English Plain Tipped
How do I legally upload images to Wikipedia’s Commons site and implement them into articles?
I’ve sought the help of Wikipedia’s various style guides and info pages, but it’s a lot of info that I don’t know how to decipher and only leads to more questions.
What are the plain-English requirements for using images on Wikipedia? Where am I most likely to find images eligible for use (ie. Google images, to me, doesn’t seem like it would cut it), besides my own image library?
What info on the image must I provide, and how do I go about making images I find suitable for use if: I can contact the owner? If not?
Any other tips regarding the process that I may have missed would also help!
The image, to be uploaded, must be free. That is, it must be under a free license (the most common are the creative commons licenses, CC-BY and CC-BY-SA are acceptable for Commons), or they must be public domain (mostly these are Very Old pictures, pre-1920). Information that you need to provide are:
* the author
* the license
* some kind of proof to show that the picture is indeed under that license.
If you are the maker of the picture yourself, that’s enough for the third one, otherwise it is usually best to add a link to the page where the picture is shown with the indication of its license.