The Vampire Diaries Wiki:Media

This page is an official policy on The Vampire Diaries Wiki. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

V:Media
redirects here.

We ask that all users take the time to read the below guidelines before uploading files to the wiki. We are currently hosting 76,378 files on the wiki. Many which need to be categorized and licensed to adhere to the below guidelines.

Screencaps

Websites:
Home of The Nutty Screencapped Net Kiss the M Goodbye

When uploading screencaps for The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, and Legacies images on pages should be limited to 5 screencaps per scene. This applies to all pages - Episodes, Relationships, Actor pages, etc. We also ask that each image be sized at 250px, this can be done by adding |250px somewhere in the image brackets. Images used as the focus on articles without an infobox may be sized at 300px, but no larger. If possible, the highest resolution image should be uploaded (720p/1080p/HD) so the image can be seen clearly, if not possible, please hold off on uploading the image. There are several sites that you can find screencaps for Template:The Originals, Template:The Vampire Diaries and Template:Legacies some have been included on the right.

Names

Images should be named accurately to depict the topic they are showing. For example, an image containing Stefan Salvatore, should contain the name 'Stefan' in the filename and sometimes it is applicable to add the episode such as: Stefan404.png to represent an image of Stefan from the fourth episode of season four. Images that do not adhere to this policy can and will be renamed/deleted. We consider this a big part of the image policy as it better helps us identify images to add to articles. To better help this, if uploading images directly from your computer into the editor, please make sure that the image is saved under a identifiable name as wiki will use that string as the filename.

• Promotional Images: Promotional Images are named with the episode number, name and those appearing in the image. For example the image on the right is from This Christmas Was Surprisingly Violent and contains Hope. It is therefore named 2x08 This Christmas Was Surprisingly Violent-Hope.jpg

• Screencaps: Screencaps are named with their show identifier, numerical episode identifiers and the characters. They increment numerically as more images are uploaded. The image on the right is named LGC208-010-Kaleb-Hope.png, with LGC being the show identifier, 208 the episode, and 010 a reference showing it is the tenth screencap uploaded from said episode.

Duplicate Images

Please do not upload duplicate images and/or duplicate or very similar filenames. Usually, when uploading a duplicate image and/or filename, wiki will acknowledge that the image is already uploaded and will warn the user, at this point, the user should stop the upload process and use the image already uploaded. Duplicate images do nothing for us except make it harder to identify images and take up filenames that can otherwise be used as an advantage. A full list of duplicate images can be found here.

Fan Images

Fan images are not allowed on any article in the main namespace. This includes articles, episodes, species etc. All fan images should be confined to comments, message walls, profiles, blogs, sandboxes or [user]sub-pages. Fan images are classed as any image that has been altered from the original form it aired in either on box set and/or live tv.

Gifs

There are many reasons gifs can be seen as necessary on an article. However, we ask that gif usage on articles is kept to a minimum. Gifs are not allowed on episode, family, location and transcript pages with special cases for power, characters and species articles. Gifs should not be used in the episode summaries on a characters article but may be used within the powers and abilities section and relationship section, however, we ask that the bare minimum is used. Gifs can be freely used on species and/or power articles to represent said subject. Finally, gifs shouldn't be used on relationship articles but will be condoned to represent an important event in said couples relationship, for example, the Damon/Elena rain kiss gif is condoned on their relationship page. Gifs should not be placed in galleries on articles where they are condoned.

Categorizing Images

Main article: Category Policy

Images uploaded to The Vampire Diaries Wiki are automatically categorised based on their filenames. To do this, we ask that all images uploaded have the {{FileCharacterCategories}} template added — this way, it will automatically add the categories based on what we have predefined; this means we can ensure all images follow the same category standards.

The template should be automatically added to the edit field, however if not, please add it manually. This will only work for characters from Template:Legacies at the moment, so if uploading other types — including but not limited to BTS, cast images etc — these will need to be categorised appropriately.

Due to the fact that this system relies on correctly named files, if you break the naming policy, your account will be blocked from editing. There is no reason that users should not bwe aware of naming conventions.

Videos

When uploading a video to the wiki, it should be in 720/1080p and the occurring events should clearly be able to be seen. Videos can be added from YouTube and the filename should, following the image policy, be named appropriately. Alternately, videos can be directly added from wikia's library of licensed videos, although the library doesn't have quite the variation YouTube does. Videos, like images, should too be categorized with appropriate category. Although acceptable please refrain from using videos on any other articles except for promos of episodes, with few exceptions to power articles but before adding an admin should be contacted. Please also check the wiki for duplicate videos before adding them, feel free to replace videos with higher definition ones.

Copyright Notices

All images uploaded to the wiki must follow the copyright outlined by the authors. Images uploaded to the wiki to be used in the main namespace must hold the fair use copyright notice. Tagging an article is extremely important to us as it avoids images being deleted and/or copyright problems in the future. Images released by the CW and/or it's parent companies are deemed fair use under US copyright policy and should be tagged {{Promotional}}. Screencaps taken from other websites and/or by users and uploaded to the wiki are also deemed fair use under US copyright law and should be tagged {{Screenshot}}.

Fandoms

We want to make it easier for users to find images to add to articles via the 'add image' button in the editor, for this reason, we must exclaim that media from other fandoms is prohibited. Any images that do not regard the TVD/TO universe, will be deleted without warning; please do not upload them. We must also enforce this rule to make sure our ParentPage is always up to date with what the wiki entails. We cannot rule all content on the wiki TV-14 if we have images from other fandoms that depict TV-14+ topics. For this reason, we restrict images.

Despite the restrictions, users are free to talk about other fandoms wherever they wish — excluding the main namespace of course. Links to images are too, allowed.

Out of Universe Images

Images from other fandoms/out of universe are strictly prohibited from being uploaded. However, linking the images in comment sections is allowed.