If you live in Pakistan right now and have used the Wikipedia for any sort of information in the past few days, you must have noticed a banner at the top of every Wikipedia page mentioning “Wiki Loves Earth Photography competition in Pakistan”. That banner is shown to every Pakistani user who stumbles on any Wikipedia page.
If you click on the banner, you will be taken onto a page explaining what the competition is all about. Wikipedia Loves Northern Pakistan is an online photography competition. The competition is a part of a much wider Wikipedia loves Earth Photography competition that is localised on country basis.
Pakistan has been included in the competition for the first time
Wiki Loves Earth competitions started in 2013 from Ukraine and massive contributions and participation led to its expansion to several other countries for the 2014 competition. This year Pakistan has been included in the competition for the first time and is only the third South Asian country apart from India and Nepal to have become a part of this contest.
The purpose of this competition is to get the maximum number of submissions for the Northern Areas of Pakistan’s natural heritage and landscapes and promote them. According to Wikipedia “Photos of scenic natural landscape, natural heritage sites, national parks, forests, and gardens are eligible for the competition”.
Right now, Pakistan is leading in the number of submissions with over 6500 images from 1012 contributors
Wikipedia calls this competition an educational event to provide knowledge to every person in the world freely. By encouraging the use of ‘Creative Commons CC-BY-SA’ licences as opposed to traditional copyrights, the photographs entered into the competition will become available to everyone around the world for free.
However, the user has to credit the original author of the photograph under the licence so you’ll definitely be getting your name out. All winning photographs (and some non-winners as well) will be used in Wikipedia articles and be available to thousands in the world.
The competition will last a whole month ending on 31st of May. Anyone who wishes to participate needs to register an account with Wikipedia using their email address. Taking part is as simple as pressing a button (UPLOAD NOW to be exact) after the registration is complete. Images must be original and should not have any watermarks or copyright protection.
Jury will evaluate the participants in June, based on their quality, originality and potential usefulness and value to Wikipedia. The top 10 photograph authors from Pakistan will be awarded non-cash gifts. The gifts will include Wikipedia merchandise, WLE merchandise and Creative Commons merchandise.
There is a separate Pakistan Jury as well which nominate the top three and seven highly commended photos for the international competition. The first international winner will win a travel scholarship (worth up to $3,000) to attend Wikimania conference in Italy in 2016.
Everyone who wishes to participate should go to the link below and register themselves for the competition.
Source: Wikipedia
Bringing more content to the internet. Good work by wikipedia.
Or is it spying on us by us for them..
Spying, what? Through beautiful pictures?