Commons:FAQ

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This page sums up frequently asked questions in Wikimedia Commons with a short answer and links to background pages. For clarifications on "Creative Commons license" visit Creative Commons Frequently Asked Questions.

Questions about the project

What is this site about?

"Wikimedia Commons" (short form "Commons") is a media repository that is created and maintained by volunteers. It provides a central repository for freely licensed photographs, diagrams, animations, music, spoken text, video clips, and media of all sorts that are useful for any Wikimedia project, the most well-known of which is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The name "Wikimedia Commons" is derived from the umbrella project Wikimedia that manages all Wikimedia projects and the word "common" as it is a common project (commons) that stores media for use on all Wikimedia projects.

What is the scope of this project?

See Commons:Project scope. The page Commons:What Commons is not may also be of interest.

Can I put material on this site?

Yes, you definitely can! In fact, that's what we want you to do. Just start with the First steps in order to join the project.

What materials can I upload?

Any freely licensed media file (images, sound, video, etc.) that is useful for any Wikimedia project can be uploaded. For acceptable file types, see Commons:File types. The licenses must allow for commercial use and the creation of derivative works.¹ See also the copyright question for the required license conditions. If you are interested in uploading images, you may find it helpful to read Commons:Image casebook.

Can I upload mobile apps that are suitable for teaching or demonstrating a concept?

No. See Commons:Project scope and Commons:File types. Commons is not intended to be primarily a repository for software, it's intended to be a media repository. There are other projects (for example F-Droid, but see Category:Mobile software distribution platforms for more options) that may be much more suitable for sharing apps you have created.

Can I upload text of which I am the author?

Commons is about multimedia content (images, video, sound), not text. Text may, depending on form and content, fit into some other Wikimedia project, such as Wikibooks, Wikipedia, Wikisource, or Wikiversity. However, please note that you must not copy and paste text to these other projects unless you are willing to release it into the public domain or license it for use under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike (CC BY or CC BY-SA) licenses. For example, to use text from a website—even your own—that external website must exhibit a clear statement of such public domain release or CC BY-SA licensing.

What are 'gallery' (main namespace) pages for? How should they be designed?

Galleries are a complement to categories (primary way to organize and find files on the Commons), as another way of displaying media. They allow files to be annotated with captions, shown at better sizes than the category default, organized in tables, etc. Typically they begin with short captions that briefly introduce the topic in many languages (these can be automatically generated using Commons Sum-it-up), followed by headed sections that typically use the <gallery> tag (see meta page for guidance).

The files should be followed by interwiki links (also generated by Sum-it-up) and at least one category. Gallery pages must be in at least one category.

A good way to design a new gallery page is to adapt an existing one from a similar topic. Species (plants/animals) pages will necessarily be different to location (cities/countries) pages.

Copyright questions

What licenses do the files I want to upload have to use?

Anything that you upload must be in the public domain, or under a free license such as GNU Free Documentation License or CC BY/BY-SA. For more, see Commons:Licensing and Commons:Copyright tags. Please do not invent licenses out of thin air. Most things on the Internet are copyrighted. Don't assume otherwise unless you have a good reason. When publishing your own work, you can release your work into the public domain ({{PD-self}}), or under specific licenses: {{self|license name}}, {{self|license 1|license 2}} etc. You may also choose one of the options from the drop-down menu license selector at Special:Upload under "own work".

Can I upload scans and images of others I modified?

Only the producer of an original work, or those who have been granted the right to license that work, can license the work. A scan or a modification does not automatically make a document become (or transform into) your own work. This means that you cannot just grab a file from the Internet and put a GFDL or CC license on it. See also Commons:Image casebook.

Why doesn't Commons include fair use content?

One of Wikimedia Commons core principles is that content stored here should be freely reusable in any context, anywhere in the world, in the same way that the (CC BY-SA licensed) encyclopedia content is. This restricts us to free content only. This principle, like the NPOV policy at Wikipedia, will never change. Also, fair use applies only to usage in an editorial context – it simply doesn't apply to a media repository. Copyright law also varies from country to country. Thus, fair use laws will also vary: each country has its own interpretation, and many jurisdictions have no fair use at all. As a result, fair use content is seldom going to be usable outside the United States.

See also Commons:Fair use.

Can I use the materials on this site outside Wikimedia?

Yes, you can. Check the license on the image description page. In most cases, you will be okay if you copy the author and licensing information from the image description page and publish that with the image or other file. See Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia for details.

What information should I put in the summary, or on the image description page?

See the tutorial at First steps. It is recommended to use Template:Information to fill the description page. If you are using Upload Wizard or the enhanced upload form, {{Information}} will be automatically used and the input/data you provide will be correctly arranged in it.

Where do I get credit for my images?

Some of our accepted licenses require attribution. This means that a photographer has to be given credit every time their picture is used. Please make sure you put the name you want to have mentioned in the description page of the image. Within Wikipedia articles, people who click your image in order to enlarge it will see your name.

What happens if a Flickr license changes?

I have uploaded an image, can I revoke the license later?

The short answer is "No".

Free licenses are designed in such a way that once you release the work under them, you cannot later demand that people stop using that particular license to distribute the work. This is done to protect the users from putting their time and energy making what you upload better or developing something around that work, only to find out later than their work cannot be distributed at all because you have changed your mind. Also see the official Creative Commons FAQ topic “What if I change my mind about using a CC license?”, more info.

Please think hard before you upload images to Wikimedia Commons.

Having said that, on some occasions, such as when it is clear that a mistake was made, and the uploader requests the deletion right after the upload, images are deleted. But this is not a loop-hole that you can use if your upload has resided on Commons for a week or more.

I am not the author, but I have permission

If you are not the author but you have their permission to distribute under a free license (COM:L) please see Commons:OTRS#Licensing images: when do I contact OTRS?"

Technical questions

Does Commons use a special wiki engine?

No. It is the same MediaWiki as for most other Wikimedia sites, but with galleries instead of articles in the main namespace (see the question above). But this site has many heavily customized gadgets and most templates are unique to Commons and developed locally.

What resolution should the images I upload be?

The highest resolution available for images is more than welcome. You don't have to worry about server disk space and the load-time of the Wikipedia pages that refer to them, since the software automatically generates and caches smaller (as specified in the articles) versions.

However, scaling of images may fail if the image is very large and rendering takes too much time or memory (in that case, either no scaled image is shown, or the full image is served to the browser, often causing it to lock up). For PNG images, a hard limit of 25 megapixels is in effect. Large JPEGs are only problematic if they are saved in progressive mode, since the entire image has to be processed at once. Use baseline mode instead.

In case the full scale original is too large to process for the software, upload it anyway, but then please overwrite it with a scaled down version (around 6 megapixels in size); the full scale version will still be available in the upload history, and you can add a reference to it in the image description.

How can I directly use materials on this site in Wikipedias?

Just link to the image's file name as if it were a local image. Note: There may be a slight delay in loading the image on the Wikipedia you link it from. This is due to a delay in cached versions of images and can be fixed by doing a reload on the image itself rather than on the page it is displayed on. See also MediaWiki image help, media help page in Meta-wiki, Wikipedia image markup page and Wikipedia picture tutorial.

How do I link to an image without showing it?

Use [[:File:Example.jpg]]. That shows up as: File:Example.jpg

How can I transfer an image from Wikipedia to Commons?

If the image is under a free license, you can use FileImporter to transfer it to Commons.

How can I rename/move an image or other media file?

Shortcut
COM:FAQ#MOVE

How can I rename or move a category?

See Commons:Rename a category.

How do I put a page / image into a category?

To add an image or page to category Foo, add the following link to the page (resp. the image's description): [[Category:Foo]]. This is a "magic" link, which will a) appear in the category box at the bottom of the page and b) cause the image to show up in the category. See Commons:Categories for more information.

How do I best categorize my own pictures?

The Golden Gate Bridge is a bridge in San Francisco, United States. However, ~~Category:Bridges~~, ~~Category:San Francisco~~ and ~~Category:United States~~ are too general. Look at Category:Golden Gate Bridge instead. As this is further subdivided, Category:Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point is best suited for the above picture.

Categorization should answer "W-questions", most importantly: What is it? Where is it? A file should be put in the most specific category/categories that fit(s). We don't use general keyword tags like "nature" or "architecture" to organize files.

There are several ways to find appropriate categories (or gallery pages).

Look at Main page and at the categories given there, and go to the one that best fits your picture. Then look at subcategories and pages in that category, and again choose the one that fits best. Repeat until you find no more specific place that fits your picture.
Type the name (or location, or a short description) of the depicted motif into the search box. In the search results, look for a suitable category or pictures of the same motif that have already been properly categorized.
If your picture is suitable to illustrate a specific Wikipedia article, find out if there is a link to the corresponding Commons category (or gallery) in the article's "In other projects" or "External links" sections, and follow that link.

If unsure, choose a more general category. However, unless a picture has additional important elements to it that are currently missing their own subcategories, avoid categorizing pictures into both a subcategory and one of this subcategory's more general parent categories. See Commons:Categories for more information.

Why might a category list not be up to date?

Sometimes, pages are placed in categories not manually by Commons editors, but by means of a special editing tool called a template, which can be used to place identical information (including category membership information) on many different pages at once. When the information on such a template is edited, the pages containing that template are not necessarily updated immediately. This means that pages might not always appear in the most current categories. However, this problem usually affects project maintenance categories rather than the categories used for browsing.

Various other temporary delays may sometimes mean that lists of category members or subcategories, or the page counts given, are not completely up to date. So if you are editing Commons and find that your page hasn't yet shown up in a category or been removed from an old category, don't panic! The problem will probably resolve itself within minutes, or after a longer time in rare cases.

How should categories be organized?

How do I best make a gallery of my own pictures?

You can create a user gallery either as a subpage of your user page (so if you are user Foo, put your gallery page at User:Foo/gallery), or as a category (called something like Category:Pictures by Foo). All user galleries should be in Category:User galleries, all user categories should be in Category:User categories – see Commons:User-specific galleries, templates and categories for details. To find all the pictures you have uploaded, you can use the upload log.

How do I create a gallery?

See meta:Help:Images and other uploaded files#Gallery tag, category, table of images for information on how to create galleries the easy way – with the <gallery> tag. The page Commons:Galleries might give you information on common conventions of galleries here on Commons.

When should I use a gallery or category?

Files should always be added to descriptive categories, since if they are only added to galleries, they can be easily removed from them and thus "lost". Categories are useful as indiscriminately large "containers" of images on a topic. Galleries (on article pages) are useful as showcasing the best, most illustrative, informative and interesting images of a category. They are also useful for presenting material in a logical order, something categories have a limited ability to do. For example, compare Tennis to Category:Tennis. Information on gallery pages can be presented in a hierarchical manner, such as Pronunciation of Dutch municipality names and United States.

This is just advice for if you feel totally lost. Some topics have specific guidelines for the organisation of media, such as plants and animals which fall under the WikiProject Tree of Life. Unless you are interested in helping out with such projects, don't worry too much about finding out what the 'rules' are until someone tells you -- the people who take part in the project will fix things up.

Why is the old picture and not the new uploaded picture on my screen? (Or-- my thumbnail is wrong.)

Shortcuts
COM:CACHE
COM:PURGE
COM:FAQ#PURGE

Commons uses "caching" to display pages more quickly, which occasionally makes it show copies of pages and thumbnails which are not up to date. "Purging" is a way to force Commons to recreate a page from its database, rather than relying on the cached version of the page.

See Help:Purge, en:WP:BYPASS, and en:WP:PURGE for more details.

Can I upload video and/or audio?

Yes! Take a look at our guides about video and audio.

Why can't I see some images?

It might be a thumbnail problem (see the question above), or you might run an ad-blocking software that mistakenly thinks the image was an advertisement. Can you see File:D-fructose.png? If not, then that's the likely cause of your problem. That image resides at the URL https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/D-fructose.png which contains the string "/ad/". Your ad-blocker is probably configured such that it considers all images with a URL containing this string to be advertisements. Change the configuration such that this rule does not apply to the .wikipedia.org and .wikimedia.org domains. That should cure the problem.

The file may be too large to give a thumbnail (e.g., a large JPG in progressive mode). See: Commons:File types#Size and scaling.

How can I search for images?

Look at Special:MediaSearch or Special:Search and follow the links there. For more advanced searching see Help:Searching and Commons:Tools#Search. You can also go to related articles in the different Wikipedias and look at what pictures they are using. Some may already be on Commons, and they should be categorized, giving you a hint where to look for more.

How will the software be adapted for this project?

See Commons:Tools, Commons:Gadgets and Commons:Bugs.

I have a lot of files. Can I do a batch upload, rather than one at a time?

A file or page needs to be renamed or moved. Can this be done?

Galleries and other standard pages: yes. Accounts older than four days can rename articles by using the 'move' tab at the top of the page. Note that for different language titles, redirects should be created rather than moving a page.

Files (Images): Yes, but only by administrators or users with the filemover permission. Please see #How can I rename/move an image or other media file?.

Categories: no. If the badly named category is still a likely one (rather than a misspelling), the badly named one should be converted into a soft redirect by tagging it with {{Category redirect}}. The images in the category have to be manually changed to belong to the new category. (Cat-a-lot is a gadget which makes such mass recategorisation easy.) Note that due to technical restrictions, categories should all be in English.

When I tried to upload my file, I get this error: "." is not an allowed file format. See Commons:File types for more information.

Make sure that the file you're uploading has an extension and that it is one of the allowed types. Make sure also that you have not left a space either before or after the point.

Be sure to include an extension in the Destination filename: field as well. For example, write "Orange grove in summer.jpg" not just "Orange grove in summer".

What does the upload error This file contains HTML or script code that may be erroneously interpreted by a web browser. mean?

The file you tried to upload contains some HTML code in its metadata. Most likely, you tried to upload a JPG file, and the HTML is contained in the file's Exif data. Because of security concerns, such files cannot be uploaded.

You'll have to remove the HTML code from the file's metadata. You will need to have access to software that allows you to edit such metadata. One way to do this is via exiftool. This is a very powerful command-line program to edit image metadata. If you're using a computer running the Windows operating system, there is also a graphical user interface to that tool called ExiftoolGUI.

If the file you tried to upload is from Flickr, you can view (but not edit) the metadata on Flickr. For instance, this Flickr image does have HTML in its metadata and will thus provoke this error message. You can view the metadata by appending "/meta" to the URL: this image's metadata. The "Caption-Abstract" metadata entry contains HTML-code: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier,_New_Zealand#1931_earthquake">Wikipedia</a>. That's the bit you'd need to remove. (Yes, that's just a harmless link. But with HTML, one could try to do more nefarious things, and thus our software simply forbids any HTML in image metadata.) Download the Flickr file to your computer and then remove the HTML from the metadata.

Once you have removed the HTML from the image's metadata, you should be able to upload the file. (Do not upload this sample file from Flickr, though, it already exists as File:Central Hotel, Napier 05.jpg.)

I want to use a Commons image, but there is already a file at my local wiki with the same name which is blocking it. How can I access the Commons file?

Unfortunately at this time, the only options are to have the local file deleted, or re-upload the Commons image under another name, or ask for either the local image or the Commons image to be moved to another name. If the local image is renamed, the leftover redirect may need to be deleted as well.

How can I upload a new version of a file?

Firstly, you can only do this if your account is older than 4 days.

Secondly, consider uploading to a separate file unless the changes are relatively minor. See Commons:Overwriting existing files.

If you are still intent on uploading a new version of a file, you should have the new version of the file saved to your computer, then navigate to the image page here on Commons. Under the subhead "File history", there is a link that says "Upload a new version of this file". Click on this link. You will be taken to a page titled "Upload file". Scroll down to the middle of this page to a box labeled "Source file". Next to the words Source filename is a button marked Browse.... Click on this button and browse your computer to find the new version of the file. Do not alter the entry under Destination filename:. Under File changes, indicate what changes you have made (e.g., "hi-res version" or "removed background noise" or "fixed colour balance")— just one line is enough to say what changes your new version contains. Lastly, click the Upload file button. A warning will appear telling you that you are replacing an existing file— as that is what you want to do, you should continue.

Avoid overwriting images with different images of the same topic.

Where can I see where my file is being used?

Below the "File history" section are two "file usage" sections, one titled File usage on Commons and another titled File usage on other wikis. These two sections will list all instances on Wikimedia Foundation projects where your file is currently in use.

Why is the text of my new uploads corrected soon after upload?

In last couple of years Wikimedia Commons has been working hard on localization or internationalization (aka. i18n) of most of the text a user might see on any page. The goal is to show the content in the language of the user's choice. The current upload process, which creates a lot of new text visible on each page, was written before the current push for internationalization and creates all the headers and other standard texts in the language of the uploader, and since the software supports many different languages, new images are created daily with text in all those languages. In order to correct the problem, some automatic processes (aka bots) patrol new uploads, changing the text to code which will automatically show the text in the language of the user's choice. Some of the changes you might expect to see on files uploaded (using English language for these examples) are:

Summary → {{int:filedesc}}
[[Commons:Copyright tags|Licensing]] → {{int:license}}
Own work → {{Own}}

Some recent discussions on the subject can be found here and here.

Can't the upload process be fixed so it creates the correct wiki-text?

As explained in the above section, the wiki-text of the new file uploads is created directly by the server-side upload program (a php script). It can only be fixed by changing the Mediawiki code. The problem is well known, but it is unclear if there are plans to fix it (as of Nov 2009). Some recent discussions on the subject can be found here.

Why did my image rotate after I uploaded it?

This is most likely the result of an error in the file's EXIF data (also called its "metadata"). See Commons:Rotation for information about fixing this problem.

How do I fix the orientation of an image?

If your image appears upside down or needs to be turned by 90°, click on the Edit tab on the top of the file page. Then scroll down and type {{Rotate}} somewhere in the edit window. This will add a "rotation" template to your file (if you know exactly how you would like the image rotated, add that information to the template per the instructions below). Finish by clicking Save page at the bottom of the page. After a couple of hours, a bot will automatically rotate the image (losslessly, if possible).

RotateLink is a default gadget to add a link “(

request rotation)” to file pages, which allows you to easily (automatically) request any rotation.

Manual way:

Template	Rotation
{{rotate\|90}}	90 degrees clockwise
{{rotate\|180}}	180 degrees
{{rotate\|270}}	270 degrees clockwise (90° anticlockwise)

If you request a rotation by another value (e.g. 5°), the image will be placed in Category:Images requiring rotation for processing by humans. Maybe an editor will take the time to rotate it – can take some longer time.

My camera puts a timestamp on photos. Good?

No. Not good. Turn it off. It's much better to just let your camera store things like this in the file's Exif data – most devices will do that automatically.

What are the strangely named components in file paths?

And how are they computed?

If you go to some file on a MediaWiki installation, say File:Spelterini Blüemlisalp.jpg, and you click to view the full version, you may discover that the file resides at the URL https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Spelterini_Bl%C3%BCemlisalp.jpg. (The "%C3%BC" part is just the result of url-encoding the Umlaut "ü".)

Where does that "/a/ae" part come from?: The "a" and "ae" denote some subdirectories that are used to avoid problems with directories containing too many files. Imagine all the millions of files at the Commons in one directory! Some operating systems have problems dealing with directories with many files. (Try working with a folder containing a few thousand files on Windows…)

Can it be calculated from the file name?: Yes. It's the first and the first two characters of the MD5 hash of the filename (blanks replaced by underscores) without namespace part. The file name "Spelterini_Blüemlisalp.jpg" has the MD5 hash "ae1a26d34d6a674d4400c8a1e6fe73f8".

MediaWiki installations can be configured on how to generate these filenames and directory structures. Any MediaWiki installation has one or more file repositories, which may be local or not. First, such subdirectories are used only if the global server-side configuration setting $wgHashedUploadDirectory is true (or $wgHashedSharedUploadDirectory for shared repositories). Then, for each file repository, there is a property called hashLevels that determines how deep the directory structure shall be. If zero, no such intermediary directories are used. If set to e.g. 3, three levels of directories are used; for the example above, one would get "/a/ae/ae1".

This method of storing files has been in MediaWiki since version 1.1 (and possibly even earlier), though it became a bit more configurable over time; initially, it was hardcoded to use two hash levels.

You can check what the file URL for a given file name will be at Special:FilePath. The file path can also be queried through the MediaWiki API using e.g. a query like https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&titles=File:Spelterini_Bl%C3%BCemlisalp.jpg&prop=imageinfo&iiprop=url. Both these methods, however, work only for existing files.

Online MD5 calculators differ in the way they treat UTF-8 input. Two that return values consistent with the way MediaWiki hashes UTF-8 strings are helloacm.com/md5/ and md5.cz.

How do I translate the subtitles on a video?

You can create a copy of the timed text page containing the transcribed subtitles, changing the language code in the timed text page to your language code. Then you simply translate the text. See Commons:Timed Text#Internationalization.

Internal error: bad token

When uploading a file you may see an Internal error: Bad token. error message. This will usually be fixed by logging out of Commons, closing your browser, and starting again. If not, you may additionally delete all cookies (or just the wikimedia.org cookie) and purge your browser's cache before trying again. If this still does not solve the issue, try turning off ad blockers or network filters (sometimes the token could look like an advert URL).

How do I close my account?

If you want to stop using Commons, then no special procedure is needed: simply stop visiting the site. Accounts cannot be removed completely, but some measures can be taken for privacy. See Right to vanish.

How do I request file deletion

See the pages listed at Commons:Deletion.

Questions about the Commons community

What is an administrator and how do I become one?

See Commons:Administrators.

Where can I ask questions?

If you want to raise a question which you think is likely to have been raised before, use the Commons:Help desk. If you want to raise a question which might be new, or gain wider community attention, use the Commons:Village pump. There's also a place to discuss technical issues at Commons:Village pump/Technical and a forum dedicated to anything copyright-related at Commons:Village pump/Copyright

How does Commons work with similar projects?

Commons is very interested in working with projects that have similar aims. See Commons:GLAM for details.

What should I do if a page or file needs deleting?

See Commons:Deletion requests and Commons:Deletion policy.

Why don't all images from Wikimedia projects get uploaded here by default?

Most importantly, some Wikipedias have a less strict licensing policy than Commons, as some pictures that would not be acceptable to Commons would be okay on them. Commons does not (and cannot) allow fair use content, as some Wikipedias do. See Commons:Fair use.

What language should be used here?

Ideally, whichever one you are most comfortable with. See Commons:Language policy. However for technical reasons categories should be in English.

Unfortunately, users who don't know English well may have a harder time on Commons. Commons tries to supply information in many languages, but non-English pages tend to be incomplete or outdated. Also, some things, like the names of categories, can't (yet) be localized. Sorry.