Czocha Castle by Aneta Pawska, CC BY-SA 4.0
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 5 December 2023, and the are intended to be published at the latest by end of February.
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.
The international team reserves the right to disqualify any images at any point in the process if they are uploaded without confirmed email address in the account on Wikimedia Commons, if the images are deleted or are otherwise ineligible.
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. The total of points will determine the final ranking. Only the final ranking will be published, with comments collected from jurors.
International Jury composition
The international jury for 2023 consists of Wikipedia users, heritage experts and professional photographers:
- Rodrigo González: He is a photographer from Mexico City and an active contributor to Commons, focusing on political communication, monuments and landscapes. He has been part of the Wiki Loves Monuments jury in Mexico.
- Wilson Oluoha: Born in Lagos, Nigeria, he is a multi-lingual Information and Media Scientist with a passion for open access to knowledge and building sustainable knowledge communities. He joined the Wikimedia movement in 2018 through the Igbo language affiliate in Nigeria. In 2022, he founded IG WikiCommons Hub.
- Heidrun Rosenberg: She is an art historian, lecturer and independent curator. She is currently a board member of Wikimedia Austria.
- Bijay Chaurasia: A Nepal-based professional photographer, specializes in landscape, travel, cultural, and monumental photography. With a decade of experience, he’s captured Nepal’s allure. A dedicated Wikimedia contributor since 2014, he promotes Nepal’s charm worldwide.
- Libardo Muñoz: Volunteer in Wikimedia Colombia, he enjoys translating and recording articles from Wikipedia and participating in activities about open knowledge.
- Nassima Chahboun: She is a Moroccan architect, urban planner, and heritage consultant, holding a MA in Architecture & Historic Urban Environments from University College London. She is the founder of the heritage consultancy firm “CultureLab”, and the co-founder of “Wiki World Heritage User Group.”
- Nicola Della Quaglia: He has always been in the world of photography: his father is an art and architecture photographer and he learned from him. He is the photographer of the Egyptian Museum in Turin since 2016, focusing on digitization of the collection (open data project) and on documenting museum’s life.
- Vanj Padilla: She is a Philippine journalist and a Doctor of Laws graduate. She is a communications strategist and a public relations officer. As such, she works with photojournalists and learned photography skills, visual artistry, branding and design. She has been a Wikimedian since 2012 and has been Wikimania COT in 2021 and 2023.
- Onur Palabiyik: Born in 1961, and currently living in Turkey, he is retired after having worked as a Civil Engineer. In 2010, he started his journey in the world of photography, and he is proud to hold the titles of EFIAP/b and GPU 2.
- Rebecca Jeannette: She is the Co-Founder of Wikimedia User Group Rwanda and Community Engagement Director at Wikimedia Rwanda. She leads initiatives like Wiki Loves Monuments every year in Rwanda, Wiki for Human Rights and WikiGap while championing environmental safety through OSM Rwanda.
