Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons

Type of site	Media repository
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
Created by	Wikimedia community
URL	commons.wikimedia.org
Commercial	No
Registration	Optional (required for uploading files)
Launched	September 7, 2004
Current status	Active
Content license	Free

Wikimedia Commons is a website owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, based on a wiki. Anybody can upload images, sounds, videos, and other multimedia files to the website. The files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons can be used by any other Wikimedia Foundation project, like Wikipedia or Wiktionary. For example, Wikipedia uses images on Wikimedia Commons to include pictures in their encyclopedia articles. The files can also be freely used by anyone else because they have free licenses.

Wikimedia Commons has categories, which are groups of files that have something in common or similar. For example, there is a category for pictures of cats. Wikimedia Commons is a multilingual website, meaning that it can be used in every language. However, some parts of Wikimedia Commons are only in English, like names of categories.

Wikimedia Commons also has sound files. Not all of these are music. For example, there are recordings that read words out loud. These files are used in Wiktionary, a free dictionary, to teach people how to say words.

For every file on Wikimedia Commons, the person who made it has to let everybody use it and change it as much as they want, including companies (see Creative Commons).

Wikimedia Commons reached 10 million files on April 15, 2011.^[1]

1. ↑ "Commons:Press releases/10M". Wikimedia Commons. 16 April 2011. Retrieved 17 April 2011.