Jury

The competition consists of a series of national competitions and an international finale. Each national contest is allowed to nominate ten images for the international finale. The international jury, made up of seven members with different skills and backgrounds, will determine the winners of this final round out of the nominated images and award the prizes.

National juries need to send their results to the international team before 1 November 2016, and the are intended to be published at the latest by medio December.

Criteria

The jury will determine the winners of the international contest taking into the consideration the following criteria (in no particular order):

  • Technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective etc.);
  • Originality;
  • Usefulness of the image for Wikipedia.

Images that reach a top ranking of the international finale, will typically at least fulfill the technical criteria of the ‘Featured Image’ process at Wikimedia Commons.

Process

Each national competition is allowed to nominate up to 10 pictures from their national winners for the international finale. This results in a pool of 250-500 images. These images are rated 1-5 stars by the international jury members based on the criteria above. Based on these ratings, a ranking is drawn up, and a selection of images is made.

After this first round, the jury has some time to discuss these outcomes, and remove images from the selection or even disqualify them if they feel that they don’t meet a minimum level of quality expected of a top-20 image in Wiki Loves Monuments.

Finally, each jury member will make their ordered top-20 ranking, where 20 points will be awarded to the top picture, 19 to the second etc. The total of points will determine the final ranking. Only the final ranking will be published, with comments collected from jurors.

International Jury members

The international jury for 2016 will consist of several Wikipedia users, heritage experts and professional photographers. The following people are part of the jury, a few may be added:

  • Ons Abid (Tunisia), photojournalist, artist and media facilitator
  • Armelle Arrou (France) is Head of Public Relations and Events at UNESCO.
  • Alessandro Bordin (Italy), IT journalist and freelance photographer – videomaker. First prize winner in Wiki Loves Earth Switzerland, 2015. Teacher in Photography and Post Production schools.
  • Wolter Braamhorst (Netherlands), Independent communication specialist, advisor to European heritage organisation Europa Nostra and editor of their magazine Heritage in Motion
  • Gohar Grigoryan (Armenia) is national coordinator of the European Heritage Days in Armenia, and of the Community-led Urban Strategies in Historic Towns (COMUS)
  • Patricio Lorente (Argentina) is former Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, and has been active in the Spanish Wikipedia since 2005.
  • Daniel Schwen (USA) is staff scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory and is an experienced amateur photographer with numerous high quality contributions to Wikimedia Commons.
  • Pranav Singh (India) is the 2012 first prize winner of the international finale of Wiki Loves Monuments. He is a photographer by profession specializing in lifestyle and landscape photography; a cinematographer by hobby.