User talk:Quadell/image deletion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Our image policy on Wikipedia encourages administrators like myself to delete images if they meet certain requirements. I delete a lot of images according to this policy, so I get a lot of questions about it. Here are the most common reasons that a particular image might have been deleted.
- Did the image have a copyright tag? On Wikipedia, all images have to have a valid copyright tag. This lets us know whether you made the image or not, what its copyright status is, etc. Wikipedia:Image copyright tags will tell you all you need to know about these tags. If your image didn't have a copyright tag, just reupload it with a correct tag. I'd be glad to help you with this if need be.
- Was the image "fair-use replaceable"? On Wikipedia, an image is "non-free" if it's copyrighted and not explicitly released under a free license. (Almost all the images you find on the Web are non-free.) We can only use non-free images under a strict set of criteria. The first of these is, if a free image exists or could be created that could replace this image, then we can't use the non-free image. For example, a non-free photo of a living celebrity or a particular model of car would probably be replaceable, since the subject of the photo still exists and could be photographed by a Wikipedian. These images wouldn't be allowed on Wikipedia. However, if the subject is no longer available (because the person depicted is dead, for example), then the image might be allowed.
- Was the image "non-commercial only"? Wikipedia is non-commercial, so it might seem that we can use images that say they are free to use for non-commercial purposes only. But this is not the case. Wikipedia is a "free" encyclopedia, so it's important to us that anyone (even commercial companies) be able to reuse all our content. For this reason, we can only use an image if another website could also use the image, even for commercial purposes.
If this doesn't answer your question, please leave me a note. Be sure to include either the name of the image or the article it was in, so that I can find it easily. Thanks!
