Commons:Language policy
From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
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Wikimedia Commons is a multilingual project. This page contains the project's policy on how multilingual content is used, and what content should be in which language.
The only content area where there is a consensus to use a single language is biology-related content (plants and animals), where Latin binomial names are used.
At present, this page is a summary of existing practice rather than a formal policy. Please, amend, change, overwrite, add information where needed. However, it would be grand if we could keep discussions on the talk page so as to keep this as tidy as possible and make it a real policy in the long run. There are links to specific sections on the talk page.
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[edit] Name of files
Please see talk page: Name of files for discussion.
- Media files can be uploaded with names in any language.
- e.g. diezauberfloete.jpg is as valid as lafluteenchantee.jpg.
- However, there are some preferences. See Summary of proposals below.
- Titles of media files should be meaningful, helpful and correct in the language chosen.
- e.g. DSC123456.jpg or K0l0sm_nite.JPEG is no good. Try Colosseum_by_night.jpg.
- If you use a bad filename, an admin will probably come along and fix it at some point by uploading it again under a better name and deleting the original. Try to avoid creating work for people in this way.
- If possible, stick to ASCII so that everybody can type the filenames. Not every wiki has the accented character table enabled. The use of ASCII also avoids encoding conflicts between UTF-8 and Latin-1. Avoid "funny" characters that might be significant in future wiki markup. It is a good idea to stick to the alphabet, numbers, underscore (space), ASCII hyphen/minus/dash, plus, and period (dot). We do, however, understand that non-ASCII characters are sometimes essential: e.g. Image:上-red.png.
[edit] Titles of articles
Please see talk page: Titles of articles for discussion.
Glossary :
- Main article : the article that contains all media files on a subject
- Redirect : an article that provides a redirect from one language to the main article
- Disambiguation : a page listing articles that would otherwise have the same name.
The language used for titles of main articles has yet to be defined (see proposals in table below), but when a consensus has been reached the following applies:
- Interwikis to the different Wikipedias should be used whenever possible in the article, to allow the research engine to find the name in the desired language.
- Anyone can create redirects from their own language to the main article page
- Anyone can add a description on the main article page in their own language. For an example of a multilingual article, see Concave mirror.
- proposed amendment : the numerous descriptions should not adversely affect the legibility of the article, so that the media files presented in the articles don't appear after three pages of description. One language should be chosen for main description at the top of the article, other languages should be used at the end of the article.
- Anyone can add a disambiguation page leading to articles, in order to resolve any ambiguity caused by words that have conflicting meanings in different languages.
- For example, Bride is a briddle in French, not a 'just-married woman'; journal is a newspaper, not a diary etc.
[edit] Summary of proposals
This is a summary/reorganisation of the proposals made to this day : see talk page - proposals for proposals and talk page - Questions to be answered for questions raised by the proposals.
- please add any other examples you might see fit for these
| type of subject | policy | example |
|---|---|---|
| animals, plants | latin binomial | Vulpes vulpes, not "Red fox" |
| music, art | native | Die Zauberflöte, not "The Magic Flute" |
| people | native | Jeanne d'Arc, not "Joan of Arc"; exemptions: *Popes* and *Roman emperors* in Latin for names written in non-Latin scripts, use the Transliteration ¹ |
| places | native | Breizh or Bretagne, not Brittany |
| specialty foods | native | Cassoulet, Rösti |
| anatomical, embryological and histological structures | latin | glandula parotis, os hyoideum |
| other | free |
¹ When using non-Latin scripts, such as Cyrillic, kindly provide as many redirects as you can think of. For instance Fyodor Dostoyevsky should point to Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский.
[edit] Descriptions in articles
See: Commons:Templates for galleries
[edit] Language for categories
This definitely deserves a talk of its own, and I propose we discuss it on the vote page launched by Andre, i.e. Commons talk:Images on normal pages or categories:Vote and state results of discussions here
So far, Categories are in English
- Categories cannot be re-directed (from one language to another) in a way that would work correctly. (The contents of the redirected category is hidden by the redirect, not displayed in the destination category.)
A discussion on the language policy of categories has been started here Commons:Language for categories
See also: Commons talk:Language policy
[edit] Localisation of search words and categories
I have written an article: Using Ultimate Wiktionary for Commons it describes how the translations known in Ultimate Wiktionary can be used to search for the keywords and categories that are within Commons. Technically it is feasible and it would be a benefit to all. GerardM 08:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
