Kulturskatter på nätet/en/Uploading files

This image was part of the Region Archive of the West Götaland Region in Sweden and was uploaded manually...

...while this image from the Nordic Museum was uploaded with the help of a program.

Uploading files

Uploading files (such as images or films) to Wikimedia Commons is not very hard. You need a user account, which you can create easy and free. After that, you follow the instructions to upload one or more files.

For most persons and organizations, the normal way of uploading files will do nicely. (It is marginally more complex if you haven't created the work yourself, but there are som good tutorials.) If the upload tool should fail, you can choose the old version. The tools are constantly being upgraded, and you can now upload files that are up to 500 Mb in size.

Commonist

If you have a bunch of files where the metadata is identical or similar for most files, you can choose another method, the program Commonist. In order to use Commonist you need to download a small program that connects to Wikimedia Commons. The program makes it easy to put files in the same category (such as the category for images from the Regional Archives), give them similar descriptions (for instance a text area with links to the institution website), etc. Anyone who has an account on Wikimedia Commons can use Commonist. There is a user tutorial and many users who use Commonist, which means that it's easy to get help.

Batch uploads

If the number of files exceed around 100 files, both the normal upload tool and Commonist are impractical. For that type of batch uploads, you can use special programs that only a few persons have access to/can use. Right now, there is a queue for anyone who wants help with batch uploads, something that local chapters around the world and the Wikimedia Foundation are working on. So far there are no easy solutions to shorten the queue time. For up to date information we recommend that you contact your local chapter.