Commons:Project scope/Summary
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This is a very short summary of Commons' Project Scope. It is intended only to give the briefest of overviews. If you have any doubts please refer to the full version
Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content to all. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.
For a file to be welcome on Wikimedia Commons it must meet the following Criteria:
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[edit] Must be a media file
Commons hosts only media files such as photographs, scanned images, diagrams, animations, audio (eg music, spoken dialogue) and video clips
Commons does NOT host Executable or binary files, Computer programs in any format, including source code listings nor files which are merely raw text (e.g. ASCII files).
[edit] Must be an allowable free file format
Currently the following formats are allowed:
- Images: SVG, PNG, GIF, JPEG, XCF (GIMP),SXD (OpenOffice.org 1.x) and TIFF
- Audio: Ogg (using FLAC, Speex, or Vorbis codecs) or MIDI
- Video: Ogv using Theora codec. (.ogv replaces .ogg which is still allowable as video)
- Animation: GIF, APNG.
- General: PDF and DjVu.
No other file format is accepted.
Read Commons:File types for more details.
[edit] Must be freely licensed or public domain
Commons accepts only free content, in other words files that are either freely licensed or which are in the public domain.
The following well-known licenses are preferred for materials on Commons:
- Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike Licenses
- GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
- GNU General Public License (GPL) / GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
- Free Art License
There are other Licences that are acceptable
Common examples of licensing statuses commonly found on the Internet, but forbidden on Commons, include:
- Creative Commons Non-Commercial Only (-NC) licenses
- Creative Commons No-Derivatives (-ND) licenses
- Unlicensed material only usable under fair use, fair dealing, or other similar legal exceptions (see here for the reasons)
[edit] Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose
The expression "educational" is to be understood according to its broad meaning of "providing knowledge; instructional or informative".
[edit] File in use in another Wikimedia project
A media file that is in bona fide educational use in an article (the "mainspace") of one of the other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation is considered automatically to comply with this requirement, as is a file in bona fide use for some operational reason such as within a template or the like.
An otherwise non-educational file does not acquire educational purpose solely because it is in use on a user page (the "User:" namespace) of another project, but by custom the uploading of small numbers of images (eg of yourself) for bona fide use on a personal user page of another project is considered legitimate.
[edit] File NOT in use in another Wikimedia project
Any file that is realistically useful for an educational purpose, which means that it is broadly speaking "providing knowledge; instructional or informative".
An otherwise non-educational file does not acquire educational purpose solely because it is in use on a gallery page or in a category on Commons, nor solely because it is in use on a user page (the "User:" namespace), but the uploading of small numbers of images (eg of yourself) for bona fide use on a personal Commons user page is considered legitimate.
Examples of files that are not realistically useful for an educational purpose:
- Private image collections, e.g. private party photos, photos of yourself and your friends, your collection of holiday snaps and so on. There are plenty of other projects on the Internet you can use for such a purpose, such as Flickr. Such private image collections do not become educational even if displayed as a gallery on a user page on Commons or elsewhere.
- Self-created artwork without obvious educational use.
- Files apparently created and/or uploaded for the purpose of vandalism or attack. Preexisting designs and symbols that are or have been associated with nationalistic, religious or racist causes are not out of scope solely because they may cause offence. Provided they are legal to host and otherwise fall within Commons scope (e.g. if they could for example be used to illustrate a Wikipedia article on a hate-group) they should be kept.
- Advertising or self-promotion.
- Files that add nothing educationally distinct to the collection of images we already hold covering the same subject, especially if they are of poor or mediocre quality.
