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 3 January 2021, 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 2020 consists of Wikipedia users, heritage experts and professional photographers:
- Rajeeb Dutta is an active Wikimedian and community volunteer who has been part of the international team organizers of Wiki Loves Africa competition.
- Rezkallah Fayçal is a photographer who has done multiple exhibitions in Algeria, London, Paris and Tunis. He is also been a juror in wiki loves earth 2015 Algeria.
- Gab Mejia is a Filipino conservation and environmental photographer, National Geographic Explorer, and a contributor to National Geographic Your Shot. Gab is a Nikon Asia Ambassador and has published stories with National Geographic, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), WWF, and other international publications and organizations.
- Laurie Neale is an architect and cultural heritage expert, affiliated with Europa Nostra as Council member and as 7 Most Endangered Jury member. She is a multi-discipline artist and splits her time between The Hague and Montreal.
- Eduardo Teixeira de Sousa is a street and travel photographer from Portugal. He started photography in circa 1981 and has been published in several media.
- Frank Schulenburg is a landscape, wildlife, and travel photographer based in California. He enjoys spending time outdoors and sharing his images with a worldwide audience through Wikipedia. In 2013, Schulenburg won the U.S. edition of Wiki Loves Monuments in a previous edition.
- Kalyan Varma is a Bangalore (India) based wildlife photographer, filmmaker and conservationist.