Help:Files

It is possible to upload files at Pikipedia. These include, at the moment, images and audio files. This help page is a set of guidelines for contributing images to the Wiki. For help with including images on article, see Help:Editing#Media.

Images

Images can include screenshots from the Pikmin games (or from other games that have content relevant to a Pikmin article), box-shots, concept art, or maps and diagrams.

User images

Images are allowed for use by a user on his/her user page or signature, etc., but this allocation should not be abused. There is an upper limit of 5 images, but fewer will be allowed if large images are uploaded. Note that this is not a target: the fewer personal images, the better.

Every personal image must have the user image template on its page. Include this using {{user image}}.

Fair use

Each type of image requires a different image template. You can choose from those in the drop-down box at the upload screen. For adding templates manually, at the moment, the following is protocol at Pikipedia:

• For screenshots, use {{screenshot}}.
• For concept art, use {{concept art}}.
• For Pikmin e-cards, use {{e-card}}.
• For maps, use an appropriate free (including public domain) or non-free template and categorise in the map images category.
• For user images, add {{user image}} to the page.
• For files in the public domain, add {{PD}}
• For files under a free license, add {{free|license name|attribution details}}
• For fair use, add {{fairuse}}

Filetypes

Images must be saved properly. The filetypes used here are as follows:

• PNG: save diagrams and maps as PNG files, which are best for simple images where there are large areas of the same color. Use PNG for Internet screenshots as well. Note: for diagrams with few different colors, it is beneficial to save as a low-bit PNG file (select 256 colours, for example, in your encoding program).
• JPG/JPEG: the best choice for screenshots from games and photographs; namely, used for images of great detail. DO NOT save simple images with well-defined lines as JPG.
• GIF: apart from being most appropriate for animations, if absolutely necessary, use this for diagrams that have few different colours, as GIFs are lossless in terms of everything except colours. They are low-bit images.

Preferably, images should be less than 150KB, and a warning is issued automatically when uploading larger files. There is generally no need to upload images with a resolution larger than 800x600; resize if necessary. If you are ever unsure, always save an image as a PNG file, as this is a lossless file format, which means that you will not lose image quality, and someone else can alter the image for you.

Videos

All embedded videos are Flash-based; they can be embedded on pages as follows:

• {{#ev:service|id}}
• {{#ev:service|id|width}}
• {{#ev:service|id|width|align}}
• {{#ev:service|id|width|align|desc}}

where:

• service is the name of a video sharing service (supported services)
• id is the id of the video to include
• width (optional) is the width in pixels of the viewing area (height will be determined automatically)
• align (optional) is an alignment (float) attribute, "left" or "right"
• desc (optional) is a short description to display beneath the video when it is aligned

The number of videos used in articles should be kept to a minimum, and used only where necessary and useful. Examples of this are videos of glitches, which are easier to understand through a video, or pre-release material (though the text should not rely on videos for understanding, to cater for those who cannot watch them).

Audio

At the moment, only short clips of soundtracks from the Pikmin games are required, a list of which can be found at Category:Audio. For these, there must be no sound effects, just a clip of music up to 30 seconds in length. Add {{Audio}} to the image description page to properly license and categorize it. When adding the audio file to an article, use Template:Listen.

Only Ogg Vorbis files are accepted. This is because of the format's completely free licensing and superior encoding.

Deletion policy

All files are subject to deletion if improperly uploaded, no longer used, or of exceedingly poor quality. The following are things that should be avoided to prevent deletion beforehand:

• Do not upload copyrighted material other than that listed above. You may upload copyrighted material if you have the permission from the respective copyright holder to do so.
• Aim for high quality in images; very small, poorly-captured pictures are not much of an addition to articles.
• Do not upload Bitmap images or save diagrams as JPG files.

See Also

• Category:Media
• Special:Imagelist