Commons:First steps

First steps in other languages: Commons:First steps |

This First Steps tutorial contains a brief explanation of what you need to know in order to contribute to Wikimedia Commons.

Creating and customizing your account

Creating an account

Login/create account link in the upper right corner

In order to be able to upload files on Wikimedia Commons, you need to be logged in. However if you just want to edit pages you don't need to be logged in (although it is encouraged). Creating an account only takes a few seconds, and is free. You can register at the "Log in / create account" link in the upper right corner.

Login mask with highlighted link to account creation

After you have done that you will see the login mask and a bold written link labled "Create an account" which you will follow if you want to create an account. If you have already an account at Wikimedia Commons you can directly login at the login mask.

Now you will see the account creation mask. Enter a username and a save password. The user name will be used at all of your uploads/edits on images and texts. You have to enter the word displayed in the distorted image too in order beeing able registering you account (otherwise you will get a failure notice). Entering an email address is not required but if you do so you can recieve emails from other users via the "send email to user" function after you confirmed your email address and did allow recieving email in your user preferences. Your email address will never be made public. Even at the "send email to user" function the email address does not get shown to the sender of the email.

Customizing your preferences

User tabs after successful login with the red arrow pointing at the preferences tab

After you have logged in you can change the appearance of your interface - for example the interface language. If your first login was sucessuful you will see on top of the page your user name and various other new tabs.

Cutout of preferences with the the interface language selection dropdown list

You now can change your user preferences if you click on the "preferences" tab. At the preferences you will see a drop down list at which you can change the language of the interface of Wikimedia Commons according to your linking. Have also a look at the various settings tabs and change other things to your prefered values. You can change your interface within a great range.

After you have finished your settings don't forget to save them. So click on the "Save" button below the settings. If you got lost with your settings and are unhappy with your changes you can restore a default with clicking on the "Reset" button.

Upload of files

Highlighted "Upload file" link in the left "toolbox"

Now as you are logged in you can upload files. In the "toolbox" on the left side below the "search" box you will find the "Upload file" link which points to Special:Upload.

The upload formular below the legal text

After you have clicked on that link you will find the Special:Upload page with a very important legal disclaimer which is a must read. It explains in brief the various legal requirements which files are allowed and under which license conditions they need to be available. You need to follow these information strictly as otherwise your images will be deleted without further notice - so please read and try to understand it in order to avoid frustration of you and others. If you're unsure don't hesitate to ask at Commons talk:Licensing before you proceed with uploading. So basically the file license has to be compatible with Commons:Licensing. Generally, if the file is under a copyleft license, such as the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License), it is okay, but compliance should always be checked. Below the legal text you will find the upload formular. The first field called "Source filename" will contain the path to the file you want to upload. Click on the icon on the right of the field and a file select dialog will pop up. Choose the file you want to upload and click "Ok" there (depending from your operating system and language settings). After you have done that you will see the path to the file in the first field. Within the second field named "Destination filename" you can give the file an alternative name which will be used in Wikimedia Commons. Please always use a descriptive English filename. Often digital cameras produce "DSC123456.jpg" and similar file names. These file names are rather cryptic so please use the "Destination filename" in order to give such files a new name for Wikimedia Commons. After you have uploaded a file it is impossible to rename/move it so please be a little bit careful at this step. A wrong filename will probably anoy you later otherwise. Further down you will see the larger "summary" field. Please do not leave it blank. An image without explanation what it shows is as worthless as no image at all. So describe your file. What is the subject? What is the background? How was it made? Who made it? When? Where? What kind of camera or equipment was used? A good standardized recomended image description is described more in detail below.

After you have done that you can choose in the "Licensing" drop down list the accurate license of the file. You can also leave it at "None" and enter manually the correct license template in the summary field. However adding the license template by hand is more advanced as you would need to know the exact name of the template. After you have gone through all this you can click on "Watch this page" in order to keep track what is going on with your image in future. All files you watch can be tracked by you with their change date, change comment and changing person at your "Watchlist" which you will reach via your personal user tabs on top. And finally you can click on "Upload file" and confirm the safety question of your computer system with "Yes" (depends from your software). Now the file will be uploaded and shortly after that you will be directed to the page of the newly uploaded image. Check if everything in the image description is okay and enter either a descriptive existing category for the image or add it to a gallery page (like Moon if you were uploading an image of the Moon) as otherwise nobody will be able finding your image (more in detail below).

Good practice hints

Quality

The quality of files should be as high as possible. In case of images use a high image resolution in order to allow for good quality printouts of articles that use these image. For photos and diagrams in JPEG-format (recomended for photos but not diagrams) or PNG-format, use a high resolution - 3000 by 3000 pixels is not too big (Note that as of October 19, 2005, MediaWiki refuses to scale PNGs that are more than 12.5 megapixels - that would be 3535 by 3535 pixels, so keep diagrams a little bit below this limit). MediaWiki can't scale animated GIFs, so these have to be uploaded at an appropriate resolution for use in articles.

As only certain file types are allowed in Wikimedia Commons (you will get an error message if you are trying to upload a file with a wrong file format) there are certain recommended file types for different kinds of media files. For photographs JPEG is preferable due to the fact that we can't convert during rescaling (this technical limitation is the reason why we do not allow the widely used TIFF). PNG is better for archival (as it is lossless). If you crop or modify a photograph, upload the original first, then upload the modified version with another file name and link to each other image in the image description, so that people see the different versions directly. For diagrams SVG is preferred (which gets converted on the fly to PNG in articles using it, so every browser can display it), because it can be scaled without loss, and may easily be edited by others. As SVG-animations are currently not possible within MediaWiki please use PNG for animations. The GIF-Format is allowed but discouraged at Wikimedia Commons.

For sound files supported file types are MIDI (.mid) and Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) and for video files Ogg Theora only (also .ogg). Other widely used sound file formats like MP3 and video formats like MPEG are strictly not allowed at Wikimedia Commons due to their proprietary, patented and thus unfree file formats. Like the images quality of sound and video files should not be too low. There is an upper limit for allowed file size at about 20 MB, which should give you a hint how good the file quality can be dependant from the duration of your media file.

Good file descriptions

Photo of the Orion Nebula with the recomended description answering e.g. all question how the image was made (which is important especially for astronomical photos) and a direct quote of the permission of the copyright owner (click image in order to see the image page)

As previously noted a good file description that answers all important questions to that file is necessary. As it is not that easy creating good descriptions that have always equally good quality and look always the same there is a strongly recommended standardized image description with a template. That way the descriptions are also better readable for users of Wikimedia Commons media files. So copy the following code example and paste it at the "summary" field at the upload form and fill in the missing fields (and also transform your old free form image descriptions using it so that they look more structured):

{{Information|
|Description=
|Source=
|Date=
|Author=
|Permission=
|other_versions=
}}

The single fields get used the following way

If you can't fill in one variable with information use a "-" sign instead (without the quotation marks). Please don't leave a variable out. You have to use all variables as otherwise the template doesn't work correctly.

Description

Description of the content. What you can see, hear, or otherwise perceive, in case of a photograph. Historical background in case of a painting. In case of scientific data, a brief scientific analysis of this image, video, audio file or other kind of media file. Descriptions can be in any language, but it is always a good idea to include an English description as well. If you can speak multiple languages, consider adding the description in all of them.

Source

Self-made work: a statement such as "Own work." or similar.

File made by another person:

Link to a website, with a direct link to the page embedding the file and a direct link to the file
Catalog number
Name of institution
Book source
etc.

Date: Date of creation (or date of release), preferably in ISO 8601 format, such as "2006-01-08" for 8 January 2006.
Author: Author(s) of the image. If no individual person known, use the name of the institution(s) that released this file. In case of self-made work, put your real name and your linked username in parentheses, such as "Gabor Eszes ([[User:UED77|UED77]])", which shows up as "Gabor Eszes (UED77)" or alternatively directly link your real name to the username such as "[[User:UED77|Gabor Eszes]]".
Permission: Short quote of the permission of the copyright owner of this image in case of a individual permission. In case of a general permission (eg US Public Domain or free content licenses) short link to that legal disclaimer or an according hint. If you are the copyright owner yourself give a short notice as "Dual-licensed under the GFDL and CC-By-SA-2.5, 2.0, and 1.0" Alternatively, you can say "See below" to direct others to license tags after the file information.; Note: You still need to tag the image in any case with the appropriate license template!
Other versions of this file: If there exist within the Wikimedia Commons other versions of this file, e.g. a black and white version of a color image or another image description in case of a diagram, link these versions here with a wiki link.

Sorting and catalogisation of images

Other people need to find your file in order to use it to illustrate articles in other Wikimedia projects. So it is crucial to add your media files to specific gallery articles on Commons and/or adding it to a specific category otherwise your valuable media files won't get used that much. Adding images and other kinds of media files to galleries is prefered over categories as they can keep more information and look more polished to an outsider. A good example for a gallery page would be for example the image gallery of the planet Mars. You can tell if a page is an article or a category by looking at its name. Pages without prefix are article pages, pages with a "Category:" prefix are categories and pages with "Image:" are image pages. This concept with these prefixes is called "namespaces". That way you can separate easily different contents.

In order to add an image to a gallery go after upload to the gallery article, click there on "edit" and you will see among other things something like this:

<gallery>
Image:Mars Valles Marineris.jpeg|Valles Marineris on Mars
Image:Mars Hubble.jpg|Mars seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, Realistic Colors
</gallery>

Which looks like:

Valles Marineris on Mars
Mars seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, Realistic Colors

You can add your image between those two gallery-tags (one opening and one closing tag) in the following way:

Image:Your photo name.jpg|A brief description

After saving the article you will now see your image as thumbnail in the gallery. Unlike in the normal case when you incorporate a single image into an article you don't use the [[- and ]]-brackets around the image. For sound and video files it works the same way exept that the media files will display a replacement icon like in this example:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni - Overtüre

Adding an image to a gallery is done like adding a Wikipedia article to a category. Simply place something like the the following example code at the image page itself:

[[Category:Some specific category]]

However be aware: Do not add more than two categories to an image. Everything else is pure overkill and does not help anybody finding that image better. Be as specific as possible. Don't add an image to an overcrowded root category. In order to find a right category for your image the category tree will help you a lot.

Additional tools

For some special tasks like uploading larger amounts of images and maintaining them in Wikimedia Commons there are additional software tools available. Especially the Java-software Commonist will be helpful in case of uploading larger amounts of images. So have a look at our Software and Tool integration pages in order to make your daily work in Wikimedia Commons easier.

Looking for media files on Commons

In order to find certain media files on Wikimedia Commons see if an appropriate article for your file exists. Fewer articles exist in Commons than in Wikipedia, but Bicycle, Lake, many National Parks, plant species, animals, etc., exist. Add in your local Wikipedia a link to at least one gallery article of Wikimedia Commons, if possible.

Ah good way finding certain media on Wikimedia Commons is our Search page.

If you want to reuse Wikimedia Commons media files outside Wikimedia projects you are welcome to do so. However keep some very important points in mind:

Unlike traditional media repositories Wikimedia Commons is free. Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely for any purpose including commercial ones as long the source and the authors are credited and as long you release your copies/improvements under the same freedom to others.
The Wikimedia Commons database itself and the texts in it are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. The license conditions of each individual media file can be found on their description pages.
However be aware that we cannot guarantee the correctness of the informations given on each file. So please verify on your own the license conditions given on the media file you want to use.
More detailed information on usage conditions can be found at Commons:Licensing.

Transferring files from other projects

As files on the Commons can be used by all Wikimedia projects, it is a great idea to start transferring copyleft-licensed files from other projects. To transfer files from Wikipedia, please follow Wikipedia's Moving images to the Commons guidelines. Especially do not transfer non-commercial and Fair use images. They will be deleted inmediatly without further notice and will not be reuploaded to Wikipedia.

If you have questions regarding the conditions of a certain media file you want to transfer ask at Commons talk:Licensing for clarification.