Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia created by users, is running the world's largest photo competition.
Called "loves monuments" it's asking people to photograph monuments of historical and cultural interest. Clearly, Britain's Nick Clegg comes to mind but what they're trying to do, is to create a more visual site.
Wikipedia is the highest result on Google so a lot of brands, companies, people don't realise that they can and should be, on the site. Although there are rules governing what's acceptable, it's still a good place to spread information.
Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it currently has about 23 million articles. It's talked about as being the world's 6th most visited site and isn't monetised. No ads, just donations, run largely by volunteers online which gives it an amateur feel. After all, who else would run a photo competition on monuments? A little bit of the 'village fete' about it.
It's also "sticky" with "high dwell times" because it takes time to find and to read the information. A holy grail for website owners.
One is reminded of Microsoft's Encarta which was launched in 1993 but Wikipedia has really overtaken all contenders. Wikipedia has also shut down twice in protest on censorship so it's very much a non-commercial site.
The consequence of that non-commerciality, is that it's both visually unappealing and frankly, difficult to edit, post, search, although it did launch its first visual editor late in 2011. Hence a strive to get more photos.
That being said, it has heritage which gives its content, credibility. And as we all know too well, content is king.
Whilst Wikipedia would never wish to be seen as something to be used in marketing, the fact is that such a substantial site, which such good search results, should not be ignored by marketeers. A word of warning, its editors are always referred to as "grumpy" so the content does need accuracy.
And of course the content needs interest and relevance but a presence on Wikipedia brings traffic and possibly more importantly, kudos. We do forget about it in some ways whilst it happily generates about 12% of the worldwide Internet traffic every month.
We will see if the "loves monuments" project improves the look of the site.
But we should not forget its power.
Nor should we forget to use that power.
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