Bahaimedia:Participate

Welcome to bahai.media. This page describes ongoing projects and how you can get involved. There are primarily two types of work on bahai.media: uploading new media (both personal photography and historical periodical excerpts) and organizing or categorizing existing files. There are also maintenance categories that list specific problems needing resolution, described below.

Community archives & personal photography

• Personal Photography: If you have taken photographs or videos of Bahá’í Houses of Worship, Holy Places, historical sites, or local community events, we encourage you to share them using the Media Uploader by selecting "This site is my own work" during the rights release step.
• Community Archives: If you have an archive of documents, photographs, or media related to your local community and would like them preserved online and accessible to researchers, you can upload your collection here and we can create a dedicated page to organize and present that material. Please email to get in touch about this.

Uploading images from Bahá’í periodicals

A major source of media on bahai.media is official Bahá’í periodicals where permission has been granted to crop, categorize, and upload the images contained in those publications. These images are frequently referenced in articles on sites like Bahaipedia, and collecting them into a central repository allows researchers and editors to view related historical subjects scattered across many different volumes and publications.

Images from Bahá’í News, The Bahá’í World, and the Bahá’í World News Service have already been uploaded. There is an ongoing project to extract and upload images from The American Bahá’í. Volumes 1–5 have been completed, so new contributors can begin from Volume 5 and work forward (or contribute to Star of the West).

Steps to upload via the Media Uploader

1. Navigate to the category page for the volume and issue you want to work on (for example, Category:AB Volume 4 No 1) to check which images have already been uploaded.
2. Download the PDF of the issue.
3. Save each page of the PDF as a lossless image. For example, using Adobe Acrobat Pro:

   File > Save as Other > Image > PNG (please use PNG rather than JPEG to avoid compression artifacts).

4. Use your preferred photo editing software to crop the individual images from the pages.

   Give each cropped file a descriptive filename on your computer based on its caption or subject.

5. Navigate to Special:MediaUploader (account required):
   • Step 1 (Learn): Review the guidelines and click Next.
   • Step 2 (Upload): Click Select media files to share, choose your cropped image(s), and click Continue.
   • Step 3 (Release rights): Select "This work is not my own". Under Source, choose the publication (e.g., The American Bahá’í (1970–2001)) and enter the Volume, Issue, and Page numbers into the boxes provided. The uploader will automatically format the source and license templates for you. Click Next.
   • Step 4 (Describe): Verify the Title, copy or type the image's caption into the Caption field, and add any relevant subject categories in the Categories box (note: the issue category is handled automatically by the source template, or you can add topical categories like People, National Spiritual Assemblies, etc.). Click Publish files.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please email so we can help. If you find yourself doing a lot of this work, there are also batch tools to speed up the process—feel free to reach out!

Organizing existing images

When images are initially uploaded from periodicals (such as Bahá’í News or The Bahá’í World), they are placed into the category for their specific issue or volume (for example, Category:Baha'i News No 450). Many of these images still need topical categorization (by country, subject, institution, or individuals pictured) so they can be easily discovered.

1. Log in to your account.
2. Navigate to an issue or volume category you want to work on (for example, issues in Category:Baha'i News or volumes in The Bahá’í World).
3. Open an image file page (for example, File:A Baha'i meeting in Tipitapa, Nicaragua.png).
4. Scroll to the very bottom of the page where the category bar is located:

   You will see something like: Categories (++): Baha'i News No 450 (−) (±) (↓) (↑) | People of Nicaragua (−) (±) (↓) (↑) | (+).

   To add a new category, click the (+) button on the far right. Start typing a category name and select from the auto-populated suggestions.

   Click the Save button that appears once you have made your changes.

Fixing specific problems

As bahai.media has evolved over the years, different methods and templates were used when uploading files. Below are maintenance tasks that help standardize older uploads.

Making image titles descriptive

Images listed in Category:Images to be renamed were uploaded with generic or non-descriptive filenames (such as camera serial numbers).

1. Navigate to Category:Images to be renamed and open a file.
2. While logged in, look at the action tabs along the top of the page (Read | Edit | View history | More).
3. Hover over More and select Move (please email if your account does not yet have permission to move files).
4. Under New title, enter a clear, descriptive filename based on the image's caption or subject.

   Important: Make sure you keep the original file extension (such as .png or .jpg) at the end of the title.

5. Click Move page.

Updating legacy file description pages

Some older uploads use outdated formatting instead of our standard {{cs}} and source templates.

For an example of the current standard, compare the description page of the first image in Category:Baha'i News No 450 with older files, or view the standardized descriptions in Category:BW Volume 4. Using standardized source templates—such as {{bns|issue|page}} for Bahá’í News, {{bws|volume|page}} for The Bahá’í World, {{bwn|article}} for Bahá’í World News Service, {{ab|volume|issue|page}} for The American Bahá’í, and {{sw|volume|issue|page}} for Star of the West—automatically generates links to the publication and categorizes the file properly.

If you would like to assist with standardizing legacy file pages, please email so we can direct you to the categories that need attention.