Wikipedia:Adding images improves the encyclopedia

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Shortcut WP:ADDIMAGES

This page in a nutshell: Adding images to articles and essays is an easy way to improve the encyclopedia.

Let's be frank. Many aspects of editing Wikipedia article text can be challenging: finding reliable sources, drafting new text in your own words (without plagiarizing the source), preparing the inline citation, adding the text to the article, and then engaging in discussion with fellow editors over whether your text should be included or not. In some cases, the end result of drafting and saving a new paragraph is that it is deleted with a curt edit summary.

Even though editing text is hard, Wikipedia needs editors to work on drafting new text, and improving existing text. Only a fraction of Wikipedia's 6 million articles are featured articles. If the encyclopedia is going to be improved, it is essential that editors spend a good deal of their time adding text or improving text in existing articles that are in earlier stages of development.

But if you need a Wikibreak from some of the stress that goes along with editing text, particularly when proposing major additions, there is another activity that you can do on Wikipedia that is helpful to the encyclopedia, rewarding, and low stress: adding images from Wikimedia Commons.

Longtime editors can testify that they have had countless disagreements, debates and discussions regarding adding or deleting text. But veteran editors who have been adding well-chosen images from Wikimedia Commons for years will rarely get a complaint on their Talk page–indeed, they may even get "thank you" messages for particularly well-chosen image additions.

Of course you can't just go adding images to Featured articles (on these articles, the images are chosen after careful discussion), but if you focus your image contributions on articles in earlier stages of development, particularly those with no images, and you pick images that properly illustrate the topic of the article, your contributions are likely to stay in the articles. When you are adding images, you must comply with the Wikipedia Image use policy. More information about using images is available at WP:IMAGES.