Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

[edit] Media files

Commons is not Wikipedia, and files uploaded here do not necessarily need to comply with the Neutral point of view and No original research requirements imposed by many of the Wikipedia sites. Commons acts amongst other things as a common media file resource for all Wikimedia projects, and we stand apart from the rules that may be imposed locally by each of those individual projects.

It is not the role of Commons to adjudicate on subject-matter disputes nor to force local projects to use one version of a file in preference to another. Provided that a file falls within Commons scope, and can be legally hosted, we make it available. Whether and under what conditions it is actually used is a matter for the local communities of the individual projects to decide.

Images having particular national, political or religious significance including flags, emblems and maps can arouse strong passions, but Commons is not the place to decide which of various competing versions is the correct or official version. If you feel strongly that a map, emblem, flag or other file hosted here is “wrong” in some way please try to persuade your local wiki community to make use of the version you prefer instead. Examples of subject matter disputes that are not appropriate here include:

• Maps: “The author is trying to push a nationalistic/political/religious point of view by showing the national boundary in the wrong place", "the towns have been labeled with a non-approved name or in wrong language", "the map shows a state that has no legal recognition”.
• Flags/emblems: “That is not the official version”, “the colors are not officially-approved”, “that design is used by a terrorist group”.
• Photographs: “This is propaganda”

Such subject-matter disputes remain inappropriate even when they are expressed (as they normally are) in absolute terms: “that flag does not exist”; “that boundary is wrong”; “that country does not exist”.

If an author has made a factual mistake and there is no serious dispute about this being the case, the file may fail the test of being useful for an educational purpose. Such files can be deleted on that basis, provided that they are not in use. Where an alleged error generates significant dispute, however, the image should be kept and the dispute left to the individual wiki communities to resolve. As stated above, files that are in use in another Wikimedia project are in any event considered of educational interest and are not liable to deletion on the grounds that they are "wrong" in some way.

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For the reasons given above, it may not always be possible for file names and related descriptive text to be "neutral". However, neutrality of description should be aimed at wherever possible, and in any event neither filenames nor text may be phrased in such a way as to constitute vandalism, attack or deliberate provocation.