Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Before posting

Newcomers: Please read these guidelines prior to posting on the technical village pump. They contain useful information about where to ask certain things, and what to ask.

Developers aren't guaranteed to read this
Although Brion, Tim, Ævar and Rob do read these pages, there are no guarantees that they will see your message; and not all developers read the technical village pump.

Getting in touch
Developers do take notice of:


 * MediaWiki mailing list
 * Wikimedia tech mailing list
 * Wikimedia/MediaWiki bug tracker (Phabricator)

In addition, some developers can be found in the IRC channels on Freenode; #mediawiki for software, and #wikimedia-tech for server administration issues.

These mailing lists, plus other options like subscribing to Tech/News, are also good ways for you to stay informed about impending changes that might affect you.

Asking sensible questions
No-one can give a decent answer to a poor question. People are incapable of reaching into each other's brains and pulling out the details, and if you can't provide a decent set of information with your query, many won't take the time to bother answering. Consider the wording of the post, and consult Asking Questions the Smart Way, which contains useful tips.

Bugs and feature requests go on the bug tracker
As noted above, there are no guarantees your post will be seen by a developer and we can't fix things we don't know of. If you're sure you've found a bug, post it on our bug tracker, which is also used for tracking feature and configuration requests.

Not for how-to questions
Unless you suspect that some function of Wikipedia is not working correctly, please refer how-to questions to Help desk or Teahouse. Of the two, Teahouse is more designed for newer users.

Be polite
The developers, like most people, have better things to do than listen to complaints from a rude or uncooperative user. Please be polite, patient, and reasonable when asking questions and responding to our answers.

Provide details/be specific
When reporting an error (or discussing any technical matter), be specific.

Information to provide:
 * Browser (and browser version) e.g. Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Opera 9, Firefox 3.7
 * Operating system - XP, Vista, Mac, Windows 7
 * Page/File- Please provide a link to the page or file if one is giving difficulty.
 * If you're having trouble with a user script, consider contacting the author first.