1. A brief overview of Wikimedia
Commons
“Not just a common project at all!”

2. What is Wikimedia
Commons?
 Wikimedia Commons (often shortened
to just “Commons”) is Wikimedia‟s
multimedia repository, containing
images, sounds, video and other files.
 Accessible at
http://commons.wikimedia.org

3. Scope of the Project
 Commons‟ scope is limited to
„educational‟ material that is available
under a free licence.
 “Educational” is interpreted in a very
broad fashion.
 However, photographs of your family or
that barbeque you had on the weekend
are not in scope (unless you are related
to someone famous and they attended
your barbeque!)
 Areas that Commons does well in are
historical public domain photos, wildlife
and nature photography, and images of
buildings and architectural features.

4. Image Licencing
 All media on Commons must be available under a free
licence. This means that each and every file can be
used for anybody, for any purpose (including
“commercial” use)
 Commons encourages copyright holders to licence their
files under the „Creative Commons‟ licences, however
other licences are permitted so long as they fulfil the
above criteria.
 The “non-commercial” and “no-derivative” Creative
Commons clauses are too restrictive for Commons, and
files under these licences are not permitted.
 Images that are in the Public Domain are very welcome!
 Commons is hosted in Florida, USA. Therefore, all
media must comply with the copyright laws of that
jurisdiction.

5. Why are “non-commercial”
licences not allowed?
 There is no internationally consistent
definitions of what “commercial use” actually
is.
 Indeed, in Australia, there is not even a legal
definition of “commercial use.”
 Due to this ambiguity, allowing such
conditions on media in Commons would
mean that users could not be sure of whether
their planned re-use is legally permissible.
 Forbidding „commercial use‟ could block
some uses of the information that the
copyright holder wishes to allow, for instance:
providing copies of the media on DVD-ROM
compilations to schools.

6. Uploading images to
Commons

7. Uploading images to
Commons
 Uploading media to Commons can get
quite complicated and involved if there
are thousands of images involved, or if
there are special requirements.
 However, uploading single images or
small batches of images is very simple
using Commons‟ “upload wizard”, which
is what we will be using today.
 While we will be concentrating on
images today, uploading other sorts of
files (audio, video, etc) follows much the
same procedure.

8. Starting the upload wizard
 Click on the
“Upload File” link
on the left hand
toolbar.
 You must be
logged into
Commons for this
to work.

9. Selecting a file
 Click on the “Select a media file to donate”
button. You will then be prompted to select
your file.

10. Selecting a file (Part Two)
 Once you‟ve selected your file, a thumbnail
will be shown. You can upload multiple files
this way, but in this example we‟ll only be
uploading one.
 When ready, press the “Upload” button.

11. Hopefully, you‟ll see this
screen…

12. Specifying a licence
 The next step is to specify which
licence the image is released under. If
you have created the image
yourself, then you can select from a
small list of allowable licences.
 If you did not create the image
yourself, then select “This file is not
my own work.”, specify the source and
the image creator(s), and choose
whichever licencing condition applies
from the list.

13. Describing the image
 Now you can fill in information on the file.

14. Uploading the image
 Until now, the image has not actually
been published. When you press the
“Next” button, the image will actually
be published to Commons!
 Do not worry if you made a mistake,
you can always fix it up later.

15. The end result…

16. Problems?
 Pages on Commons, just like on any
Wiki, can be edited to add new
information or to correct errors.
 The image we uploaded on previous
slides is not Hibiscus at all, but rather
an example of Bougainvillea! Lets
correct that.

17. Editing the page
 Click on the “Edit” tab in the top right-
and corner of the page.

18. Interpreting Commons
Wikimarkup
 When you press the “Edit” button, the
information we entered previously will
be displayed in markup format.

19. Markup Continued
=={{int:filedesc}}==
{{Information General
|description={{en|1=Pink hibiscus flower at information
Possum Park, Queensland.}}{{ga|1=Ceineaf bándearg
bláth ag "Possum Park", Queensland.}} on the
|date=2011-06-21 image, includ
|source={{own}} ing
|author=[[User:Lankiveil|Lankiveil]] description
|permission= and creation
|other_versions= date.
|other_fields=
}}
=={{int:license-header}}== Details of the licence
{{self|cc-by-sa-3.0}}
[[Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard]] Categories that the
[[Category:Hibiscus]] image is in.

20. Correcting Mistakes
 You can just edit the markup directly to
correct errors or introduce new information.
 Once you‟re done, press the “Save Page”
button under the text box to commit your
changes to the page.
 The changes you make become “live”
immediately.
 The “Show Preview” button will show a
preview of what the metadata will look
like, without actually saving that page.
 You can edit the page as many times as
required.

21. The corrected metadata
markup
=={{int:filedesc}}==
{{Information
|description={{en|1=Pink bougainvillea ([[Bougainvillea glabra]])
flower at Possum Park, Queensland.}}{{ga|1=Bougainvillea
([[Bougainvillea glabra]]) bándearg bláth ag "Possum
Park", Queensland.}}
|date=2011-06-21
|source={{own}}
|author=[[User:Lankiveil|Lankiveil]]
|permission=
|other_versions=
|other_fields=
}}
=={{int:license-header}}==
{{self|cc-by-sa-3.0}}
[[Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard]]
[[Category:Bougainvillea glabra]]

22. Renaming Files
 It is not possible to rename files using
markup, this must be done by a Commons
administrator.
 Luckily, the {{rename}} template has been
developed for these situations.
 For this example, I used:
{{rename|Bougainvillea at Possum
Park.jpeg|Correct name of species.}}
 This resulted in the following message being
posted to the page:

23. Categorisation
Animals
Dogs Cats
Labradors
Dalmatians
Poodles

24. Commons‟ categorisation
scheme
 Commons uses a categorisation scheme
slightly different to what many libraries
and other collecting agencies use.
 Rather than categorising at multiple
levels from general to specific, files on
Commons are only categorised at the
specific level.
 So, a picture of a Dalmatian is
categorised only under “Dalmatians”, not
“Dogs” or “Animals”
 Files can be in multiple categories.

25. Multiple Categories
 Take this sleepy fellow for example:
 He is in both the “Dalmatian” and the
“Yawning Dogs” categories.
 The multiple categorisation is allowed
because both are “leaf” nodes in the category
tree.

26. Notes on Categories
 Because Commons is a multilingual
project, sometimes the best category is
not in English. For instance, the
Dalmatian category is actually
“Dalmatiner”, which is the German word
for “Dalmatian”.
 Categories can contain other categories.
It is through this mechanism that the
category tree is built.
 If a category does not already exist for a
file, it can be created by any user!

27. Notes on Categories (Part
Two)
 Assignment of files to categories is
done the same way as all other
metadata, through the “Edit” screen.
Simply add the text [[Category:____]]
to the page in question.
 By convention, category assignments
are located at the bottom of the raw
metadata.

28. Questions?
 If you have further questions after this
session, assistance is available at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:Helpd
esk