Commons:How to

This project page is under construction, or in the middle of an expansion or major redevelopment. This development started on 29 January 2025.
You are welcome to assist in its construction by editing it as well.

Status: this page is an attempt to create single starting point for frequently asked "how to" questions about Commons. The goal here is to start from what the person wants to do, and guide them in the best direction(s) to achieve it.

See also: Commons:FAQ.

Asking for help in using Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons (hereafter just "Commons") has a variety of places to ask for help. Please, try to do little bit of searching first and see if you can answer your own question: Commons is staffed entirely by volunteers, almost all of whom are working on projects of their own, and while we will try to help you, when you ask a question here you are asking someone to take time away from the focus of their own work.

That said: the best place to ask general questions about Commons is Commons:Help desk. If your question is specifically related to copyrights, try Commons:Village pump/Copyright. If it appears to be a technical issue, start at Commons:Village pump/Technical.

Really general stuff

What is Wikimedia Commons?

Wikimedia Commons (hereafter just "Commons") is a media repository, focused toward content of educational value. Commons is one of the many "sister projects" under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation, the best known of which is probably the English Wikipedia. Other sister projects include (this list is not exhaustive) over 300 Wikipedias in other languages, and Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, and Wikivoyage in numerous languages, as well as the multilingual database Wikidata and the Meta-wiki, a place where issues can be addressed that cut across many of the different sister projects.

Commons stores media of various sorts:

• Images, especially photographs
• Audio
• Video
• Three-dimensional models (limited support as of early 2025)
• Documents, but we have much more specific limitations on what documents we store here than we do for the abovementioned media.
• Commons it also has a bit of an annex (less than 2% of the site, as of early 2025) to handle tabular data, especially data for geographic mapping, with special support for some other data scenarios likely to be added over time.

Commons supports only "free" file formats (as against ones that are proprietary). See Commons:File types for detailed information, including preferred formats and other supported formats.

Commons is focused on educational content (see COM:SCOPE for details). Our notion of "educational" is broad—besides the obvious, it includes (for example) documentation of popular culture, local history and customs, pronunciations of individual words, etc.—but it is not infinitely elastic, and images that are deemed to have little to no educational value by the community may end up being deleted (see COM:SCOPE for details).

Commons hosts only content where reuse is not restricted by copyright (see #How do I reuse Commons content? below for more detail). Basically, our intent is that all Commons content is either in the public domain or free-licensed, both in its home country (whatever that may be for the individual file) and in the United States. It is possible that some third country might have copyright restrictions, and reusers who are neither in the home country nor the U.S. should emphatically do their own diligence. Due to difference in copyright laws there are many files which are copyright-free in the United States but not in their country of origin. These often can be uploaded locally in one or several projects (such as the English Wikipedia). Commons does not allow images to be uploaded under fair use, but if an image is needed in an article on the English Wikpedia and meets their policy on non-free content, then a scaled-down version of those images can be uploaded to the English Wikipedia. (Each language-specific Wikipedia has its own rules on this sort of thing.) Locally uploaded files are only visible in the project they are uploaded to.

"Commons is not censored." For legal purposes Commons is hosted in the U.S. state of Virginia, so we necessarily abide by the laws of that jurisdiction, but if we consider an image to be of educational value we are not going to remove it for political reasons, reasons of prudery, etc. Some images are tagged to indicate that their use might be a legal issue in certain countries: e.g. many countries have laws about the use of Communist or Nazi symbols.

How is Commons related to its "sister projects"?

As mentioned above, Commons is one of the many "sister projects" under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Commons is intended as a multilingual media repository. There is a different Wikipedia for each language, but there is only one Commons. Although English is the principal language of Commons, the intent is that people be able to participate here in whatever language(s) they prefer. For example, for any media file or category, we welcome translated captions and descriptions in as many languages as possible. Files can have names in any language. Many of the more basic help pages are available in dozens of languages, and we always wish to carry that further. Commons categories are more often named in English, but we welcome multiple translations of that name on the category page. Many pages have an infobox that has multilingual support. (More on that below).

Commons has two main missions, and they can sometimes be in a bit of tension with each other:

• Commons provides a single repository of media that can be used by all of the other Wikimedia projects. For example, most of the time when you see a picture in the English-language Wikipedia, it is actually stored on Commons. That same image is available to be used on all of the other language-specific Wikipedias, and other sister projects, and even some projects outside of the WMF umbrella. That means they don't have to upload and store their own copies. Similarly, if you look at wikisource:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, all of the illustrations come from Commons.
• Commons is a public-facing site in its own right. A gallery page like London is intended to be publicly useful in its own right; even a category page like Category:Klondike Gold Rush with its various subcategories can provide a fascinating visual introduction to its topic.

We won't go too heavily into sister project Wikidata here, but it helps to know a little about it. Wikidata attempts to provide a rigorous, language-independent representation of basic facts about "items" (which can be anything from specific objects to abstract concepts). It has about as many "items" as Commons has media files. Commons categories (and, to a lesser extent, Commons gallery pages) very often correspond precisely to a single Wikidata item, as do categories and articles on our other sister projects. The Wikidata item ties all of these together, and then the Mediawiki software (the "wiki" itself) can automatically create links that make it possible (for example) for you to navigate from a Commons category to all of the Wikipedia articles in different languages that correspond to that category (and vice versa). Also, when you see an "Infobox" on a Commons category page, its content is almost always drawn entirely from Wikidata. From the Commons side, the mechanism to add that box is very easy for our contributors to use. The Commons contributor doesn't need to understand Wikidata: once the Wikidata item links to the Commons category, the Commons contributor just adds "{{Wikidata Infobox}}" to the page and presto!, an Infobox appears.

How is Commons different from other online media repositories?

Of course, it all depends on what you are comparing to, but here are a few characteristics of Commons; you can probably do your own "compare and contrast" to other repositories you may know.

• Commons hosts images, audio, video, three-dimensional models, and certain types of tabular data. Our goal is to host educationally useful media content (but not articles, that is not our bailiwick).
• Commons attempts to host only content that can be freely reused. More specifically, we host content whose re-use is not restricted by copyright, although much of our content does require attribution to the specific author, and there can be issues of trademarks, personality rights, etc.
• Commons is uncommonly rigorous about copyright. Inevitably, a large volunteer project like this will, at any given time, contain some content that hasn't been well-vetted, but when it comes to copyright, we have a well-earned reputation for being among the most rigorous sites on the Internet. Probably the only way we could do a lot better would be to pre-check content before showing it publicly, but that would be a very different sort of site and almost certainly a much smaller site. We have a lot of expertise here on the copyright laws of the various countries of the world (look in any time at the current discussions on Commons:Village pump/Copyright for a taste of this, or look at a diagram like Commons:Hirtle chart, a quick guide through the thicket of United States copyrights), and we abide by what we call the "precautionary principle: "where there is significant doubt about the freedom of a particular file, it should be deleted." Closely related: unlike most sites, if we say something is in the public domain, we are almost always quite clear why, at the level of the individual item of media. One consequence of this worth mentioning:
  • Even independent of our scope, probably well over 95% of media content on the Internet is not eligible to be on Commons, because either it is clearly copyrighted or its copyright status cannot be readily determined.
• Commons is collaborative. Often, content that someone uploads here without much information gets much better described over time. That unidentified flower? Probably someone can describe/categorize it. The building you photographed on vacation where all you know is "building in Miami"? Someone who knows the city is very likely to come along and identify it exactly, especially if its a good enough photo that someone might want to use it. Etc. We've been known to do such a solid job of curation that we are feeding back information to libraries, museums, etc. about photos they had in their collection and had under-described or mis-described.
• Commons is about sharing. You put your content up here (especially photos, which constitute the majority of our content) and it is very available to be reused.
• Commons is also about giving credit where it is due. We are as careful as we can be in enforcing that media files are credited to the person (or other entity) responsible for them. People who falsely take credit for other people's work don't last very long as contributors to this project. (This is in contrast to some other online media repositories that we will refrain from naming here, where probably half the uploads are someone claiming things as their own work when it is not, or where the work is completely unattributed.)

How does Commons run as a project?

Like all of its sister projects under the Wikimedia Foundation, Commons is almost entirely a volunteer operation. The Foundation provides web hosting and the basic technology, but virtually all of the content you see is either created by volunteers or is publicly available content brought into this project by volunteers. Even some of that "publicly available" content only became publicly available because Commons volunteers successfully urged various entities to make it publicly available.

Even a fair number of the software tools used on Commons are developed and maintained by volunteers. For example, as of early 2025, the tool for making a crop of an image, the tools for mass-editing, the bots that handle mass uploads (e.g., bringing in an entire database of files and metadata from a library), and the main tool for converting video to an acceptable format for Commons, are all volunteer-maintained.

The one notable exception to that "all volunteers" approach is that certain number of people have paid positions as Wikimedians in residence at companies or (more commonly) NGOs. For example a Wikimedian in residence at a museum might be involved in helping to organize images of that museums holdings and make them available through Commons. These people are paid by the institutions with whom they are affiliated, not by Commons or by the Wikimedia Foundation, and there are some rather specific restrictions to prevent them from functioning as on-wiki publicists for their respective institutions.

In general, anyone (except the relative handful of people whose behavior has resulted in a ban from Wikimedia projects) is welcome to contribute, adding content to the project, curating that content, and even influencing policies. It is even possible to contribute in many ways (though not to upload content) without creating an account, though there are quite a few good reasons to create an account, as discussed below. As people gain more experience, they are allowed more scope of action. The lower levels of user rights are granted as a matter of course for users in good standing; the higher levels require a broad community consensus to grant the right. There is a comprehensive list of what rights apply at what levels at Special:ListGroupRights (but it's a bit opaque). A few things worth knowing:

• If you create an account, and you are in good standing, it only takes four days to become an "autoconfirmed" user, which allows you to do most things that users at all routinely do.
• Many pages that have had problematic edits are in one or another degree protected, requiring a certain level of user rights to edit that page.

Naturally, coordinating a large group of people requires a lot of discussions. In general, we encourage that most discussion happen on-wiki where it can be seen and where there is a permanent record of what was discussed. A few of the places where discussions happen:

• Every user has a "user talk" page where other people can message them.
• Every media file has a "file talk" page where it can be discussed.
• If someone believes a particular file should be deleted they can start a "deletion request" ("DR").
• If someone believes a particular category needs discussion for possible deletion, potentially controversial renaming, etc., they can start a "Category for Discussion" page ("CfD").
• There are many forums for more general questions about using Commons:
  • Commons:Help desk for your basic "how do I do this?"
  • Commons:Village pump for potentially broad community discussions.
  • Commons:Village pump/Proposals to discuss and flesh out proposals.
  • Commons:Village pump/Technical to report technical problems.
  • Commons:Administrators' noticeboard and its adjuncts Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems (complaints about user conduct, possibly calling for sanctions), Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Vandalism (to report blatantly malicious activity), Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections (mostly to request page protection)

In short, we have a large apparatus that has been developed over time, mainly by volunteers, and certainly with some influence from things we have seen go well on our sister projects.

End user scenarios

How do I find media about a given topic on Commons?

Many people discover media on Commons through Wikipedia, as articles often include images that are hosted here. When you click on an image on Wikipedia, if that image came from Commons then it will take you to the image's page on Commons (there is typically an intermediate page involved, and you have to click a second time to actually get to the page on Commons). From there, you can check its categories at the bottom of the page to find more files on the same subject. Wikipedia articles themselves can be linked to a Commons category via Wikidata, which often includes more images related to that specific topic.

On Commons itself, you can find media by using the search bar at the top of the page. Browsing categories can also be an effective way to find relevant media. Also: many general search engines allow you to search a given site. For example, to search Commons using a Google search, add "site:commons.wikimedia.org" (without the quotations) to your search terms.

If you are logged in, Commons gives you several options about configuring how search works for you. Probably the most important of these is the first choice, which lets you choose between the very visually oriented Special:MediaSearch that is entirely about searching for content files, and Special:Search, which is more concerned with the text on the page and is especially useful for searching Commons as a whole, including instructional pages like this one, discussion pages, etc.

If you're looking for high-quality images, collections like Featured pictures, Quality images, or Valued images catalogue some of the best content on Commons.

How do I find out information about a file on Commons?

Every file has its own information page, which can be accessed by simply clicking on it. That page contains extra information such as a description, source, the date it was created, and the license it was uploaded under. The file history section shows when and by whom it was uploaded, along with any modifications over time. The usage on other wikis section lists Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other sister project pages where the file is used. All the way at the bottom you can find the file's internal metadata (typically EXIF data), and categories (though categories aren't always visible when visiting this page on a mobile device).

Some files are continually updated, or deal with contentious topics. These will often have a talk page where people discuss changes or disputes.

How do I find other content related to a particular file on Commons?

Files related to the same subject matter are usually included in the same category, listed at the bottom of the file page. These categories in turn will have a parent category, and sometimes child or sibling categories that contain media on similar topics. If the file is widely used, checking the Wikipedia articles it's used on could also provide more information on it.

Also, a relatively small number of file pages have an "other versions" section. This is useful for finding things like crops and other derivatives, multiple distinct prints from the same negative, etc.

If you are looking for non-Commons information related to a file:

• Many Commons files, though probably a minority, link an online source for the file on the broader Internet.
• Near the bottom of the file page is a list of where (if anywhere) the file is used in sister projects such as Wikipedias.
• Many files contain geographic location data (latitude and longitude). If you click that, you will navigate to a page that offers to show that location in a wide variety of online map sites.
• Most files are in categories. Especially for under-described files, you can often learn a lot more about the context of the file by clicking on one or another category. Categories also often link to sister projects for yet more context.

How do I reuse Commons content?

Commons does not "own" its content. All files here are either in the public domain or are copyrighted but under a free license that allows anyone to reuse the photo.

In the context of Commons, a free license means one where:

• Reusers may make derivative works.
• Reusers may use this content commercially (e.g. on a postcard, or in a book for sale).

Depending on the license, reusers may be required to:

• Credit the photo as requested. Note that the credit is normally to the author or copyright-holder, not to Commons.
• Overtly indicate the license they are using.
• Use the identical license for any derivative works.

Reuse of some files may be limited by non-copyright-restrictions. This is further discussed in the section Non-copyright restrictions immediately below.

Both in terms of correctly identifying licensing/public domain status and in terms of providing warnings like the {{Trademarked}} and {{Personality rights}} tags, Commons tries to identify these issues for individual files, but we can't make guarantees. We have tens of thousands of contributors, virtually all of them volunteers, and over a hundred million files. We believe we try harder to get this right than any other comparable repository on the Internet, but there is no chance of perfection. Reusers still need to evaluate their own risks and do their own diligence.

You can greatly reduce your risks by being careful to comply with the license granted for a particular file. Every file page on Commons should overtly indicate license terms or (public domain status) for the relevant file (and please feel free to bring the issue to Commons:Help desk if you find one that does not and is not already tagged as having a problem in this respect). For example, if you look at File:The Babia Gora Biosphere Reserve, Poland (3).jpg you will see that it offers the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license ("CC-BY-SA 4.0"). There are two ways for you to determine more exactly what that means, either of which should get you what you need:

• Clicking the link for that license brings you to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en, which gives a high-level explanation of the terms of that license and links to the formal text of the license. If you follow those directions, you should be fine.
• There are two links near the top of the page, both labeled "Use this file", on with a globe symbol and the other with the "W" Wikipedia logo. Click the one with the globe symbol, and it will show (among other things) an acceptable way to attribute the file and HTML code to embed the file in a web page with proper attribution.

NOTE that if you do not follow the terms of a license, you can be just as liable for copyright infringement as if no free license had ever been offered. For example, CC-BY-SA 4.0 requires attribution. If you use a photo that is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 and you do not attribute it, you are in the same legal position as if you used any copyrighted, unlicensed work. In these circumstances, we very much encourage our contributors to send a polite warning to request that such a breach be fixed rather than to take legal action, but Commons cannot stop them from pursuing any available legal remedies for a copyright violation. And, of course, if you are using an image in print or in other offline manners, there is almost no way to fix the breach after the fact.

In short, though we try to make it as easy to get this right as we can, you do still need to be careful and exercise due diligence.

Non-copyright restrictions

• 
  Angela Merkel in Talinn in 2017. Free-licensed, with attribution to "EU2017EE Estonian Presidency, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons", but you still can't use it in an advertisement.
• 
  Microsoft Copilot logo. Too simple to copyright in the U.S., but still a protected trademark.
• 
  Free-licensed, with attribution to "FeaturedPics, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons", but most reuse in Italy, especially commercial use, would require authorization by the Italian Ministry of Heritage and Culture and payment of a fee.

Although Commons goal is to provide a repository of images where copyright does not restrict reuse, be aware that non-copyright restrictions may still apply. We try to tag files accordingly where these are particularly likely to come up but (for example):

• Any image of an identifiable living person (or, in many countries, a recently deceased person) might raise issues of personality rights when used in a manner that suggests any endorsement of a product, a political view, etc.
• Laws about libel and slander apply just as much to reuse of public-domain and free-licensed images as to any others.
• Most countries have at least some laws about images of nudity or sexual activity, especially when published commercially.
• A logo (for example) may be way too simple to be copyrighted, but would still almost always be protected by trademark law.
• Many countries have laws limiting the use of certain political symbols, especially Communist and Nazi symbols.
• Some countries have laws limiting the commercial use of images related to their cultural heritage. Here is a good discussion about Italy in this respect, which also mentions that Greece and Turkey have similar laws.
• Some countries ban maps that conflict with that country's territorial claims.

This list is certainly not exhaustive. Again, you need to exercise your own due diligence.

How do I contact a Commons user?

The most straightforward way to contact another user on Commons is via their talk page, which functions the same way across all Wikiprojects. If you want to reach out to another user for reasons that require a bit more discretion, as long as you are logged in and have provided an email address for your account, you can also check if they have their e-mail enabled. If this is the case, the option "E-mail this user" is available on the left sidebar if you're on their profile.

What do I do if I believe a particular file on Commons should be deleted?

To nominate the file for deletion, go to the file page and click on the "Nominate for deletion" link in the tools section on the left-hand side. This will guide you through the process of adding the file to the deletion requests page and will notify the uploader after you're finished. You will need to provide a clear reason for the deletion request based on Commons' policies, as simply disliking a file's content is not sufficient grounds for removal.

If the file is a clear case of a copyright violation (a "copyvio"), you can use the "Speedy deletion" process by adding {{copyvio|1=URL or reason}} to the file's description, which bypasses the discussion stage. Do make sure to explain why you are confident it is a copyvio (e.g. URL of where it was taken from, if it is from an online source). There are a few instances where files are eligible for speedy deletion, but for more complex cases, a regular deletion request is recommended.

In some cases, uploads of a specific user or of a specific topic may still be copyrighted. To nominate multiple files for deletion at the same time, you can follow the steps at COM:MASSDEL.

GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) scenarios

See also: Commons:GLAM.

How do we make our photos or other media content available to Commons?

In general, there are two approaches to making content available to Commons:

1. If you really don't want to engage at all closely, and you already are posting such content to the Internet yourself, the bare minimum is to
   • Make sure that the files in question are publicly visible online and can be downloaded. Ideally, they should be organized comprehensibly, especially in terms of a pattern of URLs.
   • Make sure that the licensing is clear: typically this means either a global statement on your site about licensing if all of it has the same licensing (of course, individual files can be clearly marked as exceptions) or an explicit statement about licensing visible for each item of media.
   • Make sure the licensing is compatible with what Commons needs: see Commons:Licensing#Well-known licenses.
   • If the licenses in question require attribution, make sure the desired attribution is clear on your site.
   • Let us know the material is available. One way to do this is to post to the Village pump about where we can find your content. Another would be to contact someone from the GLAM contact list on the Outreach wiki.
2. Of course, we prefer a bit more engaged approach. We can work with you about efficient ways to do bulk uploads, especially if the content is already described in a database that can be made available to the person driving the uploads. You'll probably want to start at Commons:GLAM#Resources.

If we upload content, how can we track its reuse?

The Global Usage section on each file's page automatically shows where the file appears across Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia articles in different languages and Wikidata. To track this information of multiple files at once however, third-party tools need to be used. GLAMorous is one such tool, which is able to track files uploaded by specific users, or files in a specific category, as many GLAM institutions create their own dedicated Commons categories to organize their works.

Basic Commons contributor scenarios

Can I help out here?

Absolutely. Here are some things you can do as a relative beginner; this list is by no means exhaustive.

• Take pictures and upload them, especially if you have access to things for which we don't yet have a ton of content. Among the many things of which we always want pictures (with the caveat that some countries' copyright laws severely limit publishing images of human-made structures from the last hundred years or so; do learn the rules for your country):
  • Buildings with any sort of "landmark" status.
  • Monuments and memorials.
  • Business districts.
  • Institutional buildings such as schools, places of worship, and hospitals
  • Interesting or unusual geographic features.
  • Waterfronts.
  • Fairs, public celebrations, etc.
  • Public parks.
  • Public squares.
  • Public markets.
• Translate things into a language or languages in which you have native or near-native language skills. Most content on Commons is described in only one language; ideally, it should be described in as many languages as possible. This applies both the the short captions in the structured data and the potentially longer descriptions in the wikitext {{Information}} template. In the latter, remember to use a language template, such as {{En}} for English {{Es}} for Spanish {{Zh}} for Spanish, etc.
• Help with categorization. This one has a little more of a learning curve, but if you focus in a particular area you should be quickly able to learn the relevant part of the category hierarchy. Do read Commons:Categories before plunging in! Look for images in very general categories, like a category for a large city or Category:Felis silvestris catus (housecats) or Category:People, and move into more specific categories if you can identify those.
  • There are also requested categorization tasks editors of varying levels of experience can do.
• Fix bad spelling, flesh out overly brief descriptions, etc. (but please don't edit other peoples signed comments on talk pages or on project pages like Commons:Help desk or the Commons:Village pump!)

I'm confused by all this jargon

Like any long-lasting project, Commons has ended up developing a bit of a vocabulary of its own. Some of this jargon is common to Wikimedia projects; some is specific to Commons. There's a pretty good guide to the jargon at Commons:Glossary. Some common terms or abbreviations you might come across include the following:

• Copyvio: Copyright violation - Commons only accepts files under a free license, so anything that's still under copyright can't be hosted here.
• DR: Deletion Request
• FoP: Freedom of Panorama - the rights and restrictions surrounding photographing copyrighted works (such as artworks, and sometimes even buildings) in public.

I work on Wikipedia/Wikidata/etc. What should I know about Commons?

At the risk of stating the obvious: those pictures on your site? Most of them (for Wikipedia) or all of them (for Wikidata) come from Commons.

Unlike Wikipedia, which focuses on encyclopedic content, Commons is dedicated to media files and follows its own policies. Wikipedia allows fair use media under strict conditions, whereas Commons only accepts files that are freely licensed for anyone to use. Content policies also differ: Wikipedia requires a neutral point of view and notability, whereas Commons does not have notability or neutrality requirements but instead focuses on ensuring files are educationally useful and freely licensed.

One key advantage of Commons is that a single file can be used on multiple Wikimedia projects without needing to be re-uploaded. If you're working on Wikipedia or Wikidata and need an image, you can search Commons and directly insert the file using its filename. Likewise, when you upload media, it becomes available to all Wikimedia projects. This makes Commons especially useful for Wikidata, as images can be linked to Wikidata items and displayed across multiple language Wikipedias automatically.

In Wikipedia (and most sister projects), there is exactly one consensus version of every article. On Commons, we leave most disagreements about "which version is better" open. We generally avoid overwriting existing files without first consulting the original author/uploader. It's fine to have two versions of a map, or even two differently retouched versions of a photo. Just upload your version under a different filename, and be clear to acknowledge and credit the original source (e.g. {{Derived from}}, plus a clear statement as to who was the original author). Then individual reusers (such as the various Wikipedias) can choose their own preferred version.

What file formats does Commons support?

Please see Commons:File types.

How do I upload content I created?

• To upload content to Commons, you must be logged in to an account. If you already have an account on any Wikimedia project, you should be able to log into it on Commons. If you don't have an account, there should be a "Create account" link at the upper right of this page (or any other Commons page when you are not logged in).
• Do make sure you have at least a basic familiarity with Commons:Project scope (at least read Commons:Project scope/Summary) to make sure that the files you want to upload are appropriate for Commons.
• The phrase "content I created" is a little trickier than it sounds. A lot of human-made objects are copyrighted, and for copyright purposes, photos of those objects can easily be considered "derivative" works, not entirely things that you are considered to have "created." If you've taken photos of animals, nature, food, vehicles, machinery, etc. you are probably fine; ditto if you've taken pictures of very old buildings (a good rule of thumb is about 120 years). Otherwise, the issues may depend on what country you are in.
  • Functional objects are almost always OK even if they have a significant design component.
  • Conversely, photos of any but the simplest packaging are almost always a problem.
  • The rules about photos of buildings, signs, graphic art, and sculpture vary wildly from country to country. For example, the U.S. is extremely liberal about photographing buildings, but very tight about these other things. India and the UK allow for photographing nearly any sculpture in a public place, but not a two-dimensional work of art. France allows almost nothing: if the architect of a building is alive, or died less than 70 years ago, we can't accept a picture of the building. Germany is super-liberal about outdoor public spaces, but far more restrictive than the U.S. or UK about indoor public spaces. See Commons:Freedom of panorama to learn more about the country where you are photographing.
  • Oh, and your photo of something on a computer screen? Unless what is on that computer screen is your own creation, definitely not your own work in the sense that counts.
• If you've taken photographs of identifiable people, there is one other consideration: consent. Again, this may vary from one country to another; see Commons:Country specific consent requirements. For example, the U.S., UK, and India are all pretty liberal about pictures taken in a public place. France and (especially) Germany are quite tight. Also: don't be creepy. Even if something is legal, we really don't want the photo that looks like you took it creepily.

Yes, that may seem like a bit much, but we know people get really frustrated when they upload a bunch of photos and then they get deleted, and this is the stuff that usually causes that to happen. If you are uploading material you are not sure about it in the respects discussed above, please don't upload hundreds of pictures right out of the gate. Upload a few first, and make sure there isn't a bunch of push-back.

That said: actually uploading should be pretty easy. Use the Commons:UploadWizard; it should guide you through pretty well. We recommend the {{CC-BY-SA 4.0}} license (the most restrictive Creative Commons license that is compatible with Commons notion of a "free license") or {{CC-BY 4.0}} (very similar, but allows people to derivative works without free-licensing their own contribution). Both of these licenses require that anyone using the work attribute it to you. Unless you really know what you are doing, you probably don't want to grant a {{CC-zero}} license: that effectively puts the work in the public domain, giving you no right to be attributed as its author.

How do I upload content to Commons if I am not the creator (or it is only partly my work)?

From a technical point of view, you upload third-party content to Commons the same way you upload your own content; the recommended tool for beginners is Special:UploadWizard. However, it is a lot more difficult to judge what third-party content is OK to upload to Commons than to determine whether your own work is OK. This is because Commons hosts only content that is either in the public domain or free-licensed, both in its home country (whatever that may be for the individual file) and in the United States. Besides all of the issues mentioned above for uploading your own content, probably less than 5% of images and 2% of videos on on the Internet meet this requirement, so most of what you will run across online is not suitable for Commons. This section contains a few notes to help you make an educated guess as to what third-party content is eligible for Commons. Do remember also: copyright is not the only relevant consideration, content must also be appropriate to Commons' educational scope.

Commons can accept works that are already legitimately licensed under one of the "well-known free licenses". The word "legitimately" is important there, because there are definitely many sites on the Internet (including a fair number of users on repository sites such as Flickr) who make false licensing claims. Try to use at least common sense in judging whether a license is legitimate.

As mentioned above, Commons content must be either public-domain or free-licensed both in its home country and in the U.S. Typically, free licenses are independent of country, so the issue of rules from two different countries is almost exclusively about the public domain. For work from the U.S., of course, only one country is involved.

The following is a quick summary of U.S. copyright law. For a more extensive summary, see Commons:Hirtle chart. Of course, things are much more complicated than can be expressed in one chart—people spend entire careers becoming expert in copyright law—but that chart will guide you through the vast majority of likely cases.

• Anything published anywhere in the world more than 95 years ago (1929 or earlier, as of 2025) is in the public domain in the United States.
• All works created by U.S. federal government employees as part of their work are in the public domain in the United States.
• Works from the United States published up to and including 1977 without a copyright notice are in the public domain in the United States.
• Works from the United States published up to and including 1963 with a copyright notice, but where copyright was never renewed (>>> can we link a good summary of how to determine hat?), are in the public domain in the United States.
• The above is not exhaustive of the ways works can enter the public domain in the United States; please see Commons:Hirtle chart for some of the trickier cases.
• Since 1 March 1989, the United States considers works to be copyrighted by default. In particular, this means that throughout the Internet Age it has been the case that if a site says nothing about copyright, the default is that everything on the site that can be copyrighted is copyrighted.

Outside the U.S., every country of course has its own laws. Commons:Copyright rules by territory leads to a series of pages which attempt to sort out these rules for virtually every country in the world. (The Infobox at right on that page links to a page for each country or special territory.) While many countries have special rules of their own (ror example, the laws in the Philippines are similar to those in the U.S.), for the vast majority of countries in the world other than the United States:

• Any content with a known author who has been dead for 70 years or more is in the public domain.
• Any content where the author cannot be reasonably determined, and where the content is over 120 years old, is in the public domain.
• Any content which can be shown to have been always anonymous, or where the effective author was a collective entity such as a corporation, and where the content is over 70 years old, is in the public domain.

Because making an accurate representation of a two-dimensional work does not "create a new copyright," virtually any photograph of a 200-year-old painting, showing nothing but the painting, is going to be in the public domain, because the painting is in the public domain. However, that is not true for three-dimensional objects such as sculptures, and it is not true for pictures that show a non-flat picture frame, because the decision on how to photograph something three-dimensional always involves some creativity.

You can create and upload modified versions of any freely licensed or public domain work, whether or not the original of the work is already available in Commons. In those cases, you must credit as author both yourself and the original author/s. You can't create and upload any derived version from a non-freely licensed work. Always respect the conditions specified at the license of the original work (for example, derived versions of a work licensed under Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) must always be available under the same license).

Even if an image (or other file) is in the public domain, you should still try to provide an accurate date for it and credit the author as accurately as possible. In some countries such as France, crediting the author remains a legal obligation even after copyright has expired.

How do I best make my work reuseable?

Mostly, this comes down to providing clear information about what your uploaded file.

• Make sure your uploads are correctly licensed, and that the basis for the license is clear. Nothing impedes reuse more than people not being sure if the license (or the basis for the file being in the public domain) is "safe".
  • If it is your own work and requires attribution, be clear how you want to be attributed, especially if you want something other than just your account name.
  • For licensed work from a third party, it is even more important to be clear who is to be attributed. Typically, this can be done with the "author" field of the {{Information}} template (or other similar templates), but it can also be useful to use an explicit "attribution=" field on the licensing template.
  • For public domain work, it is good to use as specific a PD tag as possible. For example, {{PD-USGov-Congress}}, if accurate, is better than {{PD-USGov}}, which in turn is better than {{PD-US}}.
  • For public domain work, it is still good to indicate any preferred courtesy attribution. For example, for work from a particular library or archive, it is always polite to be explicit about that, even if it is not legally required.
• Make sure your image is discoverable:
  • Make sure your image is well described, both in the description and the short SDC caption. A good clear title helps as well. For example, an image described as "Aerial photograph of the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington during a time when the large lock was drained for annual maintenance" is tremendously more likely to be found and used appropriately than an image described as "Locks in Seattle".
  • Commons:Categories are also very valuable to help people find media, as is some of the structured data. To continue that example, we have very specific Category:Hiram M. Chittenden Locks aerial views and Category:Cleaning Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. In the structured data, it would be useful at least to know that it depicts Hiram M. Chittenden Locks (Q5769218). Adding the structured statement genre (P136) => aerial photography (Q191839) as well would also be best practice.
  • Adding an accurate {{Location}} (latitude and longitude) is also very useful. There are tools that will show Commons content on a map, if the content has geolocations like this associated with it.
• For video and audio, remember that this sort of content is almost impossible to "skim." Make sure that the description tells as much as possible of what would be relevant in choosing to use this file.

Advanced Commons contributor scenarios

What if I want to run a bot or script on Commons?

Bots require prior authorization; please see Commons:Bots.

Also, before you ask to set up a bot of your own, see if what you want to accomplish can be easily done with existing tools. See Commons:Tools for an extensive list.