I have never been to the Philippines. Yet in 2026 I spent many evenings looking closely at it: reefs, rice terraces, volcanic lakes, mangroves, waterfalls and birds, one photograph at a time, as a juror for two national Wikimedia photo competitions.
This post describes what that work involves and what it taught me. I am not sharing how I voted on any individual image. Jury deliberations are private, and the published results speak for themselves.
How I came to judge for the Philippines
In January 2026 I offered to help the Philippine organisers as a juror. I had been using Montage, the Wikimedia jury tool, for the Wiki Science Competition in India, so I already knew the workflow. That led to two juries:
Wiki Loves Birds Philippines, judged between January and February 2026.
Wiki Loves Earth 2026 in the Philippines, judged in August 2026, where the jury is listed on the competition page.
Both competitions are run by Filipino volunteers and send the best national images into international rounds. The Philippine community has a strong record there, with international placings in Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Folklore in recent years.
How a national jury actually works
Both juries ran on Montage in several rounds, each narrower than the last. Wiki Loves Earth 2026 was a good example of a clean structure:
An elimination round, run by the organisers, removed ineligible files.
A yes/no round, in which every juror judged each image on three published criteria: technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective), originality, and usefulness on Wikipedia.
A star-rating round on the images that survived, 187 of them, each scored out of five.
A final ranking round, in which all seven jurors ranked the top 24 entries from best to worst.
The top 15 were then published as the Philippines' selection for the international round: Wiki Loves Earth 2026 winners, Philippines.
The organisers noted that 2026 had fewer entries than earlier years, yet it was one of the strongest batches they had judged. I agree. In the yes/no round I found it genuinely hard to decline images, because so many passed on technical quality and were clearly useful for articles. When most entries are good, you are forced to become much more precise about why one image teaches a reader more than another.
When the tool gets in the way
Jury tools are volunteer-built, and they have bugs. During Wiki Loves Birds, Montage showed my round as complete while the organiser's dashboard showed 30 of my 206 images as unrated. Clearing the cache and local storage did not help.
I suggested three ways forward: recreate the round, let me score the remaining images manually from a file list, or move on without them. The organiser chose a fairer fourth option: advance with a 50 percent threshold so the unrated images still had a chance, and distribute the next round so every qualifying image was seen by at least five jurors. I completed the remaining rounds after that.
In Wiki Loves Earth, the final ranking round displayed my top-ranked image with a score of zero. It turned out that Montage counts ranks from zero. A small thing, but it matters: a juror who thinks the tool is broken starts to doubt the result.
Both episodes taught me the same lesson. When a tool fails, the fairness of the outcome depends on how the organiser responds, and on whether jurors report problems early and clearly rather than quietly working around them.
What judging another country's photographs teaches you
You judge the photograph, not the place. I could not recognise most locations on sight. That forced me to rely on what the image itself shows, and on its title and description. A file with a precise title, location and description was easier to assess as useful, which is exactly what a Wikipedia editor later needs.
Usefulness is a real criterion, not a tie-breaker. A striking sunset can be less useful than a clear, well-lit photograph of a protected species or a geological feature with no good image on Wikipedia yet. The Philippines has extraordinary biodiversity, and many of the strongest entries were also the most informative.
An outside juror brings distance, not authority. Local jurors know which sites are photographed every year and which are rare. I knew none of that. What I could offer was a fresh eye and a consistent standard. A good jury needs both kinds of member, and neither should outweigh the other.
Consistency is a discipline. Across hundreds of images, fatigue changes judgement. I learned to judge in shorter sessions, to view images at full size before deciding, and to go back over my early decisions once I had seen the full range of the batch.
Steady organisers make trusted results. The national organiser kept the process moving, answered every question quickly and explained each round before it opened. That steadiness is a large part of why a jury spread across several countries can produce a result everyone accepts.
How it connects to my other work
Judging is the quiet end of the Commons pipeline. Someone climbs a ridge before sunrise or waits hours for a bird, uploads the photograph, and a handful of volunteers decide which images represent their country internationally.
I have now seen that pipeline from both ends: as National Lead of the Wiki Science Competition 2025 in India, and as a juror for Wiki Loves Folklore, Wiki Loves Monuments and these two Philippine competitions. Each side has made me better at the other.
I would like to meet the photographers whose work I spent those evenings with. Until then, I am grateful to the Philippine organisers for trusting a juror from Vidisha with their national selection.