Annual Report 2025/Fail fest: Wiki Loves – high quality but low renewal
In this fail fest, we describe how Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments were organized during the year; participation declined despite our efforts to lower the barriers for beginners. Initiatives to attract more participants were identified and will be implemented in 2026.
The Wiki Loves Earth (WLE) and Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) competitions were held in 2025, like in the previous years, in May and September respectively. Beautiful photographs were submitted, and the winning images are available here for Wiki Loves Earth and here for Wiki Loves Monuments.
Although the competitions continued to generate high-quality images, the number of participating photographers declined during the year. This affected both contests and was also reflected in the rankings, where many of the photographers were returning participants and previous winners. The result was a competition that maintained a high standard of submissions but showed limited renewal among participants.
One factor that continues to affect participation is the threshold for contributing to Wikimedia Commons. The platform can be perceived as difficult for new participants to get started with, which may mean that interested photographers do not complete the submission process. At the same time, the preparatory work ahead of the competitions was limited and, to a lesser extent, structured around recruiting new participants.
The work to lower the barriers for beginners, which began in 2025 with improvements to the Wiki Loves pages, will therefore continue. Ahead of the coming year, further work is planned to broaden participation and strengthen the reach of the competitions.
Among the areas for development that were identified are a stronger focus on partnerships, more side activities connected to the competitions, and new channels for reaching people interested in photography. Collaboration with photography schools, as well as associations focused on nature and culture, is seen as an opportunity to reach new target groups. At the same time, the introduction for beginners needs to be improved further, together with tools and support that make it easier to contribute via Wikimedia Commons.
The experiences from the year also show the need for a clearer division of roles between the office and the community in organizing the competitions. We are also exploring the possibility of adapting an app developed by Wikimedia Italy to make uploads easier.
To enable these different development opportunities, a staff member has been hired for the role of Project Manager for Member and Community Engagement. Among the tasks they will be responsible is further development of the competitions and creating pathways to more long-term engagement with the association and with the Wikimedia platforms alike.
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