News – Page 3 – Wiki Loves Earth

The Netherlands is waiting for more photos!

The contest Wiki Loves Earth will focus on the National Parks in the Netherlands. Pictures from those areas (if submitted between May 1 and June 30, 2014) will compete for the prizes. Join! We look forward to your contribution.

Netherlands has twenty national parks. Together they tell the story of the Dutch countryside. The parks are full details of the Dutch nature to be found: dunes, woods, moors, fens, tidal water, stream valleys and lakes. And the residents vary by park: special birds, butterflies, reptiles and amphibians, like red deer, badgers, beavers, otters and seals their place in the parks.

17 specific sites in the Netherlands designated as a national park. In addition, there are also two private national parks (NP and NP De Hoge Veluwe Veluwe) and the cross-border park Zoom Kalmthoutse Heath. The nature reserves are each contiguous and cover an area of at least a thousand acres. For the Dutch nature they form a whole: the system of National Parks in the Netherlands. The owners, managers and other stakeholders of the parks are jointly responsible for the protection and development of the quality of nature.

The national parks focus on:

Protection and development of nature and landscape
Outdoor recreation
Education and information
Research

You may read more about all natural parks here.

See also the international and Netherlandish pages on FB.

The contest as a new challenge for participants

The contest was a real challenge with new experience and opportunity for all international participants. We receive a letter from our Spanish colleagues in which they tell us about their work, first results and emotions during May.

«I have been involved in four editions of Wiki Loves events. After monuments and public art, Wiki Loves Earth was a new challenge with new partners, new audience and new targets to develop on Wikipedia. In summary, I love it and really worth it. I am still amazed by the results.

There are motivated Wikipedians who like to complete with photos almost anything you propose. There is also a large community of Flickr users that do not edit Wikipedia but they are eager to help with their expertise on photography. But it is amazing that after four years of annual photo competitions, 60% of the participants are new users. This is an important outreach goal.

A nice story of an unknown participant sums up the spirit of Wiki Loves Earth. After a month of competition, the last day a new participant registered his or her account and uploaded wonderful pictures. What surprised me most is that he only uploaded photos of sites that had no images after a month of competition. Althougt Val d’Aran, a remote valley in the Pyrenees, has got a good participation, some alpine sites are particularly difficult to get and they are pretty unknown. This last minute participant completed all the sites of Val d’Aran with valuable and well documented pictures. I do not know what was his motivation and he probably should have more photos of other sites already covered. His interest in completing all sites with photos denotes an interest beyond pure competition, more probably an interest in sharing the nice sites of Val d’Aran and showing them to the world. There is some local pride, some eager to collaborate and lots of love for nature.

The jury will have a lot of work to review more than 7,000 photographs submitted by nearly 100 participants. At the international level have been uploaded 59,000 photographs so that Andorra and Catalonia areas is in the third position.

Pedraforca. Author: Mikipons. CC BY-SA 3.0

Thankfully the involvement of all participants, some from the special group of Flickr, other veterans of previous contests, but it is remarkable that 60% of new participants have been taken part in it during a month.

The most popular has been the Sierra del Cadi-Moixeró with 12 participants, and the most photographed place is Collserola with 473 photos. The Montseny massif is in second place both in participation and in photographs.

Now we need time to digest all this volume, the Wikipedians to develop information on natural heritage motivated by new pictures, and the jury to decide who are the winners. Good luck to all participants and thank who have contributed to the spread of natural heritage».

Text by Vicenç Riullop, Spain.

Read our Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages.

International part of contest isn’t closed

The contest «Wiki Loves Earth» is closed at Andorra & Spain, Armenia & Nagorno-Karabakh, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Estonia, Macedonia, Nepal and Ukraine.

But some participants continue to accept photos for contest during June (from 1 to 30). There are Algeria, Germany, Ghana, India and The Netherlands.

Serbia and Syria have their sites opened from June 15 to July 15.

We have the first statistics from chapters that took part during May.

So in the first place is Macedonia which snatched victory in the final minutes from Ukraine. So Macedonian contest collected 12.695 photos against to Ukraine with 12.089 pictures.

Third place was taken by Andorra& Spain. Their result is 7.515 photos.

But this is only preliminary results. Finally, we are able to see the other winners. Pay your attention that the object on the photo is the most important.

Read us at Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Contest in June

The contest «Wiki loves the Earth» is opened only until 31 May in Ukraine, Andorra & Spain, Macedonia, Armenia & Nagorno-Karabakh, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Estonia, but in June there is the opportunity to participate in other countries!

So, Serbia and Algeria are ready to open receptions of photos from 1 to 30 June. But in Germany, the Netherlands, Ghana and India contest lasts two whole months – May and June.

Participation in competitions in all countries are identical. So if you have pictures of the natural heritage or if you plan to visit them – download your own photos to Wikimedia Commons and win!

The middle of the contest

These days we are at the middle of the contest, so we’re able to draw the first conclusions.

We came to an inference that Wiki Loves Earth is interesting for many countries. It’s not only a great opportunity to show the charms of nature, but also a huge chance to draw public attention to the environmental problems and Wikipedian activities. The focus is not only on the sites of national importance, but also on the areas protected on the regional level, and on the widest variety of natural sites possible: forests, parks, gardens, rocks, caves and whatever is protected in the participating countries. This makes that most users will be able to find several natural heritage sites close to them.

More than 20 countries were ready to organize «Wiki Loves Earth». There are: Andorra, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Iraq, FYR Macedonia, Nepal, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine.

However, only 13 of them were ready to start May 1. The reasons were different: from lack of time to governmental bureaucracy (as in some countries it was too hard to gain the lists of natural heritage sites from public authorities).

Nevertheless, Wiki Loves Earth is successfully going at 13 countries: Andorra&Spain, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Estonia, Germany, Ghana, Macedonia, Nepal, the Netherlands and Ukraine. A few days ago India has also joined the international contest.

So far nearly 30 000 photos from all over the world were uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons under a free license. All photos will be freely licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these. It’s a good opportunity for Wikipedia to collect more free photos and use them as illustrations.

Now the first three leaders are Ukraine (6572 photos), Macedonia (4730 photos) and Andorra&Spain (4404 photos).

Write an article about the nature heritage

Photographers are masters of presenting needed information. But … that’s as well as famous historians and financial geniuses. Sometimes it’s difficult to draw a precise line between pure knowledge and manipulation of us – subtle and subliminal or direct and brazen. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, somewhere in the intersection. Therefore we would like to see, not just read. Heard, not just seen. You can go not everywhere, but you can have a pretty full understanding of your own country.

On May 1 , in conjunction with the photo contest «Wiki Loves Earth» Wikipedia started a month of articles about nature monuments in Ukraine. In the articles Wikipedians use all that photos from the contest. Sometimes having a good picture prompts for writing essay about an event. Sometimes having the article helps choose a place for a travel. There is no importance what the chicken or the egg was the first. The main thing that we get to pinch more free knowledge .

During these two weeks volunteer editors have created over 75 articles and have improved over 20.

If you love to travel and take pictures – load your own photos. If you are not too handy with a camera – write articles. Improve the existing text. Loads and write. Share your expertise with others in the hope that both of you share too. Or already shared before.

Author: Antanana.

Congratulate India on a start of «Wiki Loves Earth» and Macedonia with second ranking place!

«Wiki Loves Earth» international photo contest has a new participant – beautiful and ancient India. It already has 28 first photos at the Commons.

Macedonia is a great country with active and talented people. Now it is in the second place with 3265 uploaded photos.

In Twitter @WikiLovesEarth you can find the most interesting facts from the each country. For example, Darco Nikilovsky from Macedonia uploaded near 1000 photos from his native country!

So, we congratulate our colleagues from India and Macedonia!

Here is just a short update from the Wiki Loves Earth Dutch team

Wiki Loves Earth in the Netherlands is ready for the competition to start on the 1st of May that will last until the 30th of June.

In addition to the photo competition, the Dutch chapter took the initiative to not only award prices for photos, but also to have a main prize for the best recorded sound in nature. Furthermore, the Netherlands has made an official partnership with the 20 National Parks that exist to collaborate on communication, organisation of events and access to expert knowledge. Throughout the two months Wikimedia Nederland will be hosting photography & Wikimedia Commons workshops, including a private tour in different parks across the country. The kick-start was last Saturday on the 3rd of May and was very successful!

More information you can read at the official site ot at the Facebook page.

A good start in Spain&Andorra and Austria

The contest is opened only 4 days, but we have two leaders: Austria and Spain&Andorra.They are constantly changing places in the ranking. At this moment Austria has 1442 photos and Spain&Andorra – 1425.

For Andorra & Spain the contest has had a good start with 1 out of 5 of all photos. They have also a dedicated Flickr group that works well with currently 100 more photos pending to transfer to Commons. 80% of the photos were uploaded by one user known as a very active participant in previous editions of Wiki Loves Monuments. The bad news is that almost all photos are from Catalonia, only one from Andorra and none from other Spanish regions. The spanish team has an active partner for promotion and press releases, but only for Catalonia. Now they should improve outreach in other regions.