Category: Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons, the repository for educational media content that hosts most of the images used on Wikipedia, has announced its photo of the year.* Nearly 3,500 people chose between 57 images in the final round of the competition. Jason Weingart’s Evolution—a composite timelapse showing the development and frightening expansion of a tornado—took the top prize.….

The black-and-white film flickers as a wealthy young woman, sitting on a bench in a garden, bats her eyes at the gardener’s son she is not allowed to marry. In her self-portrait, an artist wears masculine clothes against a bleak urban backdrop, dark eyes meeting the viewer’s gaze from the shadow of a broad-brimmed riding….

As 2018 turned to 2019, people around the world celebrated the start of a brand new year with parties, family, and friends. The transition into 2019 also marked a new era for access to knowledge and culture in the United States, as new works finally entered the public domain through copyright expiration for the first….

Alireza Akhlaghi had plenty of time inside the famed Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in Iran to capture the photo that leads this blog post. Why? He walked in at exactly noon, just as the building was about to close down for two hours. He was able to convince the mosque’s guards to let him inside anyway, even though….

A lonely monastery. The sun rising over the desert. A walk through a national park. These are just a few of the spectacular sights captured in the winners of the international Wiki Loves Earth photography competition, announced today. Coming in first place, seen at top, is a shot of the famed columnar basalt of Cape Stolbchaty, located in Russia’s….

Earlier this year, the Wikimedia Foundation asked designer George Oates, who has worked for Flickr and the Internet Archive‘s Open Library, among others, to conduct a deep dive into Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository that provides many of the images used on Wikipedia. We wanted a fresh pair of eyeballs, and we were particularly….

On 2 September, disaster struck the National Museum of Brazil: a massive fire devastated the building and its extensive holdings. Centuries of cultural heritage, including recordings of dead languages and ancient artifacts from pre-Columbian times, were lost. But amid the carnage and destruction, a movement has risen—one with the aim of adding as much knowledge….

This year, the Basque Wikimedians User Group carried out an ambitious education project that aimed to improve a series of essential articles for high school students, in collaboration with university professors and lecturers. The project was accomplished with financial support from the Basque government’s Department of Culture, who additionally stipulated that a portion of the sum would be put….

Whichever frog pun (or caption) you choose to label it with, the photo above is this year’s Wikimedia Commons picture of the year. It features two Phyllomedusa rohdei, frogs endemic to Brazil, with one stepping on the other’s head, seemingly reaching for something just out of the frame. The photo was taken by biologist Renato Augusto….

Canada’s Wikimedia chapter is collaborating with local organizations to coordinate photography sessions with public figures. The results go up on Wikipedia.