- published: 14 Feb 2013
- views: 1091
Wikimedia Commons (or simply Commons) is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used across all Wikimedia projects in all languages, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, and Wikinews, or downloaded for offsite use. The repository contains over 12 million media files.
The project was proposed by Erik Möller in March 2004 and launched on September 7, 2004. A key motivation behind the setup of a central repository was the desire to reduce duplication of effort across the Wikimedia projects and languages, as the same file had to be uploaded to many different wikis separately before Commons was created.
Given its primary function as a supporting project for the other Wikimedia web sites, the main content policy for files uploaded to Commons is that they must be potentially useful on any of the Wikimedia projects. This excludes material such as purely personal pictures and artwork, in contrast to image sharing repositories like Flickr, Photobucket and DeviantArt. Nevertheless, large numbers of files hosted on Commons are not used directly on any Wikimedia project and likely never will be; as such, the project has grown into a repository of multimedia in its own right, which is frequently linked to from articles on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia websites to provide supplemental materials.
Christopher Ashton Kutcher (/ˈkʊtʃər/; born February 7, 1978), best known as Ashton Kutcher, is an American actor, producer, former fashion model, and comedian, known for his portrayal of Michael Kelso in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show. He also created, produced and hosted Punk'd, and played lead roles in the Hollywood films Dude, Where's My Car?, Just Married, The Butterfly Effect, The Guardian, and What Happens in Vegas. He is also the producer and co-creator of the supernatural TV show Room 401 and the reality TV show Beauty and the Geek. Kutcher currently co-stars in the hit CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men as the character Walden Schmidt.
Kutcher was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He is the son of Diane (née Finnegan), a Procter & Gamble employee, and Larry M. Kutcher, a factory worker. His father is of Bohemian (Czech) descent and his mother is of Irish, German, and Bohemian ancestry. Kutcher was raised in a conservative Roman Catholic family, with an older sister, Tausha, and a fraternal twin, Michael, who had a heart transplant when the brothers were young children. Kutcher's twin brother also has cerebral palsy and is a spokesperson for the advocacy organization Reaching for the Stars.