I think that the three judging criteria are perfect:
1. Technical quality
2. Artistic quality
3. Documentary usefullness

All the problem is how to balance them. It depends on the jury composition. We have identified three potential groups of jury members:
* Professional photographers
* Heritage managers
* Wikimedians

A professional photographer will focus on artistic quality provided that there is a minimum standard technical quality. Heritage managers and Wikimedians will focus on second and thirth criteria. The composition of such jury favors the wow factor. Quality images on Commons are only judged by technical quality and not by other subjective criteria contrary to what is common in photo contests. I think this explains the different assessments that have occured. Forming a jury is not easy, and make it balanced according to the desired judging criteria it is even more difficult. More involvement of users from Commons may be useful to balance the criteria.

Vicenç

> Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:09:14 +0100
> From: polimerek@gmail.com
> To: wikilovesmonuments@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] judging criteria
>
> 2012/1/16 Nina Wikipedia <nina.wikipedia@gmail.com>:
> > I don't like the winners in 2011. They are nice pictures, but they tell
> > little about the monuments. I want institutions to use the pictures and to
> > give pictures to commons. If we have something unik that will be easier to
> > do. I am in the moment talking to 2 parts about cooperation in GLAM-work and
> > want usefull pictures not only the nice ones. As trained in
> > building-protection I see a great opertunity to have pictures documenting
> > monuments in many countries and want people to think about this in 2012.
> >
>
> Indeed, as I am generally against forsing anything on local juries - I
> would seriously reconsider the way that interational jury will work.
> IMHO 2011 international jury was mainly focused on "wow factor" and
> not enough on the documentary usefullnes and technical quality of the
> picture. I would suggest to do in 2012 in such a way:
> a) local juries choose pictures for international nomination as they wish
> b) picture nominated must go normal judgement for quality pictures on
> Commons and only those which get the quality picture status can be
> considered by jury
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Quality_images_candidates
> c) international jury chooses winners from the b) set of pictures - not from a)
>
> It should be announced before contest, so there will be up to local
> juries if they are about to send pictures to b) before their
> nomination or just take a risk and let do it international jury.
>
>
> --
> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
> http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
> http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz
>
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