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What is the Wikimedia Commons?

Wikimedia Commons is a media repository that is created and maintained not by paid-for artists, but by volunteers. Its name "Wikimedia Commons" is derived from that of the umbrella project "Wikimedia" managing all Wikimedia projects and from the plural noun "commons" as its contents are shared by different language versions and different kinds of Wikimedia projects. Thus 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.

Wikimedia Commons uses the same wiki-technology as Wikipedia and thus everyone can edit it easily and without advanced technical skills directly in the web browser. Unlike media files uploaded on 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 September 7, 2004, Wikimedia Commons hit the 1,000,000 uploaded media file milestone on 30 November, 2006 and currently contains 12,412,832 files and 105,425 collections (numbers in English notation). 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 the source and the authors are credited and as long as users release their 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. More information on usage conditions... |}

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}}. Fix an orphan file (Give an image a category or gallery). Give Uncategorized pages a category. Free media resources are waiting for an inclusion into this project. Nominate or vote for Featured Pictures (registration required). Become a FlickrLickr volunteer — it's lots of fun!

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). 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.