Images on Wikipedia

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Fair use. (Discuss)

Information on this page may not reflect the recently-passed Licensing policy Resolution.

This is an effort to provide an overview of the image policies on the different Wikipedias. The page should be a help for those thinking of uploading an image from a Wikipedia to Commons or another language Wikipedia. Under construction, please help by adding your Wikipedia.

Language	Link	General	Fair use	NC/Permission	Deletion process	local/commons
Arabic	سياسة استعمال الصور		Allowed if there is no free alternative	Not allowed		both
Bulgarian			Not allowed	Not allowed	Backlog of ~12600 images (unfree for deletion and free for transfer).	both
English	Non-free content criteria		Allowed under narrowly defined criteria, including the possibility of creating a freely licensed image, respect for commercial opportunities, and if the image will "significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic." Images must also have a rationale declaring compliance with the requirements.	Not allowed, except as fair use	An image will be speedily deleted in 48 hours if it does not comply with the criteria.	both
German	Bildrechte		Not allowed			both
French	Règles d'utilisation des images		Forbidden: first debate and vote in September 2005 which led to no decision (=Fair-use still tolerated), second debate and vote in October 2006 which led to the interdiction with 4 exceptions (see vote for the exceptions in December 2006) : Logos and Coats of arms, Money and Stamps	Not allowed	Usually takes 1 or 2 weeks, see link	both
Polish			Not allowed			both
Japanese						both
Italian	Copyright immagini		Forbidden: debate and vote in March 2006 which led to the interdiction with 4 exceptions: coats of arms, flags, money and stamps	Allowed if there is no free alternative (restrictions)	1 week for unsourced/unlicensed/orphaned images	both
Swedish	Riktlinjer för användande av bilder		Not allowed	Not allowed	Finished	Commons only
Dutch						both
Portuguese	Política de imagens		Not allowed	Not allowed	Usually takes one week.	Commons only
Spanish			Not allowed			Commons only
Chinese		zh:wikipedia:图像使用守则 and zh:wikipedia:合理使用	Allowed if there is no free alternative	Not allowed		both
Russian	Правила использования изображений (proposal)		Allowed			both
Norwegian (bokmål)	Retningslinjer for billedbruk		Not allowed	Not allowed	Usually takes a couple of days Backlog of ~500 images from 2004/05 with an incomplete or lacking source.	both, but local uploads are strongly discouraged. All images uploaded locally are promptly moved to Commons
Finnish	Tiedostojen käyttösäännöt		Allowed if a free alternative is not possible to create (eg. images of art allowed)	Not allowed	Similar to Commons	both
Danish	Billedpolitik, Hjælp til valg af billedlicens	Non-own works must have argumentation for license else invalid	Not allowed	Not allowed	One week for no license, two weeks for questionable license.	both
Esperanto						both
Hebrew			Allowed			both
Hungarian	Licence templates, Uploading guidelines		Allowed (album and other covers, logos, screenshots(movie/software), posters, coats of arms)	allowd	Requsted deletion usually dealt with within 48 hours, there is also a 1000-2000 image backlog of images tagged as missing source/licence but not yet deleted	both
Catalan	Política d'ús d'imatges		allowed with some restrictions, eg. if no free alternative available	only allowed when fair use is also claimed	Usually it takes 1 week, see link.	both
Ukrainian						both
Czech						both
Bulgarian						both
Slovenian						both
Korean						both
Serbian			Allowed if no free alternative available	Not allowed		both
Romanian						both
Indonesian						both
Estonian						both
Ido						both
Turkish						both
Norwegian (nynorsk)						both
Croatian	Wikipedija:Slike/Opći_uvjeti		Allowed if no free alternative available			both
Galician						both
Lithuanian						both
Interlingua	Politica de imagines		Not allowed	Not allowed		Commons only
Greek	Πολιτική χρήσης εικόνων	Thorough check underway for all images and discussion on ways of implementing the LPR and clarifying our EDP.	Allowed (album covers, logos, screenshots, posters, coats of arms, low resolution works of art, low res images of notable people no longer living or historical events)	Only as fair use, if rules apply.	Images are usually sorted out by the admins. Deletion takes ~1 week from upload, on the spot when free alternative is known/found or img is blatant copyvio. About 150 images w/o source/license.	both
Wu			Allowed if no free alternative available	Not allowed		both