Commons:Picture of the Year/Rules

Picture of the Year 2023

POTY 2023 || Introduction – Rules – Discussion – Translations – Committee – Help || R1 Candidates – Gallery || R2 Gallery || Results

Official policies

These policies were determined by the POTY committee and should not be modified without committee approval.
For questions or proposed changes, please use the talk page.

Voting

Rounds

There will be two rounds in each POTY contest:
- Round 1 will include all images promoted to featured picture status during that year.
- Round 2 will include the top 30 (+α) images from Round 1.
The top image will be declared as the Picture of the Year. The next two will be featured as runners-up.

Dates

Round 1 of POTY 2023

from 1 February 2024, 00:00

until 14 February 2024, 23:59:59

Round 2 of POTY 2023

from 17 February 2024, 00:00

until 2 March 2024, 23:59:59

Beta testing periods

There will be several days of beta testing period, so we can check whether the voting script is working successfully.
Votes in the testing period — the several days before the official opening date — are also eligible. The committee will count them as well as the votes cast in the later period.
If you find a bug for the voting tool, please report it to MediaWiki talk:Gadget-EnhancedPOTY.js; report other issues to Commons talk:Picture of the Year.

Voter eligibility

Users must have an account, at any Wikimedia project, which was registered before or during the year the contest is being held for. For example, for POTY 2023, you must have registered before 1 January 2024 UTC.
This user account must have at least 75 live edits on any single Wikimedia project by the end of the year the contest is being held for. For example, for POTY 2023, you must have reached the edit threshold before 1 January 2024 UTC. An automated tool has been set up to check eligibility.
Users must vote with an account meeting the above requirements either on Commons or another SUL-related Wikimedia project (for other Wikimedia projects, the account must be attached to the user's Commons account through SUL).

Notes

Even if a user has multiple eligible accounts, each user can only cast votes from one account.
Votes from IP users will be considered invalid.
Votes cast by ineligible users/accounts and multiple/duplicate votes cast in violation of the rules will be invalidated.
Due to the large vote volume, we are unable to accept voters that do not meet these criteria as determined by the official POTY voter eligibility tool.
We may contact you on your talk page for up to 1 year after you vote to alert you to contest results and invite you to participate in next year's contest. You may opt-out at any time.

Voting rules

In Round 1 - multiple vote - eligible users may vote for as many candidates as they wish to support (one vote per image).

In the final (Round 2) - three votes - eligible users may vote for only 3 finalists. Each of these 3 votes counts equally, and each finalist must be voted for only once. You do not have to cast all three of your votes. Note: if someone casts more than three votes, only the 3 most recent votes will be counted.

Images

Image eligibility

Round 1

All Featured Pictures from the year the contest is being held for.

Final

The top 30 images from Round 1, by number of votes, from any category will go to the final round — the categories are irrelevant when it comes to counting the votes.
If top two images in a category are not in the top 30 of all images, they will be also promoted to the Final to guarantee a diverse final.

The committee reserves the right to disqualify or replace candidates in exceptional circumstances, but will not use this ability without careful discussion.

POTY awards

Picture of the Year
POTY #2
POTY #3
POTY Finalists
POTY Category tops