Commons:Community portal

Welcome to the Wikimedia Commons community portal

Are you new to Wikimedia Commons? If so, then Welcome! Check out what we're all about (and what we are not), or just start searching for images and 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, as well.

News

Wikimedia Foundation blog | @wikicommons

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. We also have a place for videos and sounds.
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 ^webchat Wikimedia Commons IRC channel.; #cvn-commons ^webchat shows possible vandalism.; #cvn-commons-uploads ^webchat shows new uploads.
International mailing-list: commons-l (this month)
Phabricator: Phabricator: Commons bug reports and feature requests.
Social media

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.

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. It defines when and how to delete content that does not belong on 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.
Users' 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.

All policies and guidelines…

Content organization

Creation and upload

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

High quality content

Improvements

Unidentified subjects, like plants, people or animals that need to be identified.
Images for cleanup, transition to SVG of flags and graphics.
Uncategorized media
Media missing infobox template
Categories for discussion, uncategorized pages, uncategorized categories.
Maintenance in general

Copyright issues

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

This project page in other languages:

ID	Human readable name	Description
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