Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2014
 Wiki Loves Earth
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Wiki Loves Earth 2014 was an international photography competition that took place – with the subject natural heritage (protected areas) – in 15 countries/regions.
More than 70,000 photos were uploaded for this contest, see Category:Wiki Loves Earth 2014 and subcategories. Please also have a look at the gallery of finalists and winners.
Concept
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Wiki Loves Earth (WLE) was initiated and first held (as pilot contest) by Wikimedia Ukraine in 2013. See also our presentation of the Wiki Loves Earth contest.
The aim of the contest is to collect pictures of natural heritage sites – such as nature reserves, nature/landscape conservation areas, natural parks, scenic/landscape areas, remarkable gardens, etc. – to illustrate articles in the worldwide free Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. Like Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), we use official lists of protected areas, usually available from a government agency.
The focus is not only on sites of national importance, but also on those protected at the regional level, and on the widest variety of natural sites possible: forests, parks, gardens, rocks, caves and whatever is protected in your country. This means that most users will be able to find several natural heritage sites close to them.
- Features WLE has in common with WLM
- same or very similar tools and structure
- Low threshold for participating: most users will be able to find a natural heritage monument near them.
- A vast majority of countries can participate; most countries have lists of natural heritage sites available.
- possibility of workshops, "Wiki Takes…" events, collaboration of regional wiki groups etc., and even more fun as it's outdoors
- It motivates people to photograph sites around them (especially good if we have holidays during Wiki Loves Earth, for example, May Day in Europe would be great).
- New opportunities
- outreach to the new community: photographers of nature and ecologists
- new potential partners (ecological organisations, nature protecting funds etc.)
- Photos of natural sites are usually less "boring": you can hardly get two identical pictures of a natural site.
- no problem with copyrights, freedom of panorama, laws on monuments etc. – Nature is in public domain.
- contribution to preservation of nature and public awareness of nature protection
- improvement of Wikipedia articles on natural sites
- "green" and "eco-friendly" contest (e.g. in Ukraine, diplomas were published on recycled paper, and prizes included solar mobile phone chargers and prizes from National Geographic Ukraine)
Participating countries 2014
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Help and FAQ
editQuestions are answered through:
- Commons talk:Wiki Loves Earth 2014 (primary)
- wikilovesearth
lists.wikimedia.org (subscribe) - #wikilovesearth webchat
- comments on the wikilovesearth.org website
Why was this period chosen?
- This is, so to say, the "green period" here (the Northern Hemisphere), many people are excited to take photos of nature views in spring. Summer is a time of laziness, even if people take more pictures, say, in June, they are not so eager to upload them at once.
Aren't there too many protected areas according to your system?
- In Ukraine we have almost 8000 protected areas of different types. Is this a big number? We think, no, many areas are still not protected by state anyhow. And, though natural objects are more complicated, note, that this is less than WLM objects.
- In Greece we have a smaller number of protected areas but they are bigger. It seems that we will be covering 30% of the country and anyone can visit such an area by driving less than 30 km.
Areas are too large, how to focus what to photograph?
- As to Ukraine, we focused our photographers on taking pictures of wide views and representative biotopes. There was an idea of taking pictures of significant plants, but as a) none of us could make a list of them and b) nobody can prove the photo of a separate flower was taken in the nature reserve (not on smb's own balcony), we decided not to encourage this. Though it wasn't forbidden either; you can decide this question for you.
What shall we do if some areas have an entrance fee?
- Nothing bad about that. We are not going to force someone to pay for a chance of taking photo. On the contrary, people who are going to pay for entrance will do this anyway and we encourage them to take pictures there :)
Tooling
editFamiliar tools from Wiki Loves Monuments were adapted for Wiki Loves Earth. In Ukrainian WLE 2013 we used our own tools, which can also be available internationally. Adaptation progress is tracked below.
WLE upload campaigns
- See the wle-xx links in the above lists of participating countries.
- For templates see Category:Wiki Loves Earth templates.
WLE organizers with campaign editor rights:
- User:Ilya - Ukraine
- User:Romaine - available to help anyone with their campaigns
- User:WikedKentaur - Estonia
- User:AleXXw - Austria
Other useful things