Wikipedia:Contact us/other
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You received a mysterious email from us or you think you have been subscribed to a mailing-list without asking so
- Some spammers out vast amounts of advertisements using fake addresses, sometimes including addresses @wikipedia.org or @wikimedia.org. We have nothing to do with it and cannot do anything about it. Please do not write to us about it, even to warn us.
- Our mailing-list system always requires confirmation before subscribing people. Therefore, it is impossible that you have been subscribed without your consent. Our mailing-lists have names such as wikien-l AT wikimedia DOT org or similar. If you seem to receive mailing-lists talking of Wikipedia but coming from other kinds of addresses, we have nothing to do with them.
Our search engine is insufficient, it should do spelling correction etc.
The Wikimedia Foundation has very limited resources in terms of money and personnel; redesigning the internal search engine ("MediaWiki search") would be a significant endeavour.
However, Wikipedia also offers searches through third-party engines, which tend to support many features that users request. On the search page, you may select other search engines (Google...) including some engines specially adapted for Wikipedia (Exalead, etc.).
Problems viewing the pages (fonts etc.)
Such problems can include: fonts are too small, unreadable etc.
In almost all cases, these are due to problems on the user's machine, including preferences in the browser (fonts, colors, image views, proxy servers etc.). Please try looking before contacting us. It seems that certain popular Web browsers have bad default settings for "Unicode", "ISO-10646-1" or "UTF-8" page viewing, in particular too small fonts; we suggest you fiddle with these particular font settings.
Think of the following: such problems, if on our servers' side, would be likely to affect hundreds of thousands of users. It is thus very unlikely that you would be the first person to advise us of such an issue.
If you still want to contact us (see address below), please give the following details:
- browser (Internet Explorer vs Firefox vs Konqueror vs...) and version number
- operating system (Microsoft Windows vs Mac OS X vs GNU/Linux vs...) and version
- any special settings that you have
- username on Wikipedia, if you have an account
- the kind of text you were looking at, if applicable, especially if the text is in a non Latin script (Chinese, Thai, Hebrew, etc.)
- possibly, a screenshot of the display.
We just cannot process requests such as "your main page is garbled" because, either we have a general problem and we already know, or it is a problem depending on certain parameters and it displays fine on our machines.
Bugs in the MediaWiki software
File a bug report on Bugzilla: bugzilla.wikimedia.org (you will need to create a free login there)
Donations
See our donations page.
Problem with an article about you or someone you represent
See our special page for such matters.
Other problems with articles
Please see Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error.
Error messages when searching, editing or viewing articles
All errors are logged, and the web site is closely monitored. Technical staff are aware of these problems whenever they happen. Please do not email us regarding them.
Article does not appear when searching
The database for searching is updated approximately every 4-6 weeks. Changes do not appear there right away.
Partnerships, joint ventures, and governmental and regulatory affairs
Contact the Wikimedia Foundation.
Other problems or questions related to Wikipedia
- Routine editing disputes are not resolved via e-mail. See the dispute resolution page.
- Please do not email us about mistakes in articles unless the article is about you or someone you represent. Instead, fix it yourself or use the talk page to leave a message for other editors.
- If you use a spam filter, be sure that it will allow our reply to reach you.
- Our email address is info-en-o@wikimedia.org
- If your question is already explained on this page or Wikipedia:Contact us, or if you don't have a good summary as the email topic and first sentence, your email may be deleted without response. Please bear in mind that this service is operated by volunteers.
