Month: May 2014

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!

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).

«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!

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.

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.

We wish new achievements and the huge amount of beautiful photos from the each region of Spain and Andorra.

We have the first statistics of uploaded photos.

The largest number of them is in Austria – 1117.

Andorra&Spain ranks second place with 1003 photos.

And Macedonia ranks the third position with 528 photos.

Then we see:

4. Ukraine with 428 photos

5. Germany with 379 pictures

6. Armenia and 214 photos

7. 84 photos in Azerbaijan

8. 69 in Brazil

The other counties have less then 50 photos.

More photos from each country you can see at the official Facebook page, Vkontakte or at Instagram.