WMDOC/Commons one-pager/en

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Wikimedia Commons is an online digital media library offering free-content media files. It is being improved and enriched continuously by users who upload their own files or files from free sources. Proposed in March 2004 by Erik Möller the project started September 7, 2004.

Its name comes from the word commons in the meaning of "shared, mutual good". Files shared on Commons are legally usable by anyone and for any purpose, notably by all Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia.

In less than one year, on May 24, 2005, Wikimedia Commons was hosting 100,00 medias, and the same month the project received the Prix Ars Electronica awards.

Nowdays, Wikimedia Commons offers over a four million media files of all types: photographs, drawings, diagrams, sounds, spoken texts, animations and videos.

All the documents available on Commons can be freely reused, copied and modified according to the conditions specified by their author, such as attribution or share-alike conditions.

Statistics and links

Launched : September 2004

Number of files : ~4 million

Active participants : ~6000 registered, 400 contribute 5 edits a month or more, 20 contribute 100 edits a month or more

Address : http://commons.wikimedia.org

Statistics of June 2009. Active