How to contact Wikipedia about a page

Can you contact Wikipedia directly about a page?

Not in the sense of a company with a complaints department. Wikipedia's contact page opens with a set of disclaimers: it has no central editorial board, its content is written by volunteers at their own discretion, and edits are not the responsibility of the Wikimedia Foundation, the charity that hosts the site, or its staff. It also says that whoever answers an email will generally not make edits on your behalf, and that disagreements about content will not be resolved by email.

That does not mean nobody is listening. It means the decision-makers are the editors of the article, acting in public under Wikipedia's policies, and that every contact route leads back to them in one way or another. Choosing the right route is mostly a matter of what kind of problem you have.

The Foundation does publish a postal address and telephone number, but its contact page directs questions about Wikipedia content to an email address answered by volunteers, not by Foundation staff. Wikipedia's guidance for article subjects adds that the volunteers will not telephone you, even on request.

Who handles which kind of problem?

Each kind of problem has its own route. The table summarises them, and the sections below explain each one.

How do you contact the editors of a specific Wikipedia article?

Through the article's talk page. Every article has one, reached by the "Talk" tab at the top of the page. Wikipedia's guidance for article subjects describes the steps: open the talk page, start a new section, explain the specific change you would like and why, and publish it. If the talk page link is red, nobody has started it yet, and creating the first section is allowed.

The page for article subjects suggests placing the template for conflict of interest edit requests at the top of that section, which adds the request to a queue that uninvolved editors work through. The Edit Request Wizard walks through the same process step by step. Our guide to Wikipedia edit requests explains how to write one that gets accepted.

Messages work best when they are narrow. "This article is unfair" rarely gets a response. "The second paragraph gives the founding date as 2011; the company's registration and this newspaper report give 2009" usually does.

Individual editors can also be reached on their own user talk pages, and the page history shows who wrote what. A polite question to the editor who added a disputed sentence is often the quickest way to an answer. Pressing the same point with several editors at once is not.

Where can you ask general questions about Wikipedia?

At the Help desk, or at the Teahouse if you are new to editing. Both are public question pages staffed by volunteer editors.

The Help desk takes questions about how to use or edit Wikipedia. Its instructions ask you to name the article or draft you are asking about, not to give an email address or other contact details, and to check back on the page, because answers are posted there and nowhere else. Comments about a specific article belong on that article's talk page, not the Help desk.

The Teahouse describes itself as a place for friendly help with using and editing Wikipedia, and the Help desk points new editors there. It is a good place to ask whether a source is likely to be accepted, or which process applies to your situation, before you act.

Ask in one place, not both. The Help desk asks people not to post the same question at the Teahouse as well. If you cannot post because the page is protected, both offer a link to ask for help on your own talk page, where a volunteer will respond.

When should you email the Volunteer Response Team?

When you are the subject of an article, or are acting for one, and the talk page route has not worked or is not suitable. The Volunteer Response Team is a group of experienced volunteers who answer most emails sent to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. Its members sign a confidentiality agreement, and Wikipedia says they may give more active help with defamation, privacy and requests from article subjects than with ordinary editorial disagreements.

The address for article subjects is info-en-q@wikimedia.org. The policy on biographies of living persons and the guidance for article subjects both give it, and ask you to include a link to the page and details of the problem. For a serious legal concern, the guidance asks you to put "Legal concern" in the subject line and give the exact address of the article and what you believe is wrong.

Set your expectations by what the team says about itself:

• Most requests about ordinary editorial matters are referred back to on-wiki processes.
• The team cannot help write new articles or resolve content disputes.
• Emails about deleted pages are referred back to the deleting administrator and deletion review, because the team has no extra authority to delete or restore pages.
• Your email and address are not made public, and the team will not give you other people's information, such as the IP addresses of editors.

For an account blocked as a suspected impersonator of the article subject, Wikipedia gives a separate route: email info-en@wikimedia.org with your real name and username, and wait for instructions before sending any documents.

What is the biographies of living persons noticeboard for?

It is where editors bring problems with how Wikipedia's policy on living people is being applied to an article, so that more experienced eyes look at them. Its header asks people to try the article's talk page first and to post only when that discussion needs more input.

It suits disputes such as a contentious claim resting on a weak source, a section that gives a minor allegation far more weight than the coverage supports, or material about someone who is not a public figure. The noticeboard asks posters not to copy defamatory text onto it, but to link to a diff showing the problem instead. Sections older than seven days are archived automatically.

The noticeboard is public and its archives are searchable, so a post there should be measured and specific. For general disagreements about a biography that do not raise a policy question, the noticeboard points to a request for comment on biographies instead. Our guide to correcting Wikipedia covers how corrections to biographies are argued.

How do you get private information removed from Wikipedia quickly?

Contact the oversight team privately. Oversight, also called suppression, hides edits even from administrators. It is used for non-public personal information such as a phone number, home address, workplace or school, for clearly or likely libellous content about a living person or an editor, and for some other highly sensitive material.

Wikipedia lists two fast routes: the email form at Special:EmailUser/Oversight for anyone with an account and email enabled, and an email to oversight-en-wp@wikipedia.org for everyone else. Include the full address of the page or edit and, if you can, a diff of the edit.

If the material does not meet the oversight threshold but does qualify for revision deletion, the team can apply that instead, which hides the content from everyone except administrators. Threats of harm are handled separately, through Wikipedia's emergency procedure, not through oversight.

Where do legal matters about a Wikipedia page go?

To the Wikimedia Foundation, not to the article's talk page. The Foundation's contact page lists legal@wikimedia.org for legal questions and requests, and a separate postal address for legal mail. It asks that legal documents are not sent to its general San Francisco address. Copyright takedown notices under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act follow the Foundation's DMCA procedure.

For a statement about you that you believe is defamatory, Wikipedia's policy on legal threats points you to the volunteer team's article-subjects address, and its policy on defamation is to remove libel as soon as it is identified. That is often faster than a formal legal route and does not depend on the Foundation acting.

Wikipedia also recognises that editors involved in a legal dispute with someone should not edit articles about the other party, because of the conflict of interest.

What should you avoid when contacting Wikipedia?

Above all, do not make legal threats on Wikipedia. The policy on legal threats says that anyone who posts one is likely to be blocked indefinitely while it stands. It covers threats of off-wiki legal or other official action against editors or Wikipedia itself. A polite report of a legal problem, such as defamation or copyright infringement, is not a threat and is acted on.

The same policy warns about wording that could be read as a threat. Calling another editor's statement "defamatory" or "libellous" may be taken that way. Its suggested alternative is plain: "that statement about me is not true, and I ask that it be corrected." Wikipedia says a withdrawn threat should not be held against the person who made it, but it still delays everything.

Other things that make contact less effective:

• Sending the same complaint to several addresses, which the guidance for article subjects says only slows things down.
• Editing the article yourself to remove what you dislike, which is more likely to be reverted and to draw attention.
• Copying defamatory or private material into a public post while complaining about it.
• Engaging with anyone who contacts you off Wikipedia claiming to be a reviewer or administrator and asking for payment. Wikipedia's Articles for Creation pages describe this as a scam.

When does a message to Wikipedia need someone who knows the system?

For a single factual error with a clear source, rarely. A short, polite edit request on the talk page is the right tool, and it is the route Wikipedia itself recommends.

The harder cases are the ones where the route itself is a judgement: a negative section that is sourced but disproportionate, a dispute with an editor who keeps restoring material, or a problem that might belong at the noticeboard, with the volunteer email team or with oversight. Each of those channels has its own threshold, and arguments that miss it are refused or ignored. Everything posted on-wiki also stays in the page's history, so a heated first message can shape how every later request is read.

We prepare edit requests and noticeboard posts, assemble the sources behind them and handle the discussion that follows. Our Wikipedia dispute support covers contested pages, and a free page health check will tell you which route your problem belongs in before anything is posted.