Wikipedia:Image file names
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
 |
This page in a nutshell: Use descriptive file names. Don't upload files with generic, non-specific file names. |
While the name of an image doesn't matter much to the reader, as they can reach the description page by simply clicking on the image, it is helpful to other contributors and for maintenance of the encyclopedia if images have descriptive or at least readable file names. For example, "File:Skyline Frankfurt am Main.jpg" is more helpful than "File:14004096 200703230833355477800.jpg".
To avoid accidental overwriting of images or other media, don't use very generic names when uploading them. For example, don't upload a picture of an album cover under the name "File:Cover.jpg", as sooner or later someone else will try to do the same thing and overwrite your version. Their image will now appear in place of yours in any articles it was added to – in this case, an album article would show the wrong album cover.
[edit] Protected image names
Some generic image names are protected to prevent an image being uploaded with that name. They contain a placeholder image, informing contributors that this is the case. For example, File:Image.jpg, File:Image.png, File:Image.gif and File:Image.svg.
Administrators may upload a placeholder image to, and protect, image names which they consider to be too generic – especially those which have been accidentally overwritten in the past – provided the image does not currently exist. The images File:Image.png, File:Image.jpg, File:Image.gif and File:Image.svg, all tagged {{PD-ineligible}}, may be used for this purpose.
Use the template {{protected generic image name}} as the image description. This template produces all the text, inserts all the templates and all the categories needed for such pages.
