Wiki Loves in Numbers
08-19, 03:35–04:05 (UTC), Room 311
Language: English

In this session we will review 13 years of Wiki Loves competitions through a more quantitative lens: what actually happened, and what happened to the uploads and uploaders after the competitions ended? Wiki Loves Monuments, Earth or Africa: it's worth taking a deeper dive.


Wiki Loves Monuments started in 2010 in the Netherlands and has grown to become the worlds largest photography competition. Similar photo competitions with a different thematic angle have also developed, and we'll take a look at the entire ecosystem.

As a federated photography competition, we will look at the past years and what it has brought us. The overall statistics are already impressive (almost 3 million images uploaded in Wiki Loves Monuments alone) but in this presentation we will dive a bit deeper in how images are being used, who were the participants that contributed the images and what else can we deduce?


What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

This session is for an experienced audience

How will you deliver this session?

In-person, live: The speaker or speakers will all be onsite in Singapore

How does your session relate to the event themes: Diversity, Collaboration, Future?

Wiki Loves Monuments and sister competitions have been one of the tools available to communities around the world to recruit new colleagues. It has often been heralded as one of the more successful concepts around. To the extent that publicly available data permits us, we will (among other things) look at what happened to these new contributors. What can we learn from competitions in the past, to be more effective in the future?

See also: presentation slides (in progress)

Lodewijk is a Dutch Wikipedian since 2005 and was in 2010 one of the initiators of Wiki Loves Monuments in the Netherlands. In the years after, he has been part of the international team that helped grow the competition to span dozens of countries each year.
He was administrator on various projects, board member of Wikimedia Nederland (2006-2011), steward (2006-2010), member of the Affiliations Committee (2009-2014) and served in various other roles and committees. In 2021 he was named the inaugural Wikimedia Laureate (20th year honouree).

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