Looking for quality, featured, valued images

As the photo contest goes by and most countries ended upload campaigns, time comes to organize images. Many things are to be arranged by local organizers — sorting out ineligible photos, adding categories / templates, correcting mistakes. These things may sound trivial at first glance but are really helpful afterwards.

Our dear contributors are encouraged to add meaningful descriptions to their files if they didn’t provided them while uploading and there is no autocomplete available. To do this, user only needs to find edit button at the top of the file page and write down a few words after “description”.

But there is one more thing to be underlined. What is the measure of success for international Wiki Loves Earth? You can think of number of participating countries, photos uploaded and participants and surely you’ll be right. Organizing team is also measuring the contest’s success by the number of new users, image usage on wiki projects and recognition of images as valued, quality or featured on Wikimedia Commons.

Quality, featured or valued status is given to a picture by the community of  Wikimedia Commons. Let’s look at the requirements and the procedure of gaining this statuses.

What image is quality? Quality images are diagrams or photographs that meet certain quality standards (which are mostly technical in nature) and are valuable for Wikimedia projects. They must be the work of Commons contributors; they need not be extraordinary or outstanding, but merely well-composed and generally well-executed. If you think that a particular image meets the criteria, you may nominate it at Commons:Quality images candidates.

What image is featured? Featured pictures may or may not have been created by a Commons user but must meet the same quality standards and have a “wow factor”. Images may be considered for featured status by being listed at Commons:Featured picture candidates, where the community will reach a consensus.

Guidelines for quality and featured images are the following:

• Images should have at least 2 real megapixels of information, for example, 1600 × 1250. For “easy to take” images, reviewers may choose to demand more if the image would benefit from it.
• Images should not be downsampled (sized down in order to appear of better quality). Downsampling reduces the amount of information stored in the image file.
• Images should not have distracting amount of noise when viewed in full size.
• Considering the circumstances, images should be correctly and appropriately exposed.
• Quality images must have reasonable colors.
• Every important object on the picture should be sharp, considering the idea of the image.
• The overall image should have clearly defined focus, for example, the main subject is in focus and the foreground and background are out of focus, or else, the whole scene is in focus.
• Lighting should be appropriate for portraying the subject.
• The arrangement of the elements within the image should support depiction of the subject, not distract from it.
• Foreground and background objects should not be distracting.

What image is valued? Valued images are images which are considered especially valuable by the Commons community for use in online content within other Wikimedia projects. A valued image is considered to be the most valued illustration of its kind by the Commons community. The technical requirements for valued images are typically much lower, as there is no concern about suitability for print usage. Valued images are more about your ingenuity in finding good and valuable subjects which matter, and about the usability of the information on the image page. Valued image candidates are listed here.

Did you get the difference between valued images, quality images, and featured pictures? The quality images project aims to identify and encourage users who provide images of high technical quality to Commons. Featured pictures are the cream of the crop at Commons and the project is reserved for images of both extraordinary value and technical quality. Valued images, on the other hand, are those that are the most valuable of their kind for use in an online context, within other Wikimedia projects.

All the guidelines may seem to be complicated but don’t be afraid! Wiki Loves Earth is counting on local teams in nominating deserving images for appropriate status.

WLE organizing team is waiting for at least 1% of uploaded photos are categorized as valued, quality or featured. Is this hard, having 100 thousand of them? We only will know after having tried!