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- This is a summary of the full
project scope policy
.
Wikimedia Commons (this site) is a repository of free, educational media files used by Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects, and others. The
free
part is very important ? it's a founding principle of Commons that we should only host content that can be used
by anyone for any purpose.
Commons does
not
host
fair use content
or other non-free content, such as most
content published on the Internet
and elsewhere. Commons does not host encyclopedic articles or other non-media content. We also don't host content unless it has educational value.
For a file to be welcome on Wikimedia Commons it must meet the following criteria:
It's a founding principle of Commons that we should only host content that can be freely used
by anyone for any purpose.
Therefore, Commons can only accept two types of content:
- Content whose copyright holder has explicitly agreed to allow anyone to use it for any purpose
- Content that is not protected by copyright
Recently created works such as photos, drawings and videos are almost always protected by copyright ? even if there is no copyright notice. Copyright protection means that the copyright holder has the right to specify who may use the work and how they may use it. One way to specify this is by using a copyright license. Only the copyright holder can grant a license. The copyright holder is usually the person who created the work, such as a photographer or painter. Wikimedia Commons only accepts copyrighted works if they are covered by a license that allows anyone to use them freely for any purpose.
Commonly used free licenses include
Creative Commons Attribution
and
Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
![Attribution ("by") icon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Cc-by_new_white.svg/12px-Cc-by_new_white.svg.png)
without
Non-Commercial
or No-Derivatives
restrictions, but there are also
other accepted licences
.
Common examples of licenses that are
not
accepted on Commons include all Creative Commons licenses with
Non-Commercial
or
No-Derivatives
restrictions.
Content that is not protected by copyright is said to be in the
public domain
.
Public domain content is accepted at Commons, but you must be able to explain
why
the content is in the public domain. Common reasons include that the content is
too simple
to be protected by copyright, that the copyright
expired
or that the copyright holder
explicitly released
it into the public domain. Merely making a work accessible to the public does not mean that it is released into the public domain.
Copyrighted content
without any indication of a free license
is not accepted, even in the absence of a copyright notice. Content explicitly marked as non-free, including content with
All Rights Reserved
or
fair use
notices is not accepted.
Wikimedia Commons only hosts content that is useful for educational purposes. This means content that could be used by Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects, or other projects that provide knowledge, instruction or information. Files don't have to be in use on any other project to be hosted here, but they must have a reasonable potential use.
Examples of content that is not realistically useful for educational purposes in most cases:
- Private image collections such as private party photos, photos of yourself and your friends and holiday snapshots. A small number of personal images used on Wikimedia project user pages are allowed per user.
- Self-created artwork without obvious educational uses
- Files created or uploaded for purposes of vandalism or attack
- Advertising or self-promotion
- Low-quality content that does not add value beyond our existing coverage of the same topic
For details, see the full
project scope policy
.
Commons only hosts media files such as photographs, scanned images, diagrams, animations, audio (e.g. music or spoken word) and video clips.
Commons does
not
host encyclopedic articles or other plain-text content, and it does not host computer programs in any format (including executable files and source code).
Currently, the following formats are allowed:
- Images
:
SVG
(for vector graphics),
PNG
(lossless format),
JPEG
(for photographs),
GIF
("semi"-lossless format, but PNG is preferred),
TIFF
(lossless format, but PNG is preferred),
WebP
(lossy and lossless format, but JPG is preferred),
XCF
(allows layers and text).
- Audio
:
Ogg
-container (using
FLAC
,
Speex
,
Opus
or
Vorbis
codecs with file extension
.oga
),
MIDI
,
WAV
(16-bit PCM format and 32-bit IEEE uncompressed format),
FLAC
(
.flac
),
MP3
(
.mp3
) or
Opus
(
.opus
).
- Video
:
WebM
using the
VP8
/
VP9
video codec with Vorbis for the sound, or Ogg using the
Theora
video codec. New software supports file extension
.ogv
for Theora video without or with Vorbis audio,
RFC 3534
.ogg
is still usable instead of
RFC 5334
.ogx
for Theora video with other Ogg audio codecs -
Help:Converting video
.
- Animation
:
GIF
,
APNG
,
Animated SVG
.
- Multipage documents (books, journals, magazines, etc.)
:
PDF
and
DjVu
.
- 3D structures
:
STL
(files)
.
Currently disabled
[
edit
]
While SXW, SWC, SXD, and SXI (
OpenOffice.org
1.x), as well as ODT, ODS, ODG, and ODP (
OpenDocument
) are theoretically permissible under the similar provisions to
Commons:Scope: PDF and DjVu formats
these formats are currently disabled because we are currently unable to prevent people from hiding harmful or otherwise impermissible content inside OpenOffice's
ZIP
-based container format.
For a longer list of unsupported file types, see
Commons:File types (Unsupported file types)
.
If you have questions about whether a certain file is within the project scope of Commons, you can ask at the
help desk
.