A photo competition with a twist

We need illustrations for our #Wikipedia articles and it is tough to find high quality pictures of those parts of the world where Wikipedians are rare. Both Albania and Kosovo are not well covered with Wikipedians, our Wikipedias do not cover these areas particularly well either and there is a lack of high quality pictures to illustrate such articles.

Organising a photo competition makes sense but a standard competition has a few drawbacks:

• it is time limited
• it does not necessarily build skills
• judging photos is a serious pain in the posterior

The current photo competition in Kosovo is different; there is no need for judges, the photographers have to make pictures to a high standard and best of all, there is no time limit. The first prize is for the first photographer who has its picture featuring a Kosovar subject as a Commons featured picture. 

The first valued picture will not be featured

Nominating a picture is easy but qualifying is hard. Technical requirements for digital photos are high and jealously enforced. This removes the need for the organisers to judge the pictures themselves. This competition has already generated quite a lot of pictures by several photographers and the quality is improving.

This competition has it all;

• we gain many new pictures about an area we know little about
• the competitors gain valuable skills
• Commons and Wikipedia become better known in Kosovo and Albania

It will be interesting to learn when the competition has ended.

Thanks,

       GerardM