Commons:Policies and guidelines

Shortcuts: COM:POL • COM:PG

Wikimedia Commons has several policies and guidelines that help its users pursue the goal of creating a freely licensed media file repository.

Policies

General policy

• General disclaimer
• Privacy policy
• Project scope
  • Allowable file types
  • Evidence
  • Neutral point of view
  • Precautionary principle
  • Pages, galleries and categories
• Use of gender neutral language

Regarding content

• Licensing policy
  • De minimis
  • Fair use
  • When to use the PD-Art tag
• Deletion policy
• Revision deletion
• Criteria for speedy deletion
• Language policy
• Category policy

Regarding behaviour

• Blocking policy
• Page protection
• De-adminship
• Paid contribution disclosure
• Translation administrators
• Signatures
• Username policy

Guidelines

Regarding content

• What Commons is not
• Non-copyright restrictions
• Fan art
• Nudity
• Photographs of identifiable people
• Derivative works
• When to use the PD-scan tag
• Galleries
• Using ImageAnnotator
• File renaming
• Overwriting existing files
• Grandfathered old files

Regarding behaviour

• Assume good faith
• Ownership of pages and files
• Talk page guidelines
• User-specific galleries, templates and categories policy
• Vandalism
• Rollback
• Patrol