Commons:Community portal

Welcome to the Wikimedia Commons community portal

Are you new to Wikimedia Commons? Welcome! Check out what we're all about (and what we are not), or just start searching for images or other media files. You can find collections of similar files grouped by topic or by almost any other characteristic you can think of. You can even start contributing to the project in important ways, regardless of your abilities or interests, and no matter where you live or what language you speak. All information about Commons itself is available in English, and most of it is available in other languages.

News

Current notices

• Please assist Commons users needing help.2015-11-30 23:59:59backlogs
• Commons:Photo challenge: Submit your entries for Outliers (January), Bad weather (December-January) and Household items in use (December-January).2015-01-31 23:59:59photo_challenge

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ID	Human readable name	Description	Notes
policy_new	New policies	Request for Comments about new policies, substantial changes to or the adoption of new policies
policy_change	Policy changes	Recent or intended amendments to policies
highly_trusted_election	Election of important positions	Election of people requiring a high level of trust such as checkusers
technical_new	New features	New technical features
technical_change	Technical changes	Recent or on-going technical changes
technical_issue	Technical issues	Technical issues at Wikimedia Commons
mobile	Mobile	Everything related to Mobile access to Wikimedia Commons
bot_approval	Bot approval	If community input in a bot-approval request is required
i18n	Internationalization	Internationalization and Localization
poty	Picture of the Year	The Picture of the Year contest
wlm	Wiki loves Monuments	The Wiki Loves Monuments contest
photo_challenge	Commons:Photo challenge	The Wikimedia Commons “Photo Challenge”
other_media_contests	Other contests	Other media-related contests
glam	GLAM	Cooperation with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM)
other_projects	Look at the wider picture	Information about other projects that may influence Wikimedia Commons
backlogs	Important backlogs	Backlogs at Wikimedia Commons that are important to be cleared in time
meetings_photo	Photographer meetings	Photo workshops, Photographer-relevant topics at general meetings like Wikimania
meetings_tech	Dev- and Tech-Meetings	Hackathons, IRC hours, Wikimedia Commons-relevant topics at general meetings like Wikimania

Werefox at Waves Vienna Music Festival & Conference 2013

Over 20 million files uploaded

Wikimedia Commons now has over 20 million files as of January 25, 2014. File:WEREFOX at Clubschiff - WAVES VIENNA 2013 09.jpg has been named the 20,000,000th file.

The actual file is often difficult to identify, because many files are uploaded almost simultaneously, and at the same time, other files may be deleted. The file is a photograph by Commons contributor Manfred Werner (User:Tsui), showing Werefox performing at Waves Vienna Music Festival & Conference 2013 in Austria on October 5, 2013.

Previous Wikimedia Commons news…

Communications

Help desk

For questions about how to use Commons.

Village pump

Ask questions about features, problems you may have, or policy. Similar pages are available in several other languages.

Centralized discussion

List of ongoing discussions on policies, guidelines or other matters that have a wide impact.

Graphic Lab

A place where you can request wikigraphists to improve, clean up, or color your images.

Photography critiques

A place where you can get feedback on your photography.

Administrators' noticeboard

If you need to communicate with an administrator, for example regarding blocks and protections.

IRC channels

#wikimedia-commons Wikimedia Commons IRC channel.

#commons.wikimedia to follow the recent changes on IRC (currently by invitation only).

#cvn-commons shows possible vandalism.

#cvn-commons-uploads shows new uploads.

International mailing-list

commons-l (this month)

Phabricator

Phabricator: Commons bug reports and feature requests.

Policies and decisions

Wikimedia Commons project scope

The project definition and its derived detailed policy pages on licensing, allowed copyright tags and file types give you important information what we are and what not.

Deletion policy

The deletion policy is closely related to the Wikimedia Commons project scope. They define when and how to delete content that does not belong in Wikimedia Commons for various reasons.

Multilingualism

Wikimedia Commons is multilingual. Use Babel in order to find contributors who speak your language. Please add information about the languages you understand to your user page. The language policy is discussed at Commons talk:Language policy.

User's graphics abilities

Categorizes users by graphic and audio knowledge, abilities or interest on Commons, in order to ease finding help in any area of media expertise. (Part of the Commons 2.0 project.)

Administrators

List of administrators and votes on adminship requests.

All policies and guidelines…

Recommendations and tutorials

Help index

All help, project, maintenance, discussion, policy pages and further tutorials about how to work in wikis like Wikimedia Commons are listed there. For an overview over the structure of the Wikimedia Commons project itself see Category:Commons.

Software

Recommended software for each media type in order to create and edit the content you want to share at Wikimedia Commons.

Tools

Tools for uploading and further maintenance of Wikimedia Commons as for example Commonist for uploading large numbers of images. Tool integration helps you add functionality to your Wikimedia Commons web interface.

How to use Wikimedia Commons' content

Overview on how to embed Wikimedia Commons content into various Wikimedia wikis and how to reuse Commons' content by third parties. See also the media help for software and hints how to watch images and films and listen to audio files provided by Wikimedia Commons. See Featured pictures, Valued images, Picture of the day and Media of the day for particularly valuable content you can reuse.

Content organization

Creation and upload

Picture requests, free media resources for uploads to the Wikimedia Commons.

High quality content

• Featured picture candidates, Valued image candidates and Quality images candidates
• Monthly photo challenge
• picture of the day and media of the day.

Improvements

• Unidentified subjects, like plants, people or animals that need to be identified.
• Images for cleanup, transition to SVG of flags and graphics.
• Categories for discussion, uncategorized pages, uncategorized categories, uncategorized media, orphan pages, orphan images.

Copyright issues

• Deletion requests, candidates for speedy deletion.
• Copyright and licensing questions.

Wikimedia Commons sub-projects

Commons:Geocoding for adding geographic location information to media, Commons:Stroke Order Project and more WikiProjects.

Wikimedia Commons templates

Commons:Templates