Problem

Solution

In many cases you may resolve issues of this kind yourself. Please read "First point of contact". You may also e-mail us with details. Please see below for important guidelines and an address. Your e-mail will be answered by a small group of volunteers, and it will never be made public without your explicit consent.

First point of contact

In general, the best immediate point of information is the Wikipedia page explaining the various ways that Wikipedia biographical article correction works, for people with a query about their (or another person's) biography. The page also covers how to get help from within the editing community, and the standards and expectations that you may look to be enforced on that article. The page, which is comprehensive, can be found at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Help.

While the volunteer team is extremely willing to help in general terms, its remit broadly excludes certain aspects of editing or decisions about the content of an article. Accordingly you may need to engage with the editing community itself. Hopefully the link above will help explain how to successfully do so.

HOWEVER, if the matter is of a seriousness that you need further advice or email contact with our volunteer support team, or that page has not helped you, then please read further.

Email

Before you e-mail

• Please note that Wikipedia has no editorial board. Revisions are not reviewed before they appear on the site. Whatever was written is not the result of an editorial decision by the Wikimedia Foundation or its staff. (You can see who wrote what in the page history.)

• If the error is minor — an incorrect date or spelling, for example — then please feel free to fix it yourself. Be sure to note your changes on the article's Talk page. If you're uncomfortable fixing it yourself, then just leave a brief note on the Talk page.

• If your problem is that there is no article about you, then please see Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/No article. Please note, however, that we strongly discourage people from creating articles on themselves, their company, their projects and so on. (The same applies to public relations staff.) In our experience, such articles are almost always outside of Wikipedia guidelines — strong opinions, "peacock terms", unverifiable facts, etc. — and as a result they are often deleted according to our policy. The best way to avoid deletions and public discussions is not to write about yourself.

• If the problem is vandalism — nonsense, bad language, insults, or other grossly inappropriate content — then please see our page on article vandalism.

• This address does not reach the entire community of volunteers. If you would like to contact a specific editor, then please see Wikipedia:Contact us/Contact a user. If you would like to contact the editors who watch a particular article, then please post on that article's Talk page.

What we cannot or will not handle through e-mail

• We will not prevent other users from editing your article. We can temporarily protect articles to halt vandalism or to end a content dispute, but we will not do it to enforce your preferred version. Doing so violates our neutral point of view policy.

• We will not delete or replace an entire article on demand. Instead, please tell us what exactly is wrong with the article. We can then attempt to resolve the problem in the most appropriate manner.

• We will not add content through e-mail. We have no staff to read documents, review official biographies, or add information to articles on request. Additions should go through the normal editing route.

• We cannot remove specific revisions from article history on demand. Our volunteers are technically unable to do this, and in many situations this also violates our license. However, if the revision contains nonpublic personal information or blatant libel, then a different set of volunteers may be able to help; please see Wikipedia:Oversight for further details.

• We will not handle requests related to articles that have been deleted or refused by Wikipedia users and which you think should be reinstated. Our email volunteers do not act as an appellate body for such issues. This includes cases where there is an article about a person that you claim has a similar position in society as yourself, but none about yourself.

• We cannot reveal private information, such as the IP addresses of registered Wikipedia users, except when mandated by law. This is in accordance with our privacy policy.

• We will not phone you back to hear your problem, even if you ask. Please state your concerns directly in your email.

• We can only fix problems on sites maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. We have no control over any other sites, even if the other site is a wiki. For a complete list of Wikimedia Foundation projects, please see here.

Tips for faster resolution

• Please copy and paste the exact URL of the article that you're discussing into the email; this is shown by your web browser as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... We have millions of articles. Being specific avoids any confusion.
  • Please do not alter the URL. Copy and paste it exactly. Be sure that you have not left any characters out.

• Please copy and paste the exact sentences that you think are wrong or unsuitable. Please explain why you think they are wrong or unsuitable while keeping specific and to the point. Try to avoid discussing larger issues or controversies, as this will delay response.

• The volunteers who will answer your email are most likely unfamiliar with the article that you are discussing. Please do not assume prior knowledge of the subject of the article, surrounding controversies, and article history.

• If you have specific legal concerns about the article, then please put "Legal concerns" in the subject line. This may delay response, though, because we may have to show them to legal staff prior to taking any course of action. We receive many frivolous legal complaints; legal threats will not speed up the processing of your request in the least, rather to the contrary.

• Please do not include general remarks, suggestions for Wikipedia, etc.; these just get in the way of your message. See our other contact pages if you wish to discuss these issues with us.

• Please do not send email to other addresses. This will only delay the processing of your request. All emails sent to Jimmy Wales or Wikimedia board members, or to other services (press contact...) about problems with individual articles get forwarded to the email contact address listed below, so emailing these people instead of the contact address just delays the resolution of your problem.

• Send your e-mail to info-en-q@wikimedia.org .
  • Please stick to plain text. Our system does not show boldface, italics, different colors, or any other formatting. Please do not send Microsoft Word attachments, not all of our systems can display all kinds of Word files.
  • Please do not write in ALL CAPITALS; this is rude and hinders reading.
  • If you have a spam filter, please be sure it is set so that you can receive our reply. Some spam filters make us jump through hoops, or even simply trash our answer.