Template:Wikipedia ads/doc

This template displays web banner-style advertisements, some of which are animated, for various Wikipedia maintenance collaborations, WikiProjects, policies, guidelines, processes and practises, such as barnstars, featured articles and edit summaries. The ads rotate at random each time the page is refreshed, and can be cycled manually by clicking the "show another" button in the bottom-right corner of the box. Clicking on the ad will take you to a relevant page; to view the image description page, click the "file info" link.

Ads on your page
To include the ad box on your userpage or talk page, simply edit it and add in the appropriate place. This will produce:

The parameter linkcolor can be used to change the color of the links, and color to change the rest of the text. background will change the background color; by default the template has a transparent background. nolinks will hide the links at the bottom of the template, however please try to avoid this, as the "file info" link is the only way to see the licensing and authorship information for the image (normally, this can be done simply by clicking the image).

Hiding the ads
If you do not wish to see these ads, you may hide them by adding the following code to your monobook.css:

.qxz-ads {display: none;}

Users of other skins should use the appropriate subpage for that skin (e.g. classic.css) instead.

Current ads
This template was conceived and implemented by Gurch. The images were created by many different users, as detailed below. (Individual images may have been edited by more than one user.)

If you would like an ad to be created for a particular page or project, one of the users listed below may wish to create it for you. Persian Poet Gal is taking requests at this time, along with Andrew Hampe. Bear in mind that there are already dozens of ads in use; if the project you wish to promote already has one, feel free to suggest improvements or make your own replacement, but try to stick to one ad per project.

Creating ads
If you wish to create ads yourself, you are welcome to do so. In order that the template works properly, however, please ensure that the image is:


 * In GIF (multi-frame) or PNG (single-frame) format.
 * 468 pixels wide by 60 high.
 * Named in the format Image:Qxz-ad#.gif or Image:Qxz-ad#.png, where # represents a number to be incremented with each new image. This vastly simplifies the template coding.

Additionally, the following requirements must be met to ensure copyright and Wikipedia's image use policy are not violated:


 * If the image includes other images (a derivative work), it must only include images under a free license or in the public domain.
 * The image itself must be released under a free license or into the public domain.
 * Some free licenses specify that derivative works must also use that license (for example, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0). If an ad contains images under such a license, the ad itself must also be released under that license.
 * Non-free images must not be used.

The image may be uploaded locally or to Commons, but in either case the local image description page should exist and contain  .

Bear in mind when creating animations that they can have large file sizes, and many contributors do not access Wikipedia through a high-speed connection. Try to keep each image to no more than a few hundred kilobytes in size.

Editing this template
This template is a little complex, partly because template parameters cannot be used inside   tags. Bear in mind that it is used on many userpages, and try not to break it.

Two pages need to be updated when a new ad is added – this page and the overview template.


 * [ This change] illustrates how to update this template.
 * [ This change] illustrates how to update the overview template.

Contact a user who has added images to the template before if you need assistance with this.