Submissions/Wiki Loves Earth: why it is cool and how you can join

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2015.

Submission no.: 5021

Logo of Wiki Loves Earth

Title of the submission

Wiki Loves Earth: why it is cool and how you can join

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)

Presentation

Author of the submission

Mykola Kozlenko

E-mail address

mycola-k at ukr dot net

Username

User:NickK

Country of origin

Ukraine

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Wiki Loves Earth international team / Wikimedia Ukraine

Personal homepage or blog

http://wikilovesearth.org / c:Commons:Wiki Loves Earth 2015

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

Wiki Loves Earth (WLE) is an international photography competition aimed at taking pictures of natural heritage sites and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. It started in Ukraine in 2013 and became international in 2014, covering 15 countries from Brazil to Nepal. In 2015 the contest is organised for the third time in May, and we are looking forward to getting even more participation in it. Similar to Wiki Loves Monuments, the contest is organised separately in every participating country by the local Wikimedia community, and then best photos from all countries are nominated for an international contest.

This presentation will show the brief history of the contest from 2013 and 2015 and then will focus on lessons and ideas from the previous contests. The presentation will consist:

Idea and story behind Wiki Loves Earth. Did you know that almost all countries still don't have photos of all their national parks? Did you know that in the largest European cities there are still parks and gardens without even a single picture? This is something we want to fix! Thanks to Wiki Loves Monuments people already know that finding and picturing a historical monument just near their house is easy — now it's time to discover that a huge number of natural sites next to them are also worth being pictured! In addition, Wiki Loves Earth is a nice opportunity to improve coverage of nature protection topics on the wikis, both by making outreach to nature photographers who have excellent photos and to ecological organisations who have valuable materials.
How you can join? We want to show that joining Wiki Loves Earth is easy and fun and it does not require extensive organisational resources. International team is here to help you — but you know what works best in your country. This is a wonderful opportunity to build links between your local Wikimedia community, chapter or user group and local nature protection or heritage organisations. But if you don't have time for it, you can start by doing promotion in social networks and invite people with a banner in Sitenotice — you will definitely find interested people even with limited resources. You will also learn how you can deal with finding lists of natural sites, looking for jury members or increasing photo usage in the articles.
Lessons and ideas from previous years. Wiki Loves Earth presents a number of nice outreach opportunities around nature protection topics, and you will see some ideas of how you can make this contest even more successful. May is a month where weather is fine almost all around the globe: that's a nice opportunity to organise photo walks or expeditions at some natural sites! If you want to go more local, you can add smaller natural sites, as you can make wonderful photos not only of well-known landscapes but even of small lakes or outstanding trees. Finally, we are sure that natural reserves, parks and gardens are yet to be covered even in the largest wikis, so why don't you organise an editing contest and have both good articles and nice pictures of your natural sites?

You will see why Wiki Loves Earth is a cool project and how organising such event in your country is easy and fun — hope you will like it and join WLE 2016!

Track

GLAM Outreach (alternatively, WikiCulture & Community)

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)

30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

No (funding is provided from PEG grant, but is conditional on making a submission)

Slides or further information (optional)

Slides

Special requests

None

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with a hash and four tildes. (# ~~~~).

Daniel Mietchen (talk) 21:54, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Curious. CT Cooper · talk 23:42, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Especially relevant to countries, where for FOP reasons "Wiki Loves Monuments" is impossible. Spiritia (talk) 13:29, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
--Bachounda (talk) 13:09, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ovedc (talk) 08:25, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
--アンタナナ 23:13, 22 May 2015 (UTC) (maybe)[reply]
--Armineaghayan (talk) 13:21, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
--Jbuket (talk) 07:58, 17 June 2015 (UTC) ;)[reply]
eranroz (talk) 08:11, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
--Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE) (talk) 05:20, 13 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
AleXXw (talk) 13:25, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
बिप्लब आनन्द (talk) 16:01, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nabin K. Sapkota (talk) 16:09, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
KHammerstein (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
MRG90 (talk) 19:41, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]