Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013/Meetings/Doc/WLM-2013-documentation-FAQ

This page sums up frequently asked questions asked about Wiki Loves Monuments from a participant's perspective with short answers and—whenever applicable—links to background pages.

Questions about the project

What is Wiki Loves Monuments?

Wiki Loves Monuments is a public photo competition in which people are asked to take pictures of monuments from participating countries and to upload them to Wikimedia Commons.

There have been three editions of Wiki Loves Monuments so far: in 2010, a successful pilot of the competition was organised in the Netherlands, resulting in over 12,500 pictures of Dutch monuments; in 2011, it was followed by a Europe-wide edition which ended with over 167,00 photos of cultural heritage objects being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons; and in 2012, a worldwide edition organised in 35 countries resulted in over 365,000 pictures.

In 2013, Wiki Loves Monuments continues as a global competition, with Wikimedia contributors and cultural heritage enthusiasts from over 50 countries interested in organising the contest in their areas; the list includes Australia, Brazil, India, Kenya, Mexico, Russia, the United States, and over 40 other countries from all around the world.

What is the scope of this project?

The main idea behind Wiki Loves Monuments is to ask people—readers and users of Wikipedia, photographers, hobbyists and those interested in monuments, among others—to take pictures of monuments located in one or more of the participating countries and to upload them to Wikimedia Commons under a free licence for use on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

As the contest is organised in a federative fashion, there is no common definition of a monument. Instead of that, local organisers are able to create those definitions by themselves, basing on official documents and descriptions provided by their respective governments. Federative also means that every country organises its own contest, and each of these contests is part of a bigger, global one.

Who's behind it?

Wiki Loves Monuments is organised by the Wikimedia community with the help from (whenever applicable) their local Wikimedia chapters. Preparations for the project are mostly run by groups of Wikipedians interested in cultural heritage and the chapters offer them help in promotion, legal issues, finding sponsors and partners, funding prizes for the contest etc.

The 2013 edition will be internationally facilitated by a small team of volunteers involved in the organisation of previous editions: Karthik Nadar from India, Cristian Cantoro from Italy, Lodewijk Gelauff and Romaine from the Netherlands, Mónica Mora from Panama, Tomasz Kozlowski from Poland, and Platonides from Spain.

However, as the contest is organised by a wider group of helpful volunteers from all around the world, possibly also including your country (and speaking your language), you might want to reach out to those volunteers first; there are several ways of getting in touch with us.

For a detailed information on the responsibilities of the international team, please refer to our who's who page.

Questions about participation

How do I participate in Wiki Loves Monuments?

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How do I find a monument in my area?

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How do I upload a file?

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How do I know how many files I uploaded?

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Can I upload pictures from more than one country?

Yes! You are free to upload as many pictures as you want, from as many countries as you want — as long as they participate in Wiki Loves Monuments this year.

There are no restrictions on the number of national contests you can take part in; if you happen to have pictures from other countries (even if they were taken in the past), you can submit them to the competition and increase your chances to win a prize!

My country does not participate in Wiki Loves Monuments this year; what do I do?

I have trouble uploading a file. Where to get help?

We know that when it comes to software, things can (and sometimes do) go wrong. Though it undoubtedly is an unpleasant experience, there is not much to worry about, as we are there to help you.

We prepared a short guide on uploading files that covers the most frequent issues; there is also a longer version that describes the whole upload process in detail — one of these should help you solve your problem.

If it's not the case, you might want to directly contact the people behind Wiki Loves Monuments: you can request help at the help desk, ask questions on the international mailing list, write to a dedicated support e-mail in your language, or even get help in real time on our IRC channel on Freenode.

Questions about the rules of the contest

What are the basic rules?

There are five basic rules that we ask you to follow when uploading pictures for Wiki Loves Monuments to be eligible to win prizes, both on the national and the international levels:

1. Make sure that the pictures are your own work; as a general rule, we do not accept pictures that were taken by other people and then released under a free licence;
2. Try to upload pictures in time, that is between September 1 and September 30, 2013, in your respective timezone; all pictures uploaded before or after those dates will not be part of the competition, and will not be eligible for prizes;
3. Agree to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence when uploading pictures with the UploadCampaign (or a different free licence if you use other tools);
4. Provide the unique identifier (ID number) of the monument that is visible on the picture(s) you're uploading; in most cases, it will be provided automatically by the software, but sometimes you might need to fill it in manually;
5. Have your e-mail enabled on Wikimedia Commons so we can get in touch with you whenever necessary.

What are the conditions of the licence that I need to agree to?

The default licence for all pictures uploaded with our UploadCampaigns is the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, abbreviated as "CC BY-SA 3.0." There are, however, several localised versions of this licence which are adapted to suit the needs of the local jurisdictions; if there is a localised version of the licence in a specified country, it will be set as default for all uploads coming from that country.

By uploading pictures with our UploadCampaigns, you release the under the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence; it means that you irrevocably allow everyone to copy, distribute, and build upon your work for whatever purpose, including a commercial one, as long as they attribute the authorship to you in a manner that you specify (for example, by naming you as the author by your real name or your nickname, giving a link to your personal website, etc.).

The "Share-Alike" part of the licence means that all derivative works of your file have to be released under the very same licence; it is a way of ensuring that all works build upon your picture stay free in the copyleft spirit, and can be used by everyone for all purposes just as your original picture.

Of course, Wikipedia has an article on Creative Commons licences that explains how they work in general. Creative Commons have also prepared a human-readable summary of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence, and they host a very detailed FAQ page in case you want to have all the background information.

Can I use a different licence for my pictures?

The short answer is: "Yes, but with certain exceptions."

As noted above, the default—and the only available—licence for all pictures uploaded with our UploadCampaigns is the CC BY-SA 3.0 or its localised version, depending on the country of the uploader.

However, if you are uploading your pictures with one of the other tools, you are free to use other licences, as long as they are accepted on Wikimedia Commons; a popular choice is to use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, or to release your pictures into the public domain.

What are the technical requirements for the pictures?

Due to the federal nature of Wiki Loves Monuments, there are no minimal requirements for pictures uploaded as part of the competition, just as there are no minimal requirements for pictures uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in general. All self-taken and self-uploaded pictures that fulfill the other basic rules and fill in the Wikimedia Commons scope are accepted into the contest.

However, local organising teams are able to define their own technical requirements for pictures to be eligible to win prizes (such as minimal resolution in pixels, lack of watermarks or excessive photo manipulation, etc.), so we ask you to check your country's local page for any additional rules of your local competition.

In general, we ask you to upload the highest resolution version of the image that you have, so that the image can be used in Wikipedia articles as well as in other environments. If you aim high and plan on winning your local competition (or maybe even the international one!), our general image guidelines and the essay on why we need high resolution media might be of some help.

Why do I need to have my e-mail enabled, and how do I do that?

Enabling your e-mail on Wikimedia Commons gives the local and international organisers a way of contacting you in case such a need arises—for instance to let you know that your picture won a prize, or to communicate important information related to your pictures, your participation in the competition, or the contest as a whole.

If you haven't enabled e-mail while registering an account on Commons, please go to your preferences and specify an e-mail address that you'd like to use for getting notifications or messages from other users. Once you specified an e-mail, you'll need to check "Enable e-mails from other users" at the bottom of the page. The MediaWiki software will then try to verify that the e-mail address belongs to you by sending a confirmation e-mail to that address with a link inside; you will need to click it to confirm your e-mail.

We promise that when e-mailing you (or leaving a message on your talk page), we will use the general Wikimedia principle of common sense, and will not flood your inbox if not absolutely required to.