Commons:What Commons is not

This page is considered an official guideline on Wikimedia Commons. It illustrates standards or behaviors which most editors agree with in principle and generally follow. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

This page in a nutshell: Wikimedia Commons is a repository for public domain and freely-licensed educational media content. It is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, or book, and it is not Wikipedia. It is also not a personal web host, social network, or advertising platform. Wikimedia Commons does not censor content but may delete low-quality or non-educational explicit images. It strictly enforces copyright and licensing restrictions, even if copyright holders do not.

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COM:NOT

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to all. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The project has a particular scope, and there are certain things that Wikimedia Commons is not.

Scope

Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or book

While we can help supply images for one, Wikimedia Commons itself is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, or any sort of written work. Content within these categories should normally go to an appropriate Wikimedia site, such as Wikipedia or Wiktionary for example.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project Scope: Excluded educational content).

Wikimedia Commons is not Wikipedia

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COM:NOTWP

Files on Wikimedia Commons do not necessarily need to comply with Wikipedia policies and guidelines such as neutral point of view and no original research. Wikimedia Commons acts amongst other things as a common media file resource for all Wikimedia projects, and we stand apart from the rules that may be imposed locally by each of those individual projects.

For the policy, see Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view.

Wikimedia Commons is not your personal free web host

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Although we do host media and images on Wikimedia Commons, all content must be within our project's scope, which requires, among other things, that all media must be realistically useful for an educational purpose. Unless your images are educationally useful and in the scope of this project, Wikimedia Commons is not a place to store your vacation photo collection.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project Scope: Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose).

Wikimedia Commons is not a social network

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COM:NOTSOCIAL

Using Wikimedia Commons solely to chat with your friends, create personal profiles, etc., is outside Wikimedia Commons' scope. User pages created to assist in communication with other users for the advancement of the project are OK.

For the policy, see COM:PSP (Project Scope: User pages, galleries and categories).

Content

Wikimedia Commons is not a place to advertise

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COM:ADVERT

As dictated by our scope, content which constitutes advertising or self-promotion may be deleted from Wikimedia Commons.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project scope: Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose). For information about the content of your user page, see COM:PSP (Project scope: Non-allowable user page/gallery/category content).

Wikimedia Commons is not censored

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COM:NOTCENSORED

Due to their educational value for the understanding of certain subjects, Wikimedia Commons may host material that some users may find objectionable, distasteful, or offensive for various reasons. Unless the image has possible personality rights issues, is possibly illegal in the United States, or violates other Wikimedia Commons policy such as our scope, Wikimedia Commons will not censor or remove media that users find objectionable or offensive. However, the statement "Wikimedia Commons is not censored" is not a valid argument for keeping a file that falls outside the normal permitted Wikimedia Commons scope.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project scope: Censorship) and Commons:Nudity.

Wikimedia Commons is not an amateur porn site

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COM:PORN

Low-quality pornographic images that do not contribute anything educationally useful to our existing collection of images are not needed on Wikimedia Commons. As a result, uploaded low-quality photographs of genitalia are generally deleted quickly. Deletion of such photographs should nevertheless follow ordinary deletion procedures. If the quality is bad, we may keep the file if we have no better file on a subject it can illustrate.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project scope: Censorship) and COM:PS: Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose. The relevant specific official guideline is Commons:Nudity.

Wikimedia Commons cares about copyright even when a copyright owner does not

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COM:CARES

Wikimedia Commons respects copyright and licensing restrictions regardless of whether copyright holders care about enforcing them. Uploading non-free media in good faith with excuses such as "the author won't find out", "the author would be glad that we redistributed their work", or similar statements is not how things work on Wikimedia Commons. We take copyright seriously; any image or media with questionable authorship may get nominated for deletion, and media uploaded without proper permission or licensing information may be speedily deleted.

For the policy, see Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle and Commons:Deletion policy.