Template:UploaderHints

Advice on uploading images

Hello!

Thanks for uploading some pictures to Wikipedia. I wanted to make sure you were aware of some of the requirements and good practices for uploaded images.

Pick an image name.

When uploading an image, pick a file name that is descriptive, and unique. Remember that many images may be uploaded about the same topic, and remember that names are case-sensitive.

Source the image.

On the image description page, explain where the image came from. If you created the image yourself, then say so. If it's from the web, give a URL. If it's a screenshot of a movie or game, or a scan from a book, give the title.

Provide copyright and license information.

This part is a little bit trickier, but it's very important. The copyright of the image generally belongs to whoever created it.

If it's a photograph you took, or an image you created (modifying an image that already exists doesn't count) in software like Photoshop or GIMP, then you hold the copyright. To upload it to Wikipedia, you must agree to license it freely, allowing anyone to use it for any purpose. Some licenses that are available for this purpose, like Creative Commons Attribution, require that credit is given to the original author. (you) Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike adds a requirement to release any further modification to the image under the same or a compatible free license. You can also release it into the public domain (which allows anyone to use it for any purpose without restriction.) To license your image freely, place an appropriate tag on the image description page, like {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}} for Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. To release it into the public domain use a tag like {{Cc0}} for Creative Commons Zero or {{PD-self}} for a generic waiver. Be sure to mention that you created the image.

If you didn't create the image, or the copyright somehow belongs to another party (like a screenshot, which you might "create", but the copyright belongs to the author of the movie or video game), then you need to find another tag that describes the copyright status of the image. Images used on Wikipedia need to be free for our use and the use of sites which reproduce our content. This means that images cannot have a restriction such as "only for use by Wikipedia", or "for non-commercial use only", or "for educational use". Images without a free license may be usable in certain articles under our policy for non-free content, but such a use must be justified on the image description page.

Describe the image.

To another reader, the image may not be immediately understood. A caption in an article doesn't explain the image to a visitor who sees it on its image page. Put a brief explanation of what is in the image on the image description page, similar to what you might include in a caption on an article.

Some links to Wikipedia pages on this subject:

Copyrights, Copyright tags, Non-free content, Image description page, Public domain, Images for deletion, Possibly unfree images, Copyright problems, Uploading images

Thanks again for your contributions. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me at my talk page.