Dear Wikimedians,

Wikimedia Commons is happy to announce that the 2012 Picture of the Year competition is now open. Click here to vote right now! Voting is open to established Wikimedia users who meet the following criteria:

1. Users must have an account, at any Wikimedia project, which was registered *before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000* [UTC]. 2. This user account must have more than *75 edits* on *any single* Wikimedia project *before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000* [UTC]. Please check your account eligibility at the POTY 2012 Contest Eligibility toolhttps://toolserver.org/~pathoschild/accounteligibility/?user=&wiki=&event=27 . 3. Users must vote with an account meeting the above requirements either on Commons or another SUL-related Wikimedia project (for other Wikimedia projects, the account must be attached to the user's Commons account through SUL https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login).

Hundreds of images that have been rated Featured Pictures by the international Wikimedia Commons community in the past year are all entered in this competition. From professional animal and plant shots to breathtaking panoramas and skylines, restorations of historically relevant images, images portraying the world's best architecture, maps, emblems, diagrams created with the most modern technology, and impressive human portraits, Commons features pictures of all flavors.

For your convenience, we have sorted the images into topic categories. Two rounds of voting will be held: In the first round, you voted for as many images as you like. The first round category winners and the top ten overall have made it to the final.* In the final round, when a limited number of images are left, you must decide on the one image that you want to become the Picture of the Year.*

Wikimedia Commons celebrates our featured images of 2012 with this contest. Your votes decide the Picture of the Year, so remember to vote in the first round by *February 14, 2013*.

To see the candidate images just go to the POTY 2012 page on Wikimedia Commons at * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2012/Introduc... *

Thanks, the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee