User:David.Monniaux/Contact us

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

Please read carefully the following paragraphs. They contain important facts and remarks in order to serve you better.

What information we need

 * If you want to discuss a specific article, or several specific articles, on Wikipedia, please provide their full URL (which some people call "link"). The URL is what your Web browser displays as "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blabla" just below the menu bar, on top of the browser window (at least this is the case with all common Web browsers); please copy and paste. We have millions of pages and images and we cannot guess what you are discussing without that information.


 * If you feel something is erroneous, insulting, incorrect, please copy it verbatim in your email. This allows us to quickly go to the sore spot. We are not offended if such text contains swearwords.


 * The persons who will process your email most likely have never seen the article and topic that you are discussing prior to your email. We have millions and millions of pages. Please keep this in mind and explaining in a concise manner what you think is wrong.


 * We strongly advise you against making legal threats. Most legal threats that we receive are not founded in law. Legal threats may in fact delay the processing of your email, if your email has to be shown to a lawyers.


 * Please be concise and to the point. This will speed up processing.

Which sites we run

 * We are the Wikimedia Foundation. Unless your request concerns encyclopedic articles such as Wikipedia.org, you most probably do not want to contact us. We do not manufacture anything, have no paying site subscriptions, and what else.


 * We can only deal with material presented on Wikipedia.org and a few associated sites (Wikisource.org, commons.wikimedia.org, Wikiquote.org, Wiktionary.org, etc.). We cannot deal with material presented by unrelated sites, even if these sites "look similar" to ours (many sites around the Web use the same software as we do and thus look very similar). In particular, we have no relationship with Wikitravel.org, Wikimapia.org, Conservapedia.org etc.


 * Some sites unrelated to us, including Google and Answers.com, copy Wikipedia content; however they are not constantly up-to-date. Frequently, people tell us about errors on Wikipedia content from such sites (Google search results etc.) that are not present on the current versions of articles on Wikipedia. We cannot do anything about it: these sites are independent from us and we have no means to force them to update. Generally, such problems solve quickly, as these sites automatically update themselves.


 * We do not run Google Earth. If a marker is incorrectly placed in Google Earth, please contact Google.


 * Please do not email individuals, including Jimmy Wales and Florence Devouard. They will not read your email, and will simply forward it to the official contact addresses. Save yourself and ourselves some time and use the official contact addresses.

What we cannot do

 * We cannot provide you with contact information for celebrities or companies. If it is not online on our site, we do not have the information.


 * We cannot help you research facts written in the articles. Wikipedia articles are written by a worldwide group of volunteers. There is no centralized editing authority or documentation service.


 * We cannot give you authorizations to reproduce text or images. However, it is possible that you intend to do with Wikipedia content is legal; see Copyright.


 * We will not change the content of articles unless the problem is evident to a layman (such as gratuitous profanity or clerical errors). In particular, it is useless to send us scientific or historical arguments by email. There is no documentation or editorial service, and nobody will read the scientific or historical papers that we receive. If you think something is erroneous, please use the "edit this page" button and fix it yourself, or go to the "discussion" page and discuss the matter there.


 * We will not censor Wikipedia because some content is offensive to such or such group. In particular, we will not censor nudity or content that some religious groups find offensive. We remind readers that web browsers have options to browse without images, if the matter is about images.

Articles deleted, created, not created etc.

 * We will not hear cases on articles that have been deleted. There are deletion processes and review available on the site, and the help desk does not act as an appelate court.


 * We will not write or insert articles following email requests. Wikipedia articles are written by a worldwide group of volunteers. If a topic is not covered, it is most likely because no volunteer ever thought of writing about it.


 * We will not delete an article just because it was created without the consent of the subject. In countries with a free press, there is no right to a priori censorship; newspapers do not need the authorization of a subject to cover it, and neither does Wikipedia.


 * We strongly discourage people writing their autobiography, the biographies of their friends or employer, and we also discourage "public relations" writing. Such articles are almost always unsuitable for Wikipedia, because of laudatory tone, absence of independent sources, etc. Save yourself grief, please do not do it.