Forget micro stock and Flickr, Wikipedia is aiming to become a huge "Wikipedia Commons" stock site.
They've announced a contest where people around the world will photograph monuments for free, then upload them to Wikipedia so that they are available not only to Wikipedia but everyone else as well.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/WLM_photo_contest_launches_August_2012Wikipedians around the world will participate in the world’s largest photo contest, Wiki Loves Monuments 2012, from September 1st through 30th. Thousands of volunteers in more than 30 countries will upload photos of historic sites throughout the month, making hundreds of thousands of photos available under a free license on Wikipedia’s image database, Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org).
In last year’s contest, 5,000 photographers from 18 European countries uploaded more than 168,000 photos. This year’s contest will have significantly greater participation, including the United States and many non-European countries for the first time. Volunteer Wikipedians organize the contest in each country, with the winning photos from national contests considered by an international jury in late October. The international jury will announce the top-ten international photos and the overall best picture winner in early December
For more background see
Wikipedia launches “world’s largest photo contest” on Venturebeat
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/29/wikipedia-launches-worlds-largest-photo-contest/Unlike Flickr of course where you can (in theory) restrict use of the pix, all these will be under the Wiki Commons licence, free to use usually with attribution.
Of course most of the media which already uses free Wikipedia pix when they can will love this,
What's next?
Topic: Wikipedia to become "world's largest" free stock site (Read 1099 times)