Commons:Grandfathered old files

Shortcuts: COM:GOF • COM:GRANDFATHER • COM:OLDFILES

This page is considered an official guideline on Wikimedia Commons.

It illustrates standards or behaviors which most editors agree with in principle and generally follow. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

This page in a nutshell: Files uploaded prior to 1 January 2007 may have different requirements regarding evidence of permission.

It is a general practice on Wikimedia Commons to prove that permission was given to release files created by third parties under a free license by getting that party to send an e-mail to the Volunteer Response Team (formerly OTRS team). However, the OTRS system has only been in use on Wikimedia Commons since 2006. The OTRS e-mail address was first mentioned on Commons:First steps on 15 March 2006 and Commons:Volunteer Response Team was created on 11 September 2006.

Yet there are many older files on Wikimedia Commons which have been uploaded with e-mail permission. Between 8 January 2006 and 15 March 2006, uploaders were required to add a quote of the permission grant by the copyright holder. An earlier revision of Commons:First Steps mentions that the permission field of the {{Information}} template should contain: "Short quote of the permission of the copyright owner of this image in case of a individual permission."

Prior to 8 January 2006, it was only required that the file be properly licensed and attributed, with no specific statement of permission being required on the image page.

It has been a custom on Wikimedia Commons to grandfather in these files, rather than to delete them. See for example this discussion at the Administrators' noticeboard.

If there are reasons to doubt the authorship or permission of the author of one of these files, attempts should be made to communicate with the named author, to better establish the situation (and preferably obtain VRT evidence). The precautionary principle still applies – if real doubt remains, the file may be deleted in a deletion request.

An example of a grandfathered old file (GOF) which was deleted and then undeleted based on this principle can be viewed here.

Grandfathered old files should be tagged with the {{Grandfathered old file}} template which assigns them to the hidden category Category:Grandfathered old files. This tag can be applied only to files uploaded prior to 1 January 2007.

• Commons:Requests for comment/Grandfathered old files
• Category:Grandfathered old files deletion requests

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