Wikimedia has organized the largest photo contest in the world

Great idea came from Wikimedia to increase the public domain photo database. According to the terms of the Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 contest, participants must take pictures of “monuments of historical and cultural significance”, upload them to the Wikimedia Commons warehouse under a free license and allow them to be used on Wikipedia. The judges will select the best photos, and by mid-October they will determine the top ten finalists. A mobile application has been created specifically for the competition, so you can take and upload photos from your Android device.

The competition is held for the third time, but now with the maximum scope. In 2010, it was organized as an experiment in the Netherlands, in 2011 it was distributed to Europe and Russia, and now to other countries of the world, including the USA.

The organizers hope that up to 10,000 photographers will take part in the competition from September 1–30, 2012, who will upload hundreds of thousands of photos to the warehouse. In this case, the event will be the largest photo contest. This is a very realistic forecast, because last year 5,000 participants uploaded 168,000 photos.

Interestingly, 80% of participants in last year’s competition were new to Wikipedia, but many of them remained in the project after that and began to edit the wiki pages even more actively than regular editors.
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Business cards of judges

The authors of the ten best photos in the world will receive prizes from 50 to 2,000 euros . In addition, there are separate prizes in thematic categories, as well as awards for each country.

Countries allowed to participate in the 2012 competition.