User:Sbmeirow/HowToUploadPhotosToWikipedia

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How To Upload Photos To Wikipedia

by Steve Meirowsky (User:Sbmeirow)

Warning[edit]

Please do not throw rocks at me, since this article is currently located in my user space. I welcome useful edits and constructive input.

Introduction[edit]

This user article provides instructions, guidelines, and tips for uploading photos.

Wikipedia is conceptually split up into "servers" that have different purposes. Each human language has seperate servers, such as all english articles reside on one "server", and all german articles reside on another "server". All of the media (photos, vidoes, ...) are stored on the Wikimedia Commons "server". All language servers refer to media stored on Wikimedia Commons. You aren't uploading photos to Wikipedia, but instead technically uploading to Wikimedia Commons.

Copyright licenses[edit]

All media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons must have the correct copyright license or it will be deleted. It is your responsibility to understand the different types of licenses and how it affect you, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ for more info. The copyright license for all media must be one of the following:

  1. cc-by-sa-2.0
    1. Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons. (prefered and same as Wikipedia)
  2. cc-by-2.0
    1. Attribution Creative Commons.

Creating accounts[edit]

Highly Recommended Tips:

  1. Don't create account names with any spaces in the name.
  2. Make all account names the same or very similar...see below.
  3. Use your real name or subset of it...see below.
  4. Use same name across all Wikipedia servers.

For users that only edit Wikipedia text, they only need to create one account on a specific Wikipedia language "server", such as the Wikipedia English "server".

For users that want to upload photos, they will need an additional Wikimedia Commons account, and possibly a Flickr account if uploading personal photos.

If possible, create ALL accounts with the same name or similar names, for copyright and validation purposes.

  1. Create a Wikipedia account, such as English Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Main_Page
    1. Make user names on Wikipedia and Wikimedia servers the same. This isn't mandatory, but it's silly to make them different.
    2. User names show up in all edit logs, so choose wisely since you will be associated with those logs.
  2. Create a Wikimedia Commons account at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Main_Page
    1. Make user names on Wikipedia and Wikimedia servers the same. This isn't mandatory, but it's silly to make them different.
  3. Create a Yahoo Email account (because Flickr requires it) at https://edit.yahoo.com/registration
    1. Make user names on Yahoo Email and Flickr to be the same or similar, so it is more obvious for copyright reasons.
    2. A good Yahoo account format of "FirstLast" is great for copyright usage, and your email would become "FirstLast@Yahoo.com".
  4. Create a Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/signup/
    1. Flickr will prompt for a Yahoo email address, because Yahoo owns Flickr. For copyright, it is best to use your real first and last name, such as FirstLast@Yahoo.com. Since Yahoo email is free, you can create a new account just for Wikipedia use.

Source - Wikimedia Commons[edit]

How to find existing photos:

  1. Go to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
  2. Type in search field

Source - Photobucket[edit]

You might want to avoid using Photobucket for now. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bad_sources#Photobucket

Source - Flickr[edit]

I use Flickr to host my photos because Wikipedia seems to support the validation of photos and copyright license rights from them better than most other photo hosting sites.

Warning: If you don't own the copyright or rights to use the photo, then DO NOT upload the photo! If someone else created the photo, then likely you don't own the copyright to it, thus you can't use these instructions!

The following instructions describes how to upload a photos that you created, by:

  • you taking a photo with a camera.
  • you creating drawings or graphs using computer software.

1st - Create Accounts[edit]

Create accounts on Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Flickr, Yahoo Email. See #Creating accounts section.

2nd - Login to Accounts[edit]

Login to accounts:

3rd - Flickr Account Settings[edit]

  1. Click on your Flickr account name at the top of the page after the "Signed in as".

Change your Flickr Screen Name setting, for copyright purposes, by doing the following:

  1. Click on "Personal Information" tab.
  2. Find "Your screen name", and click "edit" on right side of it.
  3. Change to your real name.
  4. Click "Save" button.

Change your Flickr default Copyright Licence setting, so future photo uploads will automatically get this setting thus you don't have to change it for each photo, by doing the following:

  1. Click on "Privacy & Permissions" tab.
  2. Find "What license will your content have", and click "edit" on right side of it.
  3. You MUST choose one of the following: (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ for more info)
    1. Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons. (prefered, same as Wikipedia)
    2. Attribution Creative Commons.
  4. Click "Set Default License".

Change your Flickr EXIF import settings, by doing the following:

  1. Click on "Privacy & Permissions" tab.
  2. Find "Hide your EXIF data", and click "edit" on right side of it.
  3. Clear the "YES" field, so it will mean "NO".
  4. Click "Save" button.
  5. Click on "Privacy & Permissions" tab.
  6. Find "Import EXIF location data", and click "edit" on right side of it.
  7. Choose "YES".
  8. Click "Save" button.

4th - Upload Photo To Flickr[edit]

  1. On a free Flickr account, you can have up to 200 photos in your account.
  2. Upload photo. If you don't own the copyright or rights to use the photo, then DO NOT upload the photo!
  3. Edit title / description / tags for photo.
  4. Validate / change copyright license of photo. Wikimedia and Wikipedia requires all photos to be freely licensed, thus the copyright owner has to release the file under an irrevocable licence which: 1) Permits free reuse for any purpose (including commercial). 2) Permits the creation of derivative works.
    The photo MUST have one of the following licenses or it will be deleted by Wikimedia.
    1. Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons. (prefered, same as Wikipedia)
    2. Attribution Creative Commons.
  5. Wait until Wikimedia bots and scripts have access to your photos. To slow down spammers and vandalism, Flickr has a 5-day wait between the time you create a Flickr account until Wikimedia bots and scripts are allowed to pull information from your Flickr photos. You can use these 5 days to refine the title / description / tags for all your photos.

5th - Upload Photo To Wikimedia[edit]

  1. Prepare photo for uploading.
    1. Find the file of the photo that you uploaded to Flickr. This photo must be the exact same file that was originally uploaded to Flickr.
    2. Duplicate the photo on your local computer, and rename the duplicate file to the file name that you want to upload to Wikimedia. This is the same as file name that will be used in Wikimedia and Wikipedia to display the photo in an article. I always make the file name match the Flickr Title field of the photo. Ensure the file name is descriptive and possibly include the photography date by adding YYYYMMDD to the end of the file name. If a file already exists in Wikimedia with the same file name, you will be forced to change it.
  2. Get photo info from Flickr using Flinfo tool:
    1. View the photo in Flickr by clicking on it and viewing just the one photo on a page by itself.
    2. Wait at least 5 days after you create your Flickr account (see above).
    3. Open Flinfo at http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/flinfo.php so it can extract the photo information from Flickr and convert it into a format the Wikimedia Upload Form requires.
    4. Copy the URL of the viewed photo on Flickr.
    5. Paste the URL into Flinfo.
    6. Click "Get Info" button on Flinfo.
    7. If it gives an error, then your provided the wrong URL or you haven't waited 5-days after the Flickr account creation.
    8. Keep this output result web page open, because you will need to copy the text during the upload of the photo to Wikimedia.
  3. Upload photo to Wikimedia:
    1. Go to this Upload Form page. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&uploadformstyle=basic
    2. Click on "Browse" button to choose the above "renamed" file on your local computer.
    3. Copy the output text from the Flinfo web page (see above).
    4. Paste text into "Body of article for photo" field.
    5. Examine pasted text to ensure all the fields look correct.
    6. Verify int:license-header section has one of the following licenses (if not, then you need to change the license for the photo in Flickr, and repeat previous steps, otherwise Wikimedia will delete your photo) (do not edit this text without changing the Flickr licence, because the Wikimedia bot will compare the licenses):
      1. cc-by-2.0
      2. cc-by-sa-2.0
    7. Edit the category field.
    8. Click "Upload File" photo.
    9. The photo is now ready to be used on Wikipedia!

Example of Body Of Article for photo[edit]

The article body for http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:City_Hall_in_Peabody,_Kansas.jpg is the following: (this photo appears in Peabody, Kansas article) 

{{Information
|Description=City Hall, 300 N Walnut St, [[:en:Peabody, Kansas|Peabody, Kansas]], 666866 [[:en:United States|USA]].
 Built in 1886. Looking towards NNE. Photo by [[:en:User:Sbmeirow|Steve Meirowsky]] on August 4, 2010.
|Source=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevemeirowsky/5106973483/ City Hall in Peabody, Kansas]
|Date=2010-10-28
|Author=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevemeirowsky/ Steve Meirowsky]
|Permission=
|other_versions=
}}

=={{int:license-header}}==
{{cc-by-3.0}}

[[Category:Peabody, Kansas]]
[[Category:Marion County, Kansas]]

Fields:

  • Description = Description of the photo, author name, and date photo was taken by you. Give a verbose factual description!
  • Source = URL of the photo on Flickr, and title of photo on Flickr, in square brackets.
  • Date = Date that you are uploading the photo to Wikimedia Commons, in YYYY-MM-DD format.
  • Author = URL of your Flickr home page, and your real name, in square brackets.
  • Permission = ?
  • other_versions = ?
  • license-header = See license for more information about this field.
  • Category = One or more photo categories in Wikimedia Commons. If you don't know the name of a category, then find similar photos on Wikimedia, and copy the categories for those photos.

How to change license for single photo[edit]

To change the Flickr licence for a single photo, do the following:

  1. Login to Flickr account.
  2. Choose one of your photos.
  3. Look for "Owner settings" on web page.
  4. Click "edit" to the right of "Attribution".
  5. You MUST choose one of the following: (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ for more info)
    1. Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons. (prefered, same as Wikipedia)
    2. Attribution Creative Commons.
  6. Click "SAVE".

Flickr links[edit]

Source - U.S. Census Bureau[edit]

You can aquire a semi-detailed map of any city in the USA from the 'census.gov' web site. These maps are useful for adding to Wikipedia city articles, such as Peabody, Kansas.

1st - Create Accounts[edit]

Create accounts on Wikipedia and Wikimedia servers. See #Creating accounts section.

2nd - Login to Accounts[edit]

Login to accounts:

3rd - Get Map From Census Bureau[edit]

  1. Open Fact Finder at http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en
  2. Under "Get a Fact Sheet for your community", type the City, select the State, press the GO button.
  3. On the next page, click on the "Reference Map" link on the upper-right area.
  4. On the next page, save the map to a GIF file on your local computer.
    1. For Windows, right-click the map drawing, then choose either "Save Picture As..." or "Save Target As...".
  5. Before you close the map drawing web page, you will need to copy the URL of this page as information when you upload to it to wikipedia.
  6. refine the following text into the above steps <<<<<<
The file name is critical, since it will be used by Wikimedia Commons during your upload.
I name the file names for my city maps in this format (because another user already started using this format): Detailed map of City, State.gif
If you plan to process a lot of maps, then you should create an easy to understand directory structure.
Since I work on a county-by-county basis, I store my files in this directory structure: \Census\State\County\
For example: \Census\Kansas\Marion\Detailed map of Peabody, Kansas.gif
For people who are working on all cities in the state at the same time, then you might want to skip the county directory branching.

4th - Upload Map To Wikimedia[edit]

  1. Log into Wikimedia Commons at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Main_Page
  2. Use the basic upload form at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&uploadformstyle=basic
  3. In the "Source File" section, click the "Browse" button. Your browser will pop-up a file browser box so you can find the file on your computer that you want to upload.
  4. In the "File description" section, validate the "Destination filename". WARNING: This will be the name of the picture on Wikimedia Commons, so ensure the spelling and white spaces are correct. The whitespaces show up as underscores. If the spelling is wrong, then rename the file on your computer, and go back to the previous step to choose the new file name.
  5. Copy the body of article text below and paste over the "Summary" area in the "File description" section.
  6. Edit the "Summary" area to match the description of the source file that you are uploading.
  7. Describe exactly what needs to be changed in the Summary box! <<<<<
  8. add more here <<<<<

Example Body Of Article for map[edit]

The article body for http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detailed_map_of_Peabody,_Kansas.gif is the following: 

{{Information
|Description={{en|1=Detailed map of {{w|Peabody, Kansas}}}}
|Source=http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/MapItDrawServlet?geo_id=16000US2055100&_bucket_id=50&tree_id=420&context=saff&_lang=en&_sse=on
, from http://factfinder.census.gov
|Author={{w|United States Census Bureau}}
|Date=Unknown; downloaded 8 September 2010
|Permission={{PD-USGov-DOC-Census}}
|other_versions=
}}

[[Category:Peabody, Kansas]]
[[Category:Marion County, Kansas]]
[[Category:Cities in Kansas]]

Every map should have a minimum of 2 categories: one for the city, and another for the county.

Misc[edit]

Note: This section needs to be expanded and refined.

How to add categories to photos[edit]

For cities in USA, add using the following example. 

[[Category:Peabody, Kansas]]
[[Category:Marion County, Kansas]]
[[Category:Cities in Kansas]]

How to add link to Commons in a Wikipedia article[edit]

At the top of the "External links" section, add using the following examples. 

{{Commons category|Locomotives}}

For cities in USA, add using the following example, and add the state portal after it. 

{{Commons category|Peabody, Kansas}}
{{Portal box|Kansas}}

To Do[edit]

  • Expand all instructions.
  • Describe which link to pick on the upload screen...if you don't use my supplied link.
  • Change color and add warning symbol about how "the file name is critical" on your computer before uploading!
  • Try out Upload Wizard and document.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons
Photo Tips

Warnings[edit]

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