විකිපීඩියා:ඡායාරූ භාවිත ප්රතිපත්ති
This page is a brief overview of the policies towards images—including format, content, and copyright issues—on the English-language edition of Wikipedia. If you have specific questions, you should go to the most specific policy page related to your question, for a prompt and accurate response.
For information on media in general (images, sound files, etc.), see Wikipedia:Creation and usage of media files. For information on uploading, see Wikipedia:Uploading images, or go directly to Special:Upload.For other legal and copyright policies, see Wikipedia:List of policies#Legal.
Requirements
Whenever you upload an image, you should meet the following minimal requirements.
Rules of thumb
Below this brief checklist of image use rules is the detailed reasoning behind them.
- Try not to use color alone to convey information, as it is inaccessible in many situations.
- In general, there is no need to specify thumbnail size. Users can select their ideal size in preferences.
Copyright and licensing
Before you upload an image, make sure that the image falls in one of the four categories:
- Own work: You own all rights to the image, usually meaning that you created it entirely yourself. (example, see below for details)
- Freely licensed: You can prove that the copyright holder has released the image under an acceptable free license. Note that images that are licensed for use only on Wikipedia, or only for non-commercial or educational use, or under a license that doesn't allow for the creation of modified/derived works, are unsuitable. (example, see below for details)
- Public domain: You can prove that the image is in the public domain, i.e. free of all copyrights. (example, see below for details)
- Fair use: You believe that the image meets the special conditions for non-free content, which exceptionally allow the use of unlicensed material, and you can provide an explicit non-free use rationale explaining why and how you intend to use it. (example, see below for details)
Always note the image's copyright status on the image description page, and provide specific details about the image's origin. An Image copyright tag provides a standard template for the licensing of the image. The image summary provides necessary details to support the use of the image copyright tag. An image summary should contain the following:
- Description: The subject of the image
- Origin (source): The copyright holder of the image or URL of the web page the image came from
- Author: The original creator of the image, especially if different from the copyright holder
- Permission: Who or what law or policy gives permission to post on Wikipedia with the selected image copyright tag
In addition, the summary might also contain the following, where appropriate:
- Date: Date the image was created. The more exact, the better
- Location: Where the image was created. The more exact the better
- Other versions of this file: Directs users to derivatives of the image if they exist on Wikipedia
- More information on how to provide a good description of the image's origin
- A good description of the origin for an image from an internet location is to point to the HTML page that contains the image ( http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=3097 ) and not directly to the image itself: ( http://www.navy.mil/management/photodb/webphoto/web_021028-N-3228G-006.jpg ).
- A good description of the origin for an image from a book is to provide full a bibliographic citation for the book (Author, Title, ISBN number, page number(s), date of copyright, publisher information, etc.) and not just title and author.
- A good description of the origin for a self-created image is to state "It is my own work." and not just use a tag that indicates it is your own work ({{self}} or {{PD-self}} for examples).
User-created images
Wikipedia encourages users to upload their own images. All user-created images must be licensed under a free license, such as the GFDL and/or an acceptable Creative Commons license, or released into the public domain, which removes all copyright and licensing restrictions. When licensing an image, it is best practice to multi-license under both GFDL and a Creative Commons license.
Such images can include photographs which you yourself took. The legal rights for images generally lie with the photographer, not the subject. Simply re-tracing a copyrighted image or diagram does not necessarily create a new copyright—copyright is generated only by instances of "creativity", and not by the amount of labor which went into the creation of the work. Photographs of three-dimensional objects almost always generate a new copyright, though others may continue to hold copyright in items depicted in such photographs. Photographs of two-dimensional objects such as paintings in a museum often do not (see the section on the "public domain" below). If you have questions in respect to this, please ask the regulars at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights.
Images with you, friends or family prominently featured in a way that distracts from the image topic are not recommended for the main namespace; User pages are OK. These images are considered self-promotion and the Wikipedia community has repeatedly reached consensus to delete such images.
Some images may contain trademarked logos incidentally (or purposely if the image is either freely licensed, covered under freedom of panorama, or being too simple to be copyrightable). If this is the case, please tag it with {{trademark}}.
Free licenses
For a list of possible licenses which are considered "free enough" for Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. Licenses which restrict the use of the media to non-profit or educational purposes only (i.e. non-commercial use only), or are given permission to only appear on Wikipedia, are not free enough for Wikipedia's usages or goals and will be deleted.[1]. A list of websites that offer free images can be found at Wikipedia:Free image resources. In short, Wikipedia media (with the exception of "fair use" media—see below) should be as "free" as Wikipedia's content—both to keep Wikipedia's own legal status secure as well as to allow for as much re-use of Wikipedia content as possible.
If the place where you found the image does not declare a pre-existing free license, yet allows use of its content under terms commonly instituted by them, it must explicitly declare that commercial use and modification is permitted. If it is not the case, it is to be assumed that it is not unless verification or permission from the copyright holder is obtained.
Public domain
Public domain images are not copyrighted, and copyright law does not restrict their use in any way. Wikipedia pages, including non-English language pages, are hosted on a server in the United States, so U.S. law governs whether a Wikipedia image is in the public domain.
Images may be placed into the public domain by their creators, or they may be public domain because they are ineligible for copyright or because their copyright expired. In the U.S., copyright has expired on any work published anywhere before January 1, 1923. Although U.S. copyrights have also expired for many works published since then, the rules for determining expiration are complex; see When does copyright expire? for details.
In the U.S., reproductions of two-dimensional public domain artwork do not generate a new copyright; see Bridgeman v. Corel. Scans of images alone do not generate new copyrights—they merely inherit the copyright status of the image they are reproducing. For example, a straight-on photograph of the Mona Lisa is ineligible for copyright.
If you strongly suspect an image is a copyright infringement you should list it for deletion; see Deleting images below. For example, an image with no copyright status on its file page and published elsewhere with a copyright notice should be listed for deletion.
Fair use images
Some usage of copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright holder can qualify as fair use in the United States (but not in most other jurisdictions). However, since Wikipedia aims to be a free-content encyclopedia, not every image that qualifies as fair-use may be appropriate.
Unauthorized use of copyrighted material under an invalid claim of fair use constitutes copyright infringement and is illegal. Media which are mistagged as fair use or are a flagrant copyright violation can be removed on sight. Editors who notice correctable errors in fair use tags or fair use rationales are urged to fix them, if able. Voluntarily fixing such problems is helpful to Wikipedia, though many errors may be impossible to fix. Frequent uploading of non-fair use non-free material can be justification for banning a Wikipedia user.
For details, or to ask questions about a specific instance, please see Wikipedia:Non-free content.
See also:
Deleting images
- Consider contacting the user who uploaded the image, telling them of your concerns. You may be able to resolve the issue at this point.
- Add a deletion notice to the image description page
- If it is an obvious copyright violation: use the {{db-filecopyvio}} tag
- If it falls under certain of the other conditions listed under WP:CSD#Files: use {{subst:nsd}} for files that lack a description of its origin, {{subst:nld}} for files that lack licensing information, {{subst:nsdnld}} for files that lack both of these, {{subst:npd}} for files that have a licensing statement but no evidence that it really applies
- If it is tagged as non-free but obviously fails the non-free content policy in certain ways: use {{subst:orfud}} if it isn't used in any article, {{subst:rfud}} if it is replaceable with a free file, {{subst:nrd}} if it lacks a non-free content rationale, {{subst:dfu}} if the rationale is in some other way obviously insufficient
- In all these cases, the file will be deleted by an administrator after a waiting period of a few days.
- If the file is tagged as freely licensed but you have reasons to suspect this tagging is false: list the file under possible unfree files, by adding the {{puf}} template on the file and then adding a listing to the WP:PUF pages following the instructions in the tag.
- If you think it should be deleted for some other reason: list the file under files for deletion, by adding the {{ffd}} template on the file and then adding a listing to the WP:FFD pages following the instructions in the tag. This process may be used for images that are low quality, obsolete, unencyclopedic, likely to remain unused, or whose use under the non-free content rules is disputed.
- For disputed non-free files, you may alternatively use a listing on the non-free content review page.
- In each case, give proper notification to the uploader, following the instructions in the deletion tag.
To actually delete an image after following the above procedure, you must be an administrator. To do so, go to the image description page and click the (del) or Delete this page links. Administrators can also restore deleted images.
Image titles and file names
Descriptive file names are also useful. A map of Africa could be called "Africa.png", but quite likely more maps of Africa will be useful in Wikipedia, so it is good to be more specific, e.g., "Africa political map.yourinitials.png", or "Africa political map with red borders.png". Check whether there are already maps of Africa in Wikipedia. Then decide whether your map should replace one (in each article that uses it) or be additional. In the first case give it exactly the same name, otherwise a suitable other name. Avoid special characters in filenames or excessively long filenames, though, as that might make it difficult for some users to download the files onto their machines. Note that names are case sensitive, "Africa.PNG" is considered different from "Africa.png". For uniformity, lower case file name extensions are recommended.
You may use the same name in the case of a different image that replaces the old one, and also if you make an improved version of the same image – perhaps a scanned image that you scanned again with a better quality scanner, or you used a better way of reducing the original in scale – then upload it with the same title as the old one. This allows people to easily compare the two images, and avoids the need to delete images or change articles. However, this is not possible if the format is changed, since then at least the extension part of the name has to be changed.
Placement
See Wikipedia:Image markup for recommendations on the best markup to use. For ideas and examples of how to place images, see Wikipedia:Picture tutorial.
Image galleries
- WP:IG
- WP:Galleries
Images are typically interspersed individually throughout an article near the relevant text (see WP:MOSIMAGES). However, the use of a gallery section may be appropriate in some Wikipedia articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. Images in a gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance both to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery, and the gallery should be appropriately titled (unless the theme of the gallery is clear from the context of the article). Images in a gallery should be carefully selected, avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made. Just as we seek to ensure that the prose of an article is clear, precise and engaging, galleries should be similarly well-crafted. See 1750–1795 in fashion for an example of a good use of galleries.
However, Wikipedia is not an image repository. A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved in accordance with the above paragraph or moved to Wikimedia Commons. Links to the Commons categories can be added to the Wikipedia article using the {{Commons}}, {{Commons-inline}}, or {{Commons category}} templates. One rule of thumb to consider: if, due to its content, such a gallery would only lend itself to a title along the lines of "Gallery" or "Images of [insert article title]", as opposed to a more descriptive title, the gallery should either be revamped or moved to the Commons.
Articles consisting entirely or primarily of galleries are discouraged, as the Commons is intended for such collections of images. Note that it is not recommended to use animated GIFs to display multiple photos. The method is not suitable for printing and also is not user friendly (users cannot save individual images and have to wait before being able to view images while other images cycle round).
Fair use images may almost never be included as part of a image gallery, as their status as being "fair use" depends on their proper use in the context of an article (as part of criticism or analysis). See Wikipedia:Fair use for more details.
Collages and montages
- WP:MONTAGE
Collages and montages are single images that illustrate multiple closely related concepts, where overlapping or similar careful placement of component images is necessary to illustrate a point in an encyclopedic way. (See File:Phoebian Explorers 2 PIA06118.jpg for an example montage.) The components of a collages or montage, as well as the collage or montage itself, must be properly licensed; and (as with galleries) fair-use components are rarely appropriate, as each non-free image used in the creation of the montage contributes towards consideration of minimal use of non-free images. If a gallery would serve as well as a collage or montage, the gallery should be preferred, as galleries are easier to maintain and adjust better to user preferences.
Image queuing
Articles may get ugly and difficult to read if there are too many images crammed onto a page with relatively little text. They may even overlap.
For this reason, it is often a good idea to temporarily remove the least-important image from an article and queue it up on the article's talk page. Once there is enough text to support the image, any contributor is free to shift the image back into the article.
If a contributor believes such a queued image to be essential to the article, despite the lack of text, he or she may decide to put it back in. However, he or she should not simply revert the article to its previous state, but make an attempt to re-size the images or create some sort of gallery section in order to deal with the original problem.
It is a good idea to use the <gallery> tag for queued images on the talk page.
It is important that queued images not be lost when archiving of talk pages takes place.
Note: Unfree images (used under the fair use doctrine) should not be moved to talk pages in this fashion. Unfree images are only allowed as long as they are in actual use in an article for encyclopedic purposes. See Wikipedia:Fair use#Policy and Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Images/Media for details.