(This is a guest post by User:Mono.)

Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2012: “Pair of Merops apiaster feeding”, by Pierre Dalous (User:Kookaburra 81)

3990 votes were cast by Wikimedians to determine the seventh Picture of the Year in this yearly competition on Wikimedia Commons. A total of 988 pictures promoted to featured picture status in the previous year were included in the competition. The organizing committee is pleased to announce the results, and would like to congratulate our winners.

The complete results are visible on the POTY 2012 results page. The competition consisted of two voting rounds—the top images from Round 1 continued to Round 2, which ended on February 14th.

The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest is an annual volunteer-led contest, running since 2006. This year, about 4,000 Wikimedians voted in the competition, a record turnout that shattered projected targets.

The support of the Wikimedia community made this incredible contest possible, and the organizers would like to thank everyone who participated.

Wikimedia Commons is a media repository hosting content that anyone can freely share, reuse, and remix. Wikimedia Commons editors nominate the best media for featured status in an ongoing project, and all featured pictures from the previous year are included in the annual Picture of the Year contest.

The contest is a fun and enjoyable event that not only celebrates our excellent photographers and illustrators, but everyone who contributes to Wikimedia. You are encouraged to donate your own work to the Wikimedia Commons as our library of freely licensed media files grows past 16 million files.

You can upload them yourself (details here) or email info-commons@wikimedia.org if you are the copyright-holder or maintainer of a freely-licensed media collection that you would like to donate to the Commons.

Mono, Wikimedia Commons contributor

(This is a guest post by User:Mono.)

Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2011

Round 1 of the seventh annual Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest began on January 16, 2013. Wikimedians are invited to help select the most compelling image from the freely-licensed database from 2012. All 988 images that reached Featured Picture status in 2012 are in the running.

As a volunteer-led contest, Picture of the Year is run by an organizing committee of Wikimedians. Since its inception in 2006, thousands of photos from all over the world have been selected as Featured Pictures, and all of them are free for anyone in the world to reuse, remix and share. Volunteers like Rillke prepared the voting script and interface, while others like Beria Lima and Miya worked to compile the contest galleries and translate contest materials.

The first round of votes will conclude January 30, 2013 at 11:59PM UTC, and the top photo in each category in addition to the top ten photos across the board will advance to Round 2 of the competition. We encourage Wikimedians from all backgrounds and parts of the world to join our appreciation of some of the finest images on Wikimedia Commons. If you created an account before January 1, 2013 and have made at least 75 edits to any Wikimedia project, then you’re eligible to vote for your favorite pictures.

The Picture of the Year Contest is just as much about celebrating talented photographers and beautiful images as it is about celebrating those who have contributed to the cultural commons and have inspired more people to do the same. If you missed the deadline this year, please consider contributing your work today so you can participate next year.

Mono, Wikimedia Commons contributor

Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2009

Winner of the 2011 Picture of the Year: A view of Lake Bondhus in Norway, and in the background of the Bondhus Glacier, part of the Folgefonna Glacier.

Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of media freely licensed and available for anyone to use and repurpose. Every year the Commons community highlights the best media submitted over the course of the previous 12 months, in what has become the Picture of the Year Contest. This year, German Wikipedian Heinrich Pniok is the winner of the Sixth Annual contest for his picture of Lake Bondhus in Norway. You can read the complete story behind the 2011 Picture of the Year in this excellent article by User:Tony1 from the 25 June 2012 issue of the Wikipedia Signpost.

The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year voting process consists of two Rounds: Round 1 includes pictures promoted to Featured Picture status during the contest period and leads to the final pool of 32 images to be voted for in the next round. Round 2 voting determines the winner from the pool of 32 finalist pictures. Wikimedia Commons currently contains over 13 million freely licensed files and these 3 finalists for Picture of the Year provide us a glimpse of some of the best work available on the database. Anyone can contribute to Wikimedia Commons and you are encouraged to upload your own work to our ever-growing database. Who knows? Maybe your picture will be featured in a blog post like this one next year!

Jordan Hu, Communications Intern

Second choice: Tracy Caldwell Dyson on the International Space Station

Third choice, water reflections in The Verdes' Cave, Canary Islands