Wiki Loves Monuments

As the national juries have determined their winners, it is time to select the international winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2023. As every year, this decision is made by the members of the International Jury. The 2023 edition of the Wiki Loves Monuments International Jury is made up of a 10-person team and has Ruben Ojeda as its Jury Coordinator.

Review and Ranking Process

The Wiki Loves Monuments 2023 recorded a total of 218,896 submissions which required dedicated and steady efforts from the national jury teams to review and nominate up to 10 images for the international finale 2023.
The international jury process is done in three rounds and involves a system that is designed to guarantee a ranked outcome which avails images a fair chance of surfacing the best images. Using the Montage jury tool, the photos are reviewed in a sequential order of:

Round 1:

This round comprises the jurors being asked to rate all the images in a final pool with 1-5 stars. The images that receive the highest average scores will move on to the second round.  Also, in the determination of the winners, there are some criteria to be put into consideration which include: technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective etc.), originality, and its usefulness to Wikipedia – in no particular order.

Round 2:

This round, which only takes a few days, allows jurors to ‘veto’ an image and the goal is to ensure that no image will win the competition where a significant minority of the jury would have a major concern with. Any image that earned at least three vetoes will result in the removal of the image from consideration for the third round.  It is worth mentioning that this round gives room for formal objections which include instances where photos are not displaying a monument, digital manipulations that deceive the viewer, or a discrepancy between the photographer and the uploader.

Round 3:

It is in this round that images that made it to the cleaned list (typically between 40 and 50 images) will be considered for the third and final round. These images are entered in the jury tool with each jury member instructed to rank their 25 favorite images by preference: on a scale of 1-25 with number 1 getting 25 points, number two 24 points all the way to 1 point for number 25 and 0 points for each remaining image, culminating to final ranking which is then summed up to arrive at the final result. In an instance of ties, the image with the highest preference would be nominated (for example, the image with the most first places would win).

In conclusion, Jury Members are key to the successful implementation of any WLM contest. For a free and credible review process, they take into consideration the historical and cultural significance of the subject matter, ensuring that the winning photographs not only showcase artistic talent but also contribute to the preservation and celebration of rich cultural heritage while ensuring its usefulness to Wikipedia.
The final results of WLM 2023 are expected in February 2024 and will be communicated in a prize ceremony on the WLM-international social media channels – Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon and X (Twitter)

Image credit: Draparv – CC BY-SA 3.0 Romania – WLM 2012