Wiki Team/Guide/Images

Images (drawings, photos, etc) can be a helpful addition to any article. Here are some important tips about uploading and using images:

Uploading image files

Please only add images to the glossary which we are legally free to use. The copyright to most photographs and drawings is owned by the author or creator, and we cannot use them unless we have permission, or unless we have a clear indication that they are free to use.
If you want to copy an image from Wikipedia or another wiki, such as Wikimedia Commons, first click on the image to visit the page which describes it and check the Permissions. Wikimedia Commons is a great source for images because they are all free for us to use.
To add an image to this wiki you must first have it on your computer (eg. right click to "Save image As..."). Then go to page Special:Upload, which you will find listed as Upload file or image in the toolbox area at the left of every glossary page. Follow the dialogue there for uploading the file. Please enter as much information as you can, including the provenance of the file (where you got it) and why you belive we are free to use it.
For any image which you create yourself and upload we will assume that we have your permission to use the image, but in the summary comments created when you upload the image could you please also indicate the name of the creator (you) and state that we have permission to use it when you upload it, just to make that all explicit. To make this easy you can use the template syntax "{{PD-self}}" in the comments.

Images are stored in the glossary in a separate namespace, called "Image:". To insert an image you simply need to make an internal wiki link to the image with this namespace prepended. For example, to insert an image of the LHO control room from the file LIGO_control.jpg (which has already been uploaded) you would simply type

 [[Image:XO_xeyes.jpg]].

You can control the size and placement of the image by adding appropriate keywords to the link, separated by vertical bars. It seems to work well to have photos float to the right, and to be about 200 or 300 pixels wide (depending on what the image shows). The image above was inserted into this page by saying

 [[Image:XO_xeyes.jpg|right|200px]]

You should almost always adjust the size and placement of images to make the page more readable. When you do so, keep in mind that not everybody has the same screen size. One way to try to take this into account is to change your window size while viewing the page to check the extremes (eg. tall and narrow, or very wide).