Hello everybody, 

Last year I've tried to participate in every single country. I didn't succeed in that (I simply did not have pictures in some countries), and this year that'll even be harder. But I succeeded to participate in most countries (10), it will be hard to defend that record again this year, because in some countries (luxembourg) I've uploaded all pictures of monuments in my collection.

Last year only a few people have uploaded in more than 2 or 3 countries (only around 5 people from the 5000 uploaded in more then 5 countries if my memory is correct), I think we should aim to improve the international participation, outside your own country during holidays for example. 

A problem when participating last year in other countries is that my skills in portuguese, swedish and romanian or polish (to name a few, the problem was almost everywhere) are very bad, but to participate I had to read the descriptions of how to do that in the local languagues. Google translate is a good friend, but sometimes he sends you in the wrong direction.

In a recent news post on the dutch wikilovesmonuments.nl site I've called for action to our readers to take pictures during their holidays in other countries, I've send them to wikilovesmonuments.org http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/participate/ is the page to look at, for other countries this page tells us to go to http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/english-pages/ where we see only 3 pages. 

I hope this year (and preferably mainly in the next week, because people are allready on holidays.) we can achieve to get an "how to participate" page for every country in english on their local website! 33 pages to go!! 

this page should contain: 

-Where you can find the lists, or how you can find the monuments. The lists will be in the local language, but knowing where to find them will be a big improvement. Last year in one country, it costed me one hour to find how a monument was named, and where the lists were.

-How you can participate/upload. (some countries used a different way, offcourse you shouldn't, but else link to the upload interface of your language)

-What the rules are (who wins?)

-Any special things for your country (some countries have other dates if I understand correctly)

-What you can win. 

- Basicly everything somebody who wants to participate should know, keeping the information short. 

I hope this year we can make it easier to participate in other countries you don't know the language of. And this way will stimulate more people to participate in multiple countries. And then I'm up for the challenge: "who can upload pictures in the highest number of countries".

Mvg, 

Bas