Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons (frequently been brief as Wikicommons or simply Commons) is a project of created Wikimedia the 7 of September of 2004, whose target is to serve like warehouse as archives as images and other formats multimedia for the rest as the projects as the foundation. All the archives must be released under free licenses (like the GFDL) or in the public domain, at the moment it has 2.544.871 images.

One is based on wiki formed of such form that the archives contained there are available in all the others wikis of the projects of Wikimedia of transparent way. This allows a centralized management of this type of archives in all the versions of Wikipedia, Wikilibros, etc.

It is possible to publish the pages of Commons without previous registry, but it is necessary to register itself to raise images.

History

Before Commons, an important duplication of efforts between the projects of Wikimedia existed, as well as in the versions in different languages from them. So that a file that existed in wiki could be used in others, it had again to be raised each of them.

In March of 2004, the user Erik Möller proposes the creation of repositorio centralized of archives multimedia, that would be baptized like “Wikimedia Commons” and launched the 7 of September of the same year. At the end of October, a modification of the software realized by he himself allowed for the first time that the archives of Commons could directly be used in the others wikis, without needing separately raising them each of them. In November the logo of the project was chosen, builds of the user Reid Beels, had originally created who it for Wikinoticias, having rejected.

The 30 of November of 2006 were reached million files stored.

Policies

Wikimedia Commons allows archives under “to fair uses”, neither free licenses that are not free, nor licenses that do not allow to the commercial use or the derived work creation (thus, not admit the variants “NonCommercial” or “NoDerivs” of Creative Commons). Archives in the public domain or released under licenses like the GFDL or Creative Commons are admitted solely “Attribution” and “ShareAlike”. This makes that the majority of wikis still allows the local ascent of archives, to thus be able to raise material that the policies of those projects admit, but that they violate the norms on licenses of Commons.

Since the main intention of Commons is to serve as support to the rest of wikis of Wikimedia, it is demanded that the archives have a potential utility for the other projects. Thus, purely personal photographies and other works are not admitted, on the contrary that in repositorios like Flickr. In spite of it, many of the archives lodged in Commons not yet have been used in no other place, and perhaps they do never it, since there is multitude of subjects on which there are many more images than those than they need the other projects. This causes that, for example, he is something frequents that in an article of Wikipedia the galleries of Commons connect on the same subject as forms to facilitate complementary material.

It is also seen

• Aid: Images

External Links

• Wikimedia Commons lodges content multimedia on Wikimedia Commons.Commons

The news Articles in Wikinoticias: Wikimedia Commons chooses the image of year 2007

• Cover of Wikicommons in Spanish