Commons is not Wikipedia

The relevant policy is COM:NPOV.

I have removed the following:

"However, some policies and guidelines do have indirect relevance on Commons though. For example, while Commons is not subject directly to the Biographies of Living Persons policy, the Photographs of identifiable people guideline follows in the spirit of the BLP policy, setting down requirements and guidance for images of living persons".

COM:PEOPLE is quite independent of the Biographies of Living Persons on the English Wikipedia, and to suggest even indirect relevance is misleading in my view: our policies stand alone and are quite independent of any English Wikipedia policies. The Biographies of Living Persons is no more relevant to us than, say, the equivalent policy on the German Wikipedia, or the French or the Italian. Singling out one is en.W and English-language centric, and is unfair on all the others. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 06:25, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Advertising

Probably should also have something about it not being intended for free advertising of you services as a photographer or of your other business, but with some indication of what is permissible (presumably, for example, indication that you are open to licensing your work, or photos of your business that are released under appropriate license and might serve encyclopedic or other educational purposes). - Jmabel ! talk 22:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

• See COM:NOT#Commons is not a place to advertize your company. The bit about what is permissible can be found via the link to the scope page. If COM:NOT includes everything permissible and well as not permissible the page will be exactly the same as COM:PS.--MichaelMaggs (talk) 06:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• And yet there seem to be people who seem to believe all photos uploaded with an intent to promote a business or product should be deleted, regardless of their educational value. See Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Marketing M Lhuillier. Is there any need to affirmatively state that files that are uploaded with promotional intent but are within this site's educational scope should not be deleted? A penny for your thoughts, MichaelMaggs, Jmabel, JWilz12345 and everyone else. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:57, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

• Also inviting comments from El Grafo and Tacsipacsi, who participated in the Commons talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Limits to G10: advertising thread. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:01, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Ikan Kekek: for you all three files I nominated at Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Marketing M Lhuillier may be in scope, but for me they are just for self-advertising purposes. The evidences are there: the username of the uploader that suggests they are here to promote their organization (which is a branch of a major money transfer firm here in the Philippines), the uploader's lack of other files that are distinct from the three files, and the promotionary names. IMO, files that are seemingly-useful but are uploaded by an organization or any other entity with the pure intent of self-promotion must be considered as out of COM:SCOPE. Authorship issues can be also taken into account but that is out of this thread. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 19:22, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

• How can photos of a building be out of scope? Filenames can be changed, and the intent of the uploader is irrelevant to the usefulness of the photos. Do I have to start a thread on Commons talk:Project scope now? -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:12, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

• Done, and I hope that's the last thread I'll have to run to to get clarification on when files uploaded with the intent to advertise or promote can be retained as educationally useful. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:23, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

  We need to renew discussion of what constitutes advertising. User:Yousiphh is using the following language (the bolded phrase, my bolding) to call all kinds of portrait photos of people he considers non-notable to be "advert"s: "content which constitutes advertising or self-promotion may be deleted from Wikimedia Commons." He includes photos like File:Sadir Surxay oğlu Məmmədov.jpg (see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sadir Surxay oğlu Məmmədov.jpg), File:Rövşən Eyyubov Su Nəqliyyatında Polis İdarəsi.jpg (see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Rövşən Eyyubov Su Nəqliyyatında Polis İdarəsi.jpg), File:Ötərxan Eltac və Sultan Hümbətov.jpg (see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ötərxan Eltac və Sultan Hümbətov.jpg, File:Gənc yaşlarinda.jpg and File:Sabir Kərimov və Zakir Kərimov.jpg (see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sabir Kərimov və Zakir Kərimov.jpg). User:Grunpfnul tried to get File:Live footage.jpg, a photo of a band recording, speedily deleted as "advertising", and even worse, tried to speedy this photo of books that is COM:INUSE on 2 Wikipedias and Wikidata, on the basis that it's an "advert."

  I think that we should make clearer that photos of non-notable people may or may not be out of scope but that photos of people, bands and products such as pictures of book covers presumably uploaded by a notable artist who probably created the cover art are not automatically out of scope as "advert"s, and if there's a way to make clearer to deletion requesters that photos COM:INUSE are not deletable as "advert"s, that would be great. I realize a lot of Commoners don't really care what reason is given to delete an image they consider out of scope, but calling what look like ordinary portrait photos "advert"s gives rise to a lot of unnecessary debate and confusion, so everyone should want to make things clearer in order to save time, if for no other reason.

  To sum up: images used for publicity that are not COM:INUSE, are obviously uploaded purely to advertise (that is, in a way that's obvious to most any viewer, not just someone who has an opinion about whether a person is notable or not), and are not of educational value (as some ads are, like ads on the sides of buildings, billboards and so forth, not to mention logos of notable companies and organizations when images of them can be hosted here), they should be deleted per the advert policy. That's something probably all Commoners except those here just to advertise would agree on and understand. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:11, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

  The Context of the Deletionrequest for Live Footage was, that the whole Uploads of the User only existed of Uploads from this Band (~1000 Follower Instagram). Must have been 3 Files in Sum, with no further use.

  The History of the Books-File has a same Setting, just with the Difference: This one File is in use (and I haven't noticed, my Mistake). I'm not further interested in Discussions on Commons at all, but maybe we should overthink the Handling of such Cases at all and distance from the „keep it under all Circumstances if the File is in use“. Many seem to create an Use for Files, to get them in Safety - useful or not for the Projectscope.

  Commons is full of Files with an Background of Advertising and much more of Copyvios.

  Just my two Cents and i'm out of the Discussion, thanks Grunpfnul (talk) 04:32, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

  We should rethink whether photos of books by an artist who has 2 Wikipedia articles about her should be kept because they're in use? Not a very strong argument. A stronger argument would be that, absent copyright problems, they should be kept because there are 2 Wikipedia articles about her, regardless of whether they photos in use or not.

  In case my point of view needs clarifying: I don't support keeping pure advertising that has no other possible use on this site, still less keeping images here in violation of copyright, which is the most obvious no-no and absolutely essential deletion reason. However, lumping slews of images of people, products or logos - some of them in use or arguably usable - into a category of "advert"s that therefore should ipso facto be deleted en masse would not be a good policy, nor do photos have to be purely advertising to be out of scope and therefore deletable. Finally, though, you should be careful not to tag images for speedy deletion when the question is how notable a band or individual is. That can be dealt with very effectively in a normal deletion request, but that type of photo isn't per se off topic and is therefore discussable. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:15, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Approval?

Is there consensus to officially mark this as a content guideline? ViperSnake151 (talk) 13:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

•  Support I think this is a good idea. -Nard the Bard 19:34, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
•  Question While I agree with this content, I'm wondering if we need this? It seems to repeat the information one can find in Commons:Project scope. --The Evil IP address (talk) 20:54, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

In a way, it kinda does. But at the same time, it does so by aggregating information about most of our core policies/guidelines onto one page. ViperSnake151 (talk) 19:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

•  Support, as I can't see any reason to object. While I understand The Evil IP address's concern about redundancy, I think a page like this may serve a useful function as a pithy summary to point to in discussions. (And I do think the lead section should make it clear that this is a summary of existing policies.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:34, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
•  Support. --Túrelio (talk) 22:38, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
• Guideline? maybe. Link it from Commons:Project scope, for example. Official policy in it's own right?  Oppose as redundant... if scope isn't clear enough, modify that. ++Lar: t/c 14:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
• Correction to my support vote, I agree that this would be better off as a guideline and is redundant to existing policy. -Nard the Bard 02:33, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
• What guideline were you all discussing in 2009? You didn't clearly indicate that, unless it was #Commons is not Wikipedia and the #Advertising section was interposed between that section and this one. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:24, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

  It looks like they were discussing this page as a whole, which, until 6 April 2010, was labelled as a proposed guideline. Brianjd (talk) 10:08, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

  Cool, thanks for explaining. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:10, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Commons is Not a Stupid or Bad Idea

I think the Wikipedia NOT STUPID policy should be adapted and used here (W:WP:BADIDEA or W:WP:NOTSTUPID). Proposed adapted text is as follows:

Porn

I have removed the phrase "amateur" opting instead for Commons is not a ponography site. THe way it was previously phrased, it seems that "professional" pornography is allowed; only amateur porn is not. --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 09:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

The distinction between amateur and professional porn is valid. Bear in mind that COM:SCOPE prohibits "private party photos, photos of yourself and your friends, your collection of holiday snaps and so on..." Whether you and your friends happen to be clothed for this private party is quite irrelevant. If you're just taking snapshots with no particular art or purpose to them, it's not really what Commons is looking for. But a professional photographer or artist producing skillful images should always be encouraged to contribute, even if his work is frowned upon in many quarters as mere pornography. Wnt (talk) 07:15, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

COM:PORN

I clarified that "quick" deletions are not related to "Speedy deletions", as I understand from the debate about COM:SEX. If speedy deletions of low quality porn are allowed, it has to be phrased more clearly, and as a reason to speedy deletions in Commons:Deletion policy. --LPfi (talk) 14:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I object. Firstly, COM:SEX is currently not policy but just a debate about a possible policy or guideline. Secondly, the reasons for speedy deletions at COM:DEL are not exhaustive. Otherwise we wouldn't have {{Speedydelete}}. COM:PORN was understood as possible cause for speedy deletions in the past and a change of this practice requires consensus. Many of these uploads are not just of abysmal quality but raise also concerns if the photographed subject is minor of if the photograph was taken without consent and is possibly used as an attack against the depicted person. I do not think that it is helpful to insist that such cases cannot be speedied. --AFBorchert (talk) 18:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Then this should be written clearly in the deletion policy. The COM:SEX debate showed that many people here did not know that speedy deletions based on scope might be allowed. The deletion policy gives no hint that the reason lists are not exhaustive ({{Speedydelete}} is needed because not everybody is an administrator and for cases where an administrator is unsure).

I do not like the situation that the policies say one thing, but "it is understood" that something else is accepted practice. Either the practice is written down and gets accepted, as it is the established consensus, or we seem not to have consensus.

I also understand the legal concerns, but then illegality should be one of the explicitly accepted reasons for speedy deletions. And an image being pornographic is irrelevant if the reason for deletion is illegality, so those cases can be ignored here, unless one wants to write something especially about child pornography or consent.

--LPfi (talk) 21:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Commons is not Wikipedia - part II

As we can read:

Files on Commons do not necessarily need to comply with Wikipedia policies and guidelines such as neutral point of view and no original research.

I suggest to strike at least the last: no original research (NOR). Impo, it contradicts the idea of "source" and common sense:

• If you upload a picture of a dog, you cannot claim it is a cat
• if you upload a picture of the golden gate bridge, you cannot state it was build by the Romans
• if you upload a picture of an enzyme structure, you have to show where you have taken the data from
• if you upload the a diagram of whatsoever, it has it's origin in one or many publications.

As far as I know (and all uploaded pictures shows that) we have "reproductions" of given things, either direct (photographs) or indirect (simplified or extended versions of existing images). Hence, why do we need to stress that commons should not comply with NOR? Which pictures are here that donna need to comply with NOR? Moreover, this statement would imply that everyone can upload fakes - but for what? --Yikrazuul (talk) 17:47, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

PS: If noone has something against my proposal, I will move on in deleting this passage. --Yikrazuul (talk) 19:42, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Please don't. This is not thought out very well. It should be obvious that descriptions of media files should be accurate, thus the first two examples are pretty pointless. The third example is already covered by the requirement to state the source of an image. The fourth example is nonsense. Commons hosts files for many more Wikimedia projects than just Wikipedia. If someone wants to make a graph about anything that may be useful to any such project the requirement of it being published anywhere would get in teh way of that. This is unreasonable. One example. --Dschwen (talk) 20:38, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

You example picture shows that specific data are used for this diagram. So those data are not imaginary, it is not a fake. --Yikrazuul (talk) 20:47, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Your understanding of en:Original research (bzw. für dich auch de:Originäre Forschung) is strange. Research is not about labeling something wrong or withhould sources. But if someone wants to upload his Ph.D.-Thesis because it is useful in a Wikiversity-article then he is welcome to do that. --Isderion (talk) 21:28, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Please don't change it. Per Isderoion + DSchwen. --99of9 (talk) 09:31, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Tightening of the wording of COM:PORN

Apparently, the use of the word "may" is a weasel point. So I propose that we change the wording of the first sentence to the following:

Low-quality pornographic images that do not contribute anything educationally useful to our existing collection of images are not welcome on the Commons.

—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:56, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I would set pornographic in brackets to show that also other low-quality images of any kind are also not needed:

Low-quality (pornographic) images that do not contribute anything educationally useful to our existing collection of images are not needed on the Commons.

—--Yikrazuul (talk) 17:06, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

But this solely refers to photographs of the genitalia and sexual acts. I'm just proposing that the word "may" be eliminated.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't see anything objectionable in the proposed change, but I don't see why it's necessary to distinguish pornographic images from others? If an image is low quality and "doesn't add anything educationally useful to our existing collction" it is by definition useless to us, regardless of the subject? Thryduulf (talk) 18:01, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm proposing we change the wording of what encompasses our "Don't upload your blurry self-taken genital photos". While it may be important to say that all low quality images are not wanted, this particular part of this policy which has existed already does so towards pornographic images.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

'Commons is not an amateur porn site'

Well, that's a lie for a start (or at best, wishful thinking, like 'Wikipedia is not a battleground'). Whatever else Commons may be, it definitely is an amateur porn site, and it's obvious that plenty of people use it for exactly that purpose (). Perhaps it's time we stopped pretending otherwise, and just renamed it to PornoPedia. Robofish (talk) 19:28, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

(i) it's not a "Pedia" of any kind, it's a media repository. (ii) the percentage of sexual content is actually not that high. The problem is that what there is too often appears where it's not expected (and also that much of it is of dubious COM:PANTS-violating quality). Bugzilla:35701 (Clustering for image searches) would help a lot. Rd232 (talk) 21:55, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

minor text-revision for clarity & style

recently, i made some minor text-revisions to a section on this page, to improve clarity, grammar, & style. the revisions do not significantly change the content of the statement.

however, i am currently involved in a "grudge match" with user:yikrazul, which involves fighting out several deletion requests & his reverting ANY changes i have made to any "rules" pages on commons, regardless of merits, regardless of how minor they are, & regardless of the quality of the writing & grammar in the original or in my revisions. the user has also demonstrated, by their comments, certain limitations in their abilities in english, which is apparently not their first language, but vituperatively insists that the "grammer" is fine & anything i do is without merit, "wierd", "POV", & deserves immediate reversal, that it requires opening a dialogue on the talk page no matter how slight the text-revision.

so fine, i am opening a dialogue on the talk page to discuss a text revision as follows:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AWhat_Commons_is_not&diff=73927690&oldid=73922606

the changes are purely for clarity, grammar, & writing style. it does not alter the substance of the "rule"

does anyone else BUT user:yikrazul object? i phrase the question this way, because yik has made his opinion abundantly clear.

to yikrazul i ask the following: please explain the reasons for your objection?

Lx 121 (talk) 16:44, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I personally prefer the improvements in style, grammar etc by Lx 121. (The only thing I do not like to see are edit wars. I recommend to follow the traditional be bold, revert, discuss cycle instead). --AFBorchert (talk) 17:30, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

That this is not only a grammer issue is quite clear, e.g. Lx121 starts with

Adding low-quality

which changes the content: "adding" means only new uploaded pictures, not the ones we have. There are also other quite POV showing changes: benefit vs. need, "shortage of files", "newly-uploaded" and so on. So what Lx121 tries to do here is a change of content, but not a change of grammer. Hence I do not agree on those "grammer" changes. --Yikrazuul (talk) 18:11, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

COM:NOT addresses first and foremost new contributors who are going to upload new files. As COM:SCOPE elaborates positively what is in our project scope, COM:NOT summarizes what we do not want to be added to Commons. Hence, I find Lx 121's wording better as it focuses on the intended readership. --AFBorchert (talk) 18:51, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

No, that is not true, or u have to show that respectively. First of all: what means "first" or "foremost" new contributions (7 days, 1 month, 12 months)? Where is that defined? 2) Similar to copyvios, there is for scope not a fail safe date. If someone does not recognize an uploaded which is out of scope, a deletion discussion can start anyway and criteria of speedydeletion also can apply. Lx's wording clearly takes influence in a direction I cannot accept. --Yikrazuul (talk) 15:36, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

If there is no clear or commonly known evidence that the written synopses of what is already there eg pictures or official files leave it alone unless very poorly translated. Or due for revision. M1ckm (talk) 06:08, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Add instructions for dealing with offending material

What are we to do when we stumble upon uploaded content that goes against these statements? Please add simple instructions. Palosirkka (talk) 11:25, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Porn on Wikipedia

"Commons is not an amateur porn site"

Does it REALLY matter whether porn is amateur or "professional"? Unless it is for educational purposes, it shouldn't be on Wikipedia. 69.125.134.86 23:12, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Of course, Commons is also not a professional porn site. The "porn site rule" is thoughtless. If nobody improves this rule it should be removed. See below. --Kafka-kun (talk) 05:29, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, the rule "Wikimedia Commons is not an amateur porn site" is thoughtless and pointless. This is obvious. You also don't need to justify the deletion of "low-quality photographs of genitalia" to the uploaders. I suggest removing this rule. --Kafka-kun (talk) 05:33, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

I suppose we might still need to say something, but I agree the current wording is bad. I haven't been cleaning up porn or studied the categories too deep, but I am worried that the rule is used to delete educationally useful media that is not porn. And of course we want to document porn also, and amateur porn as well as professional.

The nudity and sexuality related categories have been made such a maze, that when I need some image from them, it is an hour's work. Category:Nude or partially nude green-colored people, Category:Nude or partially nude people sucking, Category:Nude or partially nude females with hands in hair‎ ... No chance to find images without traversing a dozen subcategories. And in that bottom level category we have (which is typical) [[Masturbation on stage...jpg]] as well as Magdalena penitente.

It seems we are not trying to make any of those images easy to find. For an educational purpose, I am seldom interested in the position of the subjects arm. Still, if we are trying to hide nude images, to have a nude posing model in August 2009 in Brandenburg seems strange (I suppose she is posing also other months, and indoors, it being August is not easy to see).

As a result of this organised disorganisation, I really don't know how much on the theme we are lacking and how much just is hidden away somewhere. I know that more than once, when I have wanted normal everyday people, I mostly just find porn actresses. It might be non-professionals are less likely to submit such images, but I suppose amateur images are also more likely to be deleted. Even something like Anterior view of human male is very difficult to find, unless you know there is such a photo, or know the name of the pose and suspect it might be categorized by that aspect.

[end of rant] –LPfi (talk) 22:54, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

@Kafka-kun No, it's not obvious and that rule shouldn't just be kept, I think it should be amended.

The IP raised a good point and WM Commons does host a lot of professional porn. I don't care about it being on Commons (maybe one could make a theoretical argument with some degree of "realistically" about such showing diverse genitalia or diversity of genitalia and nude people as well as porn as a type of human endeavor and so on).

However, I do suggest that such isn't displayed in categories to which these are irrelevant, not expected, not searched at, distracting, and possibly at least theoretically useful to the reader such as categories about a specific food or a children's game. I made a policy-proposal for codifying that such media is only categorized into "Nude or partially nude"-type categories here. There's a lot of discussion about search filters there too but that would be a separate thing. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

"Commons is not censored" canonical location

COM:NOT has a subsection "Wikimedia Commons is not censored", which is the target of the shortcut COM:NOTCENSORED.

On the other hand, we also have a "Censorship" subsection in COM:SCOPE, which is the target of shortcuts COM:CENSOR, COM:CENSORSHIP, COM:OMGAPENIS, and COM:Commons is not censored.

The content of the two sections is pretty similar, with the latter being somewhat longer and incorporating other prongs of COM:NOT.

May I suggest we streamline our P&G so that this information is covered in just one place? I think the logical place for it to live would be COM:NOT. Perhaps the content at COM:SCOPE#Censorship could be reworked to instead be a broader outline of COM:NOT and how it interacts with COM:SCOPE? Colin M (talk) 17:34, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Proposed addition

Regarding the sentence: "Unless your images are educationally useful and in the scope of this project, Wikimedia Commons is not a place to store your vacation photo collection"; I proposed this be expanded to include: "or your fantasy flag proposals". Alternatively, a similar wording could be added elsewhere on the page. GPinkerton (talk) 13:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Was about to post something similar. not a place to store your vacation photo collection is too flippant and specific, and a user who's been pointed here may feel justified in deciding that this doesn't actully apply to them, or insulted that we are equating some seriously-minded personal project with vacation photos. Belbury (talk) 19:04, 15 April 2025 (UTC)