Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content/compliant examples

All of Wikipedia's textual content is dually freely-licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). Images and other media files on Wikipedia work differently. The majority of media files one encounters on Wikipedia are not actually part of this site, but instead are linked and shown here through our sister site, the Wikimedia Commons, a media repository with close to seven million files, all of which are either in the public domain, or copyrighted, but freely-licensed. Unlike text, freely-licensed media files may be GFDL or CC-BY-SA, or a host of other free licenses, though the majority are under the one or the other.

Note that while freely-licensed and public domain media file are permitted to be uploaded on Wikipedia, such media is better placed at the Commons and we move them there at a steady rate. Wikipedia also permits a limited subset of media files to be included here that are non-free (copyrighted, and not freely-licensed), under a claim of fair use; this page is not applicable to such non-free content.

Both the GFDL and CC-BY-SA licenses have involved regulations covering varying types of reuse, and there is no substitution for actually reading their texts. However, even after studying the licenses, users seeking to reuse text or media files may and often are left unsure of the actual mechanics of compliance. This page is intended to provide working examples of compliant reuse of freely-licensed text and images as a guide to users. The examples provided here are of straightforward reuse situations, under the most common licensing forms and this page should be viewed accordingly—it is the responsibility of reusers to ensure that the use of the media is according to the license and violates no applicable law.