Wiki Commons

Anybody can upload images, sounds, videos, and other multimedia files to the website. The files uploaded to Wiki Commons can be used by any other Wiki Foundation project, like Wikipedia or Wiktionary. For example, Wikipedia uses images on Wiki Commons to include pictures in their encyclopedia articles. The files can also be freely used by anyone else because they have free licenses.

Wiki Commons

Type of site	Media repository
Owner	Wiki Foundation
Created by	Wiki community
URL	commons.wikimedia.org
Commercial	No
Registration	Optional (required for uploading files)
Launched	September 7, 2004
Current status	Active
Content license	Free

Wiki Commons has categories, which are groups of files that have something in common or similar. For example, there is a category for pictures of cats. Wiki Commons is a multilingual website, meaning that it can be used in every language. However, some parts of Wiki Commons are only in English, like names of categories.

Wiki Commons also has sound files. Not all of these are music. For example, there are recordings that read words out loud. These files are used in Wiktionary, a free dictionary, to teach people how to say words.

For every file on Wiki Commons, the person who made it has to let everybody use it and change it as much as they want, including companies (see Creative Commons).

Wiki Commons reached 10 million files on April 15, 2011.

The Wiki Foundation was given money to make it easier for people to use their websites. They used some of this money to make the UploadWizard, a new system for uploading files on Wiki Commons. People started using the UploadWizard in December 2010.

The UploadWizard also teaches new uploaders about copyright law. It has a tutorial for users to read so that they can check if the file they are uploading is violating copyright. Most uploads are by the UploadWizard.

Before, Wiki Commons only let people upload one file at a time. The UploadWizard lets people upload multiple files at the same time and include all the required information about each one.

The logo of Wiki Commons has a red circle inside a blue circle. There are many small blue arrows pointing from the blue circle to the red circle in the middle, and one big blue arrow pointing upwards. The small blue arrows represent the different projects of the Wiki Foundation. The large arrow is to show that Wiki Commons is constantly improving.

This logo was chosen in a vote in 2004.