For the month of September, Wikipedia is holding Wiki Loves Monuments, a contest that aims to gather photos for Wikimedia Commons. Due to the contest's past popularity, 30 countries including the US will be participating are participating this year. Wiki Loves Monuments began in 2010 in the Netherlands and expanded to Europe last year, when about 5,000 volunteers contributed over 168,000 photos to the Commons. The organization claims that 80 percent of last year's participants were new Wikimedia contributors, and many continued to participate and edit — on both Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia — after the contest had ended.

Wikipedia sees the contest as a fun way to get users interested and involved in Wikipedia's services, which have been suffering from a diminishing number of active editors. The contest also has its own Android app which displays nearby historical locations and allows users to upload photos easily. There isn't an iPhone app, but the project's creators say one "is also possible," and encourage developers to use the available source code to develop new apps. The contest began on September 1st and runs until September 30th; the first prize winner will get a trip to Hong Kong next summer for Wikimania 2013.