Commons:Featured picture candidates/rules

General rules

1. The voting period is 9 complete days counted from the nomination. After the end of this period the result will be determined. Votes added on day 10 and after are not counted.
2. Nominations by anonymous contributors are welcome.
3. Contributions to discussion by anonymous contributors are welcome.
4. Only registered contributors whose Commons accounts have at least 10 days and 50 edits can vote. Exception: registered users can always vote in their own nominations no matter the account age and number of edits.
5. Nominations do not count as votes. Support must be explicitly stated.
6. Nominators and authors can withdraw their nominated pictures at any time. This is done by adding the following template: {{Withdraw}} ~~~~. Also, remember that if more than one version is nominated, you should explicitly state which version you are withdrawing.
7. Remember, the goal of the Wikimedia Commons project is to provide a central repository for free images to be used by all Wikimedia projects, including possible future projects. This is not simply a repository for Wikipedia images, so images should not be judged here on their suitability for that project.
8. Rules of the 5th day based on vote counts on day number 5 (day of nomination + 5):
   1. Pictures are speedy declined if they have fewer than two support votes.
   2. Pictures are speedy promoted if they have 10 support votes or more and no oppose votes. (Note that if it takes more than five days to reach this threshold, the picture can be promoted as soon as it is reached.) This does not apply to nominations containing at least one ‘Alternative’ image – because it is possible that another image can overtake the one in the lead during the last days, such nominations are never closed early.
   3. Once either speedy criterion is reached, the voting period is considered closed, and no more votes may be added.
9. Pictures tagged {{FPX}} may be removed from the list 24 hours after the tag was applied, provided there are no support votes other than that of the nominator.
10. Pictures tagged {{FPD}} (FP-Denied) may be removed from the list 24 hours after the tag was applied.
11. Only two active nominations by the same user (that is, nominations under review and not yet closed) are allowed. The main purpose of this measure is to contribute to a better average quality of nominations, by driving nominators/creators to choose carefully the pictures presented to the forum.

Featuring and delisting rules

A candidate will become a featured picture in compliance with following conditions:

1. Appropriate license (of course)
2. At least seven  Support votes (or 7  Delist votes for a delist) at the end of nine days
3. Ratio of supporting/opposing votes at least 2/1 (a two-thirds majority); same for delist/keep votes
4. Two different versions of the same picture cannot both be featured, but only the one with higher level of support, as determined by the closer. Whenever the closer is not sure which version has consensus to be featured, they should attempt to contact the voters to clarify their opinions if not clear from the nomination page.

The delisting rules are the same as those for FPs, with voting taking place over the same time period. The rule of the 5th day is applied to delisting candidates that have received no votes to delist, other than that of the proposer, by day 5. There is also a limit of two active delisting nominations per user, which is in addition to the limit of two active regular nominations.

The FPCBot handles the vote counting and closing in most cases, current exceptions are candidates containing multiple versions of the image as well as FPXed and withdrawn nominations. Any experienced user may close the requests not handled by the bot. For instructions on how to close nominations, see Commons:Featured picture candidates/What to do after voting is finished. Also note that there is a manual review stage between when the bot has counted the votes and before the nomination is finally closed by the bot; this manual review can be done by any user familiar with the voting rules.