Commons:Welcome

What is Wikimedia Commons? Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here. The repository is created and maintained not by paid archivists, but by volunteers. The scope of Commons is set out on the project scope pages. Wikimedia Commons uses the same wiki-technology as Wikipedia and everyone can edit it. Unlike media files uploaded to other projects, files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons can be embedded on pages of all Wikimedia projects without the need to separately upload them there. Launched on 7 September 2004, Wikimedia Commons hit the 1,000,000 uploaded media file milestone on 30 November 2006 and currently contains 19,954,899 files and 114,123 media collections. More background information about the Wikimedia Commons project itself can be found in the General disclaimer, at the Wikipedia page about Wikimedia Commons and its page in Meta-wiki. Unlike traditional media repositories, Wikimedia Commons is free. Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely as long as they follow the terms specified by the author; this often means crediting the source and author(s) appropriately and releasing copies/improvements under the same freedom to others. The license conditions of each individual media file can be found on their description page. The Wikimedia Commons database itself and the texts in it are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. More information on re-use can be found at Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia and Commons:First steps/Reuse. Participate You can improve Wikimedia Commons most if you contribute what you can do best: Contribute your work If you're a good photographer, don't hesitate to contribute your valuable images. If you're a good designer, look which diagrams and animations are badly needed. If you're a good musician or film/theater artist, do not hesitate to publish your own records of your performances of free pieces here. Contribute your skills However you do not need to upload your own files. There is plenty of other very important work to do: Translate help texts into a language other than English. Improve images. Identify unknown objects. Contribute your legal knowledge on copyright questions and deletion requests. Contribute your time You even do not need to be an artist or good at writing help texts. If you feel at home with creating order from chaos, then we could use your helping hand! Anytime you see a file with incomplete licensing or source information, tag it {{subst:nsd}}. Give Media needing categories a category. Move files into relevant subcategories Free media resources are waiting for an inclusion into this project. Nominate or vote for Featured Pictures (registration required). Register In order to be able to upload files on Wikimedia Commons, you need to be logged in. You can register at the "Log in / create account" link in the upper right corner and enter a user name that will be used at all of your uploads/edits on images and texts. However if you just want to edit pages you don't need to be logged in (although it is encouraged). If you have taken advantage of unified login, then you are already signed up at Commons. First steps tutorial Our first steps help file and our FAQ will help you a lot after registration. They explain how to customize the interface (for example the language), how to upload files and our basic licensing policy. You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold contributing here and assume good faith for the intentions of others. This is a wiki - it is really easy. More information is available at the Community Portal. You may ask questions at the Village Pump or on IRC channel #wikimedia-commons webchat. Files on Wikimedia Commons are organized in categories and galleries. An overview of the categories we use is available on the Main Page. Additional services and software If you want to upload large numbers of images, the program Commonist will be helpful. If you need specific information on tools for viewing or editing our content please see the software page. We hope that you will enjoy it here and that you will have fun.