a good landing page: Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments/Documentation/Landing page

Rules for participants edit

There are a few rules for participants, both at the national and the international levels. Every submission must:

Be self-taken and self-uploaded to Wikimedia Commons;
Be uploaded during the month of September or October 2021^1,2 (though the image does not need to have been taken during that month - older images are accepted);
Be freely licensed;³
Contain an identified monument. If your country/area has heritage monuments with unique identifiers (IDs), this identifier must be provided on every participating photo.

All entries into the international contest must have participated in a national Wiki Loves Monuments contest, and have been selected by a national jury.

Participants whose images are selected for entry into the international contest must have provided and maintained a valid email address, preferably by activating email within their Wikimedia Commons preferences. At the discretion of the international organisers, other methods of providing an email contact (eg by prior notification to the national organisers) may be permitted. If no email address is known to the international organisers, or if emails bounce or are not promptly replied to, the contestant's photo(s) may be disqualified from the international competition, and will in any event not be eligible to win any international prize. In such a case, the national organisers will be consulted before a decision is taken. For the national contests, it is at the discretion of the national organisers as to whether the provision of an email address is mandatory.

Participants can submit multiple photographs to the national competitions. If the national jury so decides, multiple images by the same photographer may be eligible for entry into the international contest.

1. - Only with a good reason and agreement of the international team is it is possible for a national contest to have a different period than 1 September to 30 September.
2. - The local time in the country/region counts. If a country/region spans multiple time zones, the contest starts when the first time zone enters 1 September, and ends when the last time zone leaves 30 September.
3. - This can be CC BY-SA or any other free licence, including CC0 and release in the public domain.

Upload wizard edit

Wiki Loves Monuments 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 of September, all uploaded files will contain a template saying that the photo is uploaded as part of Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 and automatically will be added to the category of images in your country.

For countries/areas where 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 Monuments 2021/Upload campaigns.

CentralNotice banner edit

To get attention for the photo contest Wiki Loves Monuments, the international team will create a banner that will be shown on top of page on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons during the month of September. 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 Monuments 2021/Landing pages and translation(s) of the banner text in your local language(s) on Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/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 #wikilovesmonuments at Freenode live status updates will be provided with the start of the contest.)

Jury & winners edit

See also: Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Winners (tracking page) & Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 winners (overview of winning photos)

(note: see the timeline for updated deadlines)

On 1 November 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 Monuments 2021/Tools. If you want to use the Montage jury tool, you can register your interest here.

The local jury has the full month of October/November for judging the photos.

By 30 November 2021 (midnight UTC) the international team needs to know which 10 photos are the winners in your country. Official submission for the international process is explained in an email by the international jury coordinator to the international Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list - make sure you receive those emails! You can also publish the 10 winning photos yourself on Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 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. See for more information at Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Winners. If you don't know how to submit the winners, please contact the international jury coordinator.

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 monuments edit

Wiki Loves Monuments has been set-up to have all the cultural heritage monuments in the world visible on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. To provide the public information about the cultural heritage in a country, lists of monuments are created to give an overview of all the monuments in a certain administrative area.

Therefore it is highly recommended to have also list(s) of cultural heritage monuments from your country on Wikipedia. In some countries it takes a lot of time to obtain the information from the cultural heritage 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.

Before you start with creating lists on Wikipedia, we have some recommendations how this can be done the best. See for more information at Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Lists of monuments.

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.

Make sure your monument lists are linked from one of the subpages of Commons:Lists of monuments.

Funding edit

Funding to support Wiki Loves Monuments events is available both from some Wikimedia affiliates as well as the Wikimedia Foundation.

Grants from Wikimedia affiliates edit

See Grants from Wikimedia affiliates on Meta-wiki. Several Wikimedia movement affiliates offer funding for various programs and needs. Please review the page for a list of all available programs as well as the scope and eligibility policies of their grant program. The Community Resources team at the Wikimedia Foundation recommends reviewing funding options from your local affiliate when possible. These grants are usually restricted to their applicable countries.

Rapid Grants edit

Rapid Grants from the Wikimedia Foundation offer funding between $500-$2000 USD for individuals and organizations for activities and projects that benefits Wikimedia projects or the communities that support them.

What can I request funding for?

Contests under the Wiki Loves Monuments campaign are generally eligible for funding. Please carefully review the eligibility and funding guidelines before submitting your application. Please note that the Wikimedia Foundation is not currently funding any in-person events or activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Group travel is also not eligible for funding, and individual travel may be permitted in some circumstances at the discretion of the Program Officer. Meetings should generally be held online rather than in-person.

,Who can apply? Both individuals and organizations are welcome to apply. If you are applying as an organization, institution or university with a person or department appointed to manage grants, please review the appropriate disbursement process with them before you apply to ensure your allocated funds will be available to you for your event. Private or for-profit organizations are not eligible for funding.

When should I apply?

Proposals are accepted between 1st and 15th day of each month. Applications take at least two weeks to review, and may be longer depending on your eligibility for funding or other clarifications needed during the review process. Additional time may be needed to finalize your grant agreement and transfer funds from the Wikimedia Foundation to your specific bank account.

It is better to apply as soon as possible. Please note that applications take some time to get reviewed and approved, and then there will be some time for the money to be actually transferred to your account. So, if you are planning to start contest activities in September (such as running ads throughout the contest), it is highly preferable that you submit an application by July 15th.

Any individual or a Wikimedia organization can apply for a Rapid Grant. However, there are some exceptions:

Groups and organizations that already work on a current Annual Plan Grant or Simple Annual Plan Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation are not eligible to apply.
Due to United States sanctions or local restrictions where the funding would be received, organizations and people from certain countries, there may be limitations on funding. The basis for these limitations can be the type of recipient or the types of activities the grant would support.
- On meta:Grants:Administration/Countries, you can find a list of countries which have already been funded successfully with no or few issues.
- If your country is not on that list, and you are unsure of your country's eligibility:
  - If you are not sure about your country's eligibility, it is better to check with the Wikimedia Foundation beforehand by emailing grantsadmin wikimedia.org. See instructions on meta:Grants:Administration/Countries.

Other considerations

Make sure that you have completed all reports for the previous grant application from you or your organization. Problems with a previous Wikimedia Foundation grant, even if it is not connected with Wiki Loves Monuments, may prevent you from being able to receive a grant for Wiki Loves Monument.
You can also request free swag from the Wikimedia Foundation which can be distributed as prizes to winners. See the project page. These requests for approved Rapid Grants can include a small number of T-shirts, tote bags, and other merchandise aside from the accessories listed on the Meta page; please note that the swag is dependent upon availability, so the Wikimedia Foundation may not be able to fulfill highly specific requests.
You can use the number of uploaded images, participants, and newcomers as your application's metrics. "Wiki Loves" tool is helpful in measuring them after the contest.

Where to apply

Use the landing page for Rapid Grants learn about the Rapid Grants program generally. The application page itself is at meta:Grants:Project/Rapid/Apply. Questions about the program or your application can be directed at rapidgrants wikimedia.org

For more 2021-specific information, please review Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2021/Knowledge Exchange#Funding options.

Micro-grants from WLM International Team edit

The Wiki Loves Monuments International Team will be offering microgrants in the range of USD $300-$500, with a very lightweight application process. These grants are available to countries participating for the first time in the competition or countries with new organizing teams, or organizing teams who do not have funding from any other source (such WMF, Wikimedia affiliates). The micro-grants are intended to support modest prizes and any outreach activities such as photo walks and award ceremonies. If you are interested in applying for a micro-grant, please contact Krishna along with the following details:

Wikimedia username and full legal name of the person handling the micro-grant
Country in which WLM is being organized

Links to the contest pages on Wikimedia Commons

Budget along with a breakdown
Brief explanation demonstrating the need for a micro-grant (max: 300 words)
Preferred mode of payment: reimbursement (recommended) or advance payment

Please note that all grantees are expected to submit receipts or invoices wherever applicable.

Publicity edit

Wiki Loves Monuments produces some beautiful imagery that can be shared with the press, and the press can provide valuable coverage to boost awareness and participation in your campaign. Consider talking to the press who covered Wiki Loves Monuments last year. An announcement to the press may be useful when your campaign begins (at the start) and when winners are announced (at the end)!

If you receive great press coverage, let us know in the 2021 press mentions!

v t e Wiki Loves Monuments 2021
WLM competition by year	2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Contest pages	FAQ Who's who List of landing pages, monuments and uploadlink Winning photos 2021
For local organisers	Landing pages CentralNotice Upload campaigns Lists of monuments Overview of monuments Tools Winners (tracking page) Overview of photowalks Press mentions
Lists of monuments by continents	Africa Asia Europe North and Central America Oceania & Antarctica South America
Documentation / how to..	Overview of documentation pages