Commons:Wiki Loves Plants

Wiki Loves Plants 2023

Wiki Loves Plants is a photography contest to encourage people to take pictures of plants for use on Wikipedia; its purpose is to create high quality images of plants that can be used to help illustrate Wikipedia articles. Only pictures that have been tagged with their correct scientific name and are uploaded under a copyright licence compatible with Wikimedia Commons are eligible. This helps Wikipedia editors to use the photographs on the correct Wikipedia articles. To help identify submissions, the event is being hosted on iNaturalist; after the competition, qualifying submissions will be uploaded onto Commons for use on Wikipedia.

Photographs will be judged on how well they can be used to illustrate the plant's Wikipedia article. Photographs of the whole plant or parts of the plant such as its flowers, leaves, bark, wood, seeds, parasites, disease, and/or roots are encouraged. Photographs can be submitted individually or as a collection focusing on a single species.

• 
  Gladiolus maculatus
• 
  Helichrysum dasyanthum
• 
  Aloe arborescens
• 
  Dimorphotheca pluvialis
• 
  Helichrysum dasyanthum
• 
  Bartholina burmanniana
• 
  Flower

Time

Participants can submit photographs on iNaturalist (Wiki Loves Plants project) anytime in the months of January and February 2023.

Winners

The judging is complete and we are please to announce the following winners of Wiki Loves Plants 2023. Regrettably we received no qualifying submissions in our special Fynbos category so those prizes will go unclaimed this year. Winning photographs were picked based on 1) their ability to most effectively illustrate a plant for use on Wikipedia, 2) usefulness of the photograph in helping others identify other species, 3) background illustration of the species habitat and 4) aesthetic appeal.

We received a total of 624 qualifying submissions detailing 349 plant species.

First prize

• 
  Ipomoea campanulata by Dinesh Valke

Second prizes

Our five 2nd place winners are:

• 
  Argyranthemum pinnatifidum by Paulo SP
• 
  Sticherus cunninghamii by Mike Dickison
• 
  Tillandsia stricta by tiagolubiana
• 
  Crithmum maritimum by Paulo SP
• 
  Prosopis juliflora by Dinesh Valke

Prizes

Pictures will be judged according to their encyclopedic quality. That is to say, their ability to clearly identify the plant species in question on their respective Wikipedia article. All prizes will be awarded in the form of Amazon gift cards and are valued in US$.

• Best picture: $100 – 1 prize will be awarded
• 2nd best picture: $50 – 5 prizes will be awarded

• Best use on Wikipedia: $50 – 2 prizes will be awarded

This prize is awarded to a picture that was submitted to the competition and used to illustrate a page on Wikipedia.

Participants can win multiple prizes. Pictures of fynbos species will be eligible for both the main competition and the fynbos special prizes.

Special category

A special award will be given for the best photograph of a fynbos specimen.

• Best picture: A 5 day stay for two at Cedarpeak Mountain Guest Cottages located in the Groot Winterhoek mountain range of the Western Cape, South Africa. Travel costs not included + $60 gift voucher.
• 2nd best picture: $50 – 2 prizes will be awarded

• Best use on Wikipedia: $50 – 1 prizes will be awarded

This prize is awarded to a picture that was submitted to the competition and used to illustrate a page on Wikipedia.

Judging will take place during the month of March and winners will be announced in April 2023.

About

Wiki Loves Plants is a photography contest hosted by Wikimedia South Africa that seeks to encourage people to take pictures of plants for use on Wikipedia. The purpose of the competition is to create high quality images of plants that can be used to help illustrate Wikipedia articles. Only pictures that have been tagged with their correct scientific name and uploaded under a Creative Commons licence compatible with Wikimedia Commons (such as CC-BY-SA) are eligible. This helps Wikipedia editors to use the photographs on the correct Wikipedia articles.

The competition will be held over the months of January and February 2023.

Photographs will be judged on how well they can be used to illustrate the plant's Wikipedia article. Photographs of the whole plant or parts of the plant such as its flowers, leaves, bark, wood, seeds, parasites, disease, and/or roots are encouraged. Photographs can be submitted individually or as a collection focusing on a single species.

To enter

1) You will only be able to participate on iNaturalist as the iNaturalist website will allow us to identify submissions. Once you have an iNaturalist account you will need to join the Wiki Loves Plants project page. You can participate anytime between 15 January and the end of February 2023; submitted photographs are allowed to have been taken at any time or date.

2) All photographs have to be submitted with a Wikimedia Commons compatible copyright licence. Any one of the following Creative Commons copyright licences are allowed:

• CC0 (Creative Commons 0)
• CC-BY (Creative Commons – Attribution)
• CC-BY-SA (Creative Commons – Attribution – Share Alike)

3) Tag the photographs you wish to submit with the tag "WLP2023"

4) Make sure the observation ID is 'research grade' by asking people on iNaturalist to help confirm the correct taxonomy of the plant. All submissions will have until the end of March to reach research grade.

Then you are done!

Although this event is being hosted on iNaturalist we have yet to find a way to sort photographs out by copyright licence. So we might need to add a requirement that participants upload their submissions to Commons under the category "Wiki Loves Plants 2023".