Commons:Project scope

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Wikimedia Commons self definition in other languages: Template:Lang-cfi

Wikimedia Commons is a freely licensed media file repository (similar to stock photography archives) targeted at other Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository

Wikimedia Commons is targeted at media files including photographs, diagrams, animations, music, spoken text and video clips. Wikimedia Commons does not contain text articles like encyclopedia articles, textbooks, news, word definitions and such. Each of these other kinds of content have their own projects: Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wiktionary and Wikiquote.

Wikimedia Commons is freely licensed

Wikimedia Commons only accepts free content. So all content of the Wikimedia Commons is available under some free license, meaning that it may be used by anyone for any purpose (if not prohibited by other laws). Namely, commercial use and publication of derivative work is allowed. The license may however require that the author be named ("attribution") and that derivative work be licensed under the same terms as the original ("share alike"). Consequently, media files which are available only under non-derivative, non-commercial licenses, or that have restricted usage or fall under the fair use clause, are generally not accepted on the Wikimedia Commons. The licensing policy is defined in detail at Commons:Licensing.

More specifically:

• Images and other media are available under various free licenses; please see the description page for each file for specific license information. Valid licenses can be found at Commons:Copyright tags.
• Only free file formats are allowed. Patented file formats like MP3, AAC, WMA, MPEG, AVI and the like are not accepted at Wikimedia Commons. Currently MIDI and Ogg-Vorbis are allowed for audio files, Ogg-Theora for video files and for example PNG, JPEG and SVG for images. Find more details on allowed and recommended file formats at Commons:File types.
• All text in Wikimedia Commons is available under the Commons:GNU Free Documentation License.

Wikimedia Commons is a common central media repository of all Wikimedia projects

Files uploaded to the Commons can be used on pages of all Wikimedia projects without the need to upload them separately there. Thus a media file only needs to be kept once in a central place. This also means that files uploaded to the Commons have to be useful for some Wikimedia project. Media files that are not useful for any Wikimedia project are beyond the scope of Wikimedia Commons.

More specifically:

• Private image collections and the like are generally not wanted. Wikimedia Commons is not a web host for e.g. private party photos, self-created artwork without educational purpose and such. There are plenty of other projects in the Internet you can use for such a purpose, like Flickr and others. However, uploading images of yourself and others in small quantity is allowed as long they are useful for some Wikimedia project (for example, a Wikipedia article, a Wikinews report, a meta article, a user page). More details on personality rights can be found at Commons:Licensing.
• The quality of files should be as high as possible and should only contain the relevant content. Also include as much information as possible on how you made the image. For pixel images a resolution of 3000 by 3000 pixels is not too big, and in case of diagrams SVG graphics are preferred. Audio and video files should have as high quality as possible as long as they are not above around 20 MB. More details about good file descriptions and recommended file types can be found at the First steps and at Commons:File types.
• The Commons may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive. Like Wikipedia, the Commons is not censored. The Wikipedia:Content disclaimer also applies here.

Wikimedia Commons is an open project created by volunteers

Wikimedia Commons is created and maintained not by paid-for artists, but by volunteers. Wikimedia Commons uses the Wiki-technology in order to be as open and simple as possible. Everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikimedia Commons without the need for a prior permission from the community as long as the other basic rules of Wikimedia Commons are accepted. However as in Wikipedia we assume good faith in advance and being bold with fixing problems and improving Wikimedia Commons on your own is strongly encouraged. So please keep as well these two sentences for the contribution of others in mind everytime.

More specifically:

• Please note that the Wikimedia Commons, like all Wikimedia projects, is an open wiki, so we have no way to guarantee that all material present on the Wikimedia Commons is indeed under a free license. We try hard to find and delete material that is not free, but it is always possible that we missed something. So, anytime you see a file with incomplete licensing or source information or which is unfree, tag it either {{subst:nsd}} or {{Delete}} (and ideally add it as well to Commons:Deletion requests) and the file will be deleted soon.
• Please also see the contact page and the general disclaimer for more legal information about Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Commons is a project concentrated on content, nothing else

That means that it is essential that at Wikimedia Commons people step a little bit behind their work. The work is important; not personal egos. For example, we do not put watermarks on images. See Commons:Ownership of pages and files for more information.

Wikimedia Commons project aim is also not creating a wiki - it only uses a wiki in order to create a free media repository. So if a part of the wiki technology does not meet our goals, we change the technology, not the goal. We don't stick to wiki purism.