Wikipedia:GFDL standardization

This is an information page. It is not an encyclopedic article, nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

This page in a nutshell: If you are the copyright holder for any image that has disclaimers, then you can remove the disclaimers. Please do so by editing the image description page and replacing the licensing tag with the appropriate no-disclaimers version, e.g. {{GFDL-with-disclaimers}} → {{GFDL}} {{GFDL-self-with-disclaimers}} → {{GFDL-self}}

On Wikipedia the image copyright tag {{GFDL-with-disclaimers}} includes the phrase "Subject to disclaimers". Due to legal restrictions in the GFDL itself, one must preserve all disclaimers accompanying licensing statements, so all future reusers of images on Wikipedia that are "subject to disclaimers" must also reference Wikipedia's disclaimers.

This creates a situation where many images licensed under the GFDL have had unnecessary baggage added to them, and the {{GFDL-with-disclaimers}} license on the English Wikipedia is generally incompatible with the GFDL licenses appearing on other projects, including Commons, where such disclaimers are not used. The aim of the GFDL standardization is to overcome this limitation as best as is possible and restore the parity with other projects that don't include "disclaimers".