Commons:What Commons is not

While we can help supply images for one, Wikimedia Commons itself is not an encyclopedia, dictionary, or any sort of written work. Content within these categories should normally go to an appropriate Wikimedia site, such as WikipediaorWiktionary for example.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project Scope: Excluded educational content).

Files on Wikimedia Commons do not necessarily need to comply with Wikipedia policies and guidelines such as neutral point of view and no original research. Wikimedia Commons acts amongst other things as a common media file resource for all Wikimedia projects, and we stand apart from the rules that may be imposed locally by each of those individual projects.

For the policy, see Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view.

Although we do host media and images on Wikimedia Commons, all content must be within our project's scope, which requires, among other things, that all media must be realistically useful for an educational purpose. 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.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project Scope: Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose).

Using Wikimedia Commons solely to chat with your friends, create personal profiles, etc., is outside Wikimedia Commons' scope. User pages created to assist in communication with other users for the advancement of the project are OK.

For the policy, see COM:PSP (Project Scope: User pages, galleries and categories).

As dictated by our scope, content which constitutes advertising or self-promotion may be deleted from Wikimedia Commons.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project scope: Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose). For information about the content of your user page, see COM:PSP (Project scope: Non-allowable user page/gallery/category content).

Due to their educational value for the understanding of certain subjects, Wikimedia Commons may host material that some users may find objectionable, distasteful, or offensive for various reasons. Unless the image has possible personality rights issues, is possibly illegal in the United States, or violates other Wikimedia Commons policy such as our scope, Wikimedia Commons will not censor or remove media that users find objectionable or offensive. However, the statement "Wikimedia Commons is not censored" is not a valid argument for keeping a file that falls outside the normal permitted Wikimedia Commons scope.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project scope: Censorship) and Commons:Nudity.

Low-quality pornographic images that do not contribute anything educationally useful to our existing collection of images are not needed on Wikimedia Commons. As a result, uploaded low-quality photographs of genitalia are generally deleted quickly. Deletion of such photographs should nevertheless follow ordinary deletion procedures. If the quality is bad, we may keep the file if we have no better file on a subject it can illustrate.

For the policy, see COM:PS (Project scope: Censorship) and COM:PS: Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose. The relevant specific official guideline is Commons:Nudity.

Wikimedia Commons respects copyright and licensing restrictions regardless of whether copyright holders care about enforcing them. Uploading non-free media in good faith with excuses such as "the author won't find out", "the author would be glad that we redistributed their work", or similar statements is not how things work on Wikimedia Commons. We take copyright seriously; any image or media with questionable authorship may get nominated for deletion, and media uploaded without proper permission or licensing information may be speedily deleted.

For the policy, see Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle and Commons:Deletion policy.