Help:Contents

This help system needs to be improved over time - please contribute by providing either questions or answers.

However, in principle, you can often look at the Wikipedia in your language. The information given there will mostly be correct here as well. For English, you may want to check Uploading images. However, the help in Wikipedia may often be more detailed than necessary for a start. We will therefore provide some short step-by-step instructions here.

Please make sure that for every upload you are either the creator of the file, or have a license to put this file here (i.e. under cc-by-sa by default, or under the license you specify).

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I upload multiple images?

Answer: In the menu on the left side, look for “Upload multiple files”. Go there to get a list of 10 fields. In the first field you select a file on your computer. The second field will automatically be filled based on the file name. You can change the destination name to make sure you upload media with long, descriptive file names (this does not change the file name on your computer). Please supply some extra information in the description window - especially on the subject that is shown, or special license conditions. Note that this description will be the same for the whole set of uploaded files.

I have uploaded a file but can no longer find it. Where do I look?

Answer: Four convenient options to locate a previously uploaded file are:

1. If you know the full name, like “File:Title.jpg” you can simply paste it into Search box in the menu and click “Go”.
2. You can further search files under “Recent file uploads” in the menu on the left side. If the file is not already listed (if the upload occurred a while ago), you can enter the start of the file name under “Search for media name” on that page, or any word of the name and click “Go”. This is an interest of having long file names.
3. If you uploaded the file yourself, a convenient method is often to look in “My contributions” (at the top right of the screen, after your user name). You can also type your name in the box "Username".
4. You were wise when upolading, and put your file in one or several categories. Go then to the "Categories" page, and search for the category name.
5. You were even wiser, and created a file on your computer with the names of all the files you uploaded. So, you can retrieve their names, and use option one.

How do I replace an image with an improved version?

Answer: Open the original image page (see question I have uploaded a file but can no longer find it above). You should see a page with the image on it, but with additional text, especially a section “File history” below it. In that section, you find a link “Upload a new version of this file”. Click on this link and you will upload a new image, that replaces the existing image for all purposes (but the previous version of the image will remain).

How can a file be categorized ("classified")?

Answer: use the Wiki-code [[Category:A significant category]] on a media's description page. Additionally you can activate the interactive categorisation “HotCat” in your preferences at “Gadgets”. For further details, see on “Classification in categories”.

Can I copy images from Wikimedia Commons or Wikipedia?

Answer 1: Images from Wikimedia Commons can be used directly, without uploading them anywhere. Simply paste its file name (Starting with "File:" and ending with the extension) in your wiki and save. All wiki on biowikifarm.net are linked to Commons and the image will initially be directly loaded from Commons. In the background, we will actually copy the image to OpenMedia automatically within 2 Minutes. We do this because of latency issues with pages using many images from Wikimedia Commons: with a local copy some pages took several minutes to load, or some images were randomly missing. Note that if you want to add relevant categories to the image used from Commons (which is recommended) it is advised to wait 2 Minutes before doing this, else the automatic downloading of the original description will fail because your manual description will take precedence.

Answer 2: Manual copying may be necessary if the image comes from a Wikipedia but is not present on Commons. The majority of images on Wikipedia is shared on Commons, but certain images are not. In this case manually download the image and re-upload it here. Please ensure that a link to the original image is provided (you can use the Template:Cached Copy for this) and that information on the author(s) and file history are copied as well. This is legally required by the Creative Commons license attribution part. For an example, see the image File:Erophila_verna.jpeg and click on the 'edit' or 'view source' tab at the top to see what was manually added to the uploaded image.

Is it necessary to stress who is the author, when he is the user who uploads the image?

Answer: It is necessary to understand who the creator of an image is, since this is not necessarily the uploader. This may occur through any form, whether through a structured template or through free-form text. It is not strictly necessary to add the creator in brackets at the end of the file name. That is a useful convention, however, since it also makes it highly likely, that file names are unique, i.e. different people do not accidentally try to use the same file name.

Missing / broken File links

See Category:Pages with broken file links

Other Resources

• Image guidelines on Wikimedia commons