Help:Contents

From Wikimedia Commons

The Wikimedia Commons (or "Commons") is a repository of free images, sound and other multimedia files. Uploaded files can be used as local files by other projects on the Wikimedia servers, including Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wiktionary.

This pages is an index of all Wikimedia Commons help and maintenance pages. The following articles contain guidance and information about reading, authoring, and participating in the Wikipedia community.

Having trouble finding out what you need to know? If it's not covered by the FAQ, try asking at the Help desk.

General information

MediaWiki

The function of MediaWiki itself (the software of Wikimedia Commons) is described at the MediaWiki User's Guide in Meta-wiki. The MediaWiki-handbook in Meta-wiki is not kept here in order to avoid duplicate maintenance work (the same applies to all help pages not specific to Wikimedia Commons).

If you suspect a software bug, ask for feedback at Village Pump, and then report it using the MediaZilla bug report system. This is the only way to get MediaWiki developers to notice your bug reports.

Other help page collections

As Wikimedia Commons is younger than Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and/or received less attention there are large sets of How To's and other help pages available in those projects and are often also a good additional source finding a helpful How To for your work in Wikimedia Commons:

Download

The database of Wikimedia Commons can be downloaded at http://download.wikimedia.org/commonswiki/. Sadly the available dumps are only the database text. There is currently no dump of the media files available.

Wikimedia Commons help contents