Images are one of the many types of media used on Wikipedia and may be photos, drawings, logos, or graphs.

All pictures used must be legal in the United States, where Wikimedia's servers are located. Images are stored on the Wikipedia website or the partner Wikimedia Commons website. All free content is stored on "Commons" and images that have more onerous copyright restrictions are stored on Wikipedia, under a fair use rationale. Also, images that are used on the Main Page have a local version to prevent vandalism from appearing. Editors can also choose to have a local version stored on Wikipedia.

Images are classified as files and use the prefix of File: or the deprecated prefix of Image:. The File namespace is one of several namespaces used on Wikipedia.

Since Wikipedia is not censored, readers and editors may come across offensive images.

Policy and guidelines edit

Tutorials and help edit

Image/picture tutorials edit

Graphics tutorials edit

Help edit

Maintenance edit

Page count of image related maintenance categories
Category Number
September
2012
June
2024
Category:Articles with missing files 7,265 9
Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons 7,872 410
Category:Wikipedia files lacking a description 4,911 140
Category:Images with inappropriate JPEG compression 1,842 2,439
Category:Images which should be in PNG format 445 224
Category:Images with watermarks 238 69
Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests 1,027 4
Category:Wikipedia files that transclude the Non-free media rationale template with no Purpose specified 432 0
Category:Wikipedia files that transclude the Non-free use rationale template with no Purpose specified n/a 93
Category:Publicity photographs with missing fair-use rationale 197 43
Category:Wikipedia files with disputed copyright information 1,199 507

Files by type edit

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp
 
The first Wikipedia logo

Featured pictures edit

Wikipedia:Featured pictures is a repository of images that have satisfied the Featured picture criteria and are used on the Main Page.

Picture of the day edit

Wikipedia:Picture of the day is an image which is automatically updated each day with an image from the list of featured pictures. The {{POTD}} template produces the image shown above. Category:Wikipedia Picture of the day lists the different templates that can be used.

Wikipedia logos edit

The current and now iconic Wikipedia logo is the third in a series of three.

See also edit

Essays