Wikipedia talk:Contact us/Archive 4

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Box

When I added the box in and previewed my edit, the contact us image and link were shown in full and unobstructed. I've just followed the same procedure and so far (touch wood) it is still the same. Hugahoody (talk) 20:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) Before we add it in, I'd like to ask, why do we want a box? How does it improve the page? I'm afraid it may be visually distracting, myself. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Hello. Mainly aesthetical reasons really. I felt it made the page slightly more welcoming but if you think it may be distracting then that would be a valid point. Hugahoody (talk) 21:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I've isolated the problem. It seems to occur in IE8 in compatibility view, but not in regular. Not significant enoguh to prevent the change, so I have no objection on techinical grounds. On asthetic grounds, I think it separates the lede section from the rest of the page unnecessarily. I also think the message box and the frame around the Wikimedia image combine displeasingly. I don't object to the speech-bubble image. I hope we may revisit font size, which I think is implemented strangely on the page. --Bsherr (talk) 22:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes, the frame around the contact link image doesn't sit too well. I was wondering if it could be placed into the box perhaps, similar to the Nuvola icon I used in the left hand corner but with the clickable link still available. I placed that information within the box as I thought it was better to separate it and draw attention to it. Hugahoody (talk) 22:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The box seems to me to suggest an "end" to the page, where really the really crucial information is below, so it kind of breaks up the flow to me. (The really important information is currently in a bigger font, too, to draw attention downward to it.) It's too big to be a standard "infobox", which the eye easily covers and dismisses. I find the color contrast more of an eye strain. (#FFFFFF is not my favorite background color in general. :) But, then, I have migraines, so bright stimulus can be generally more uncomfortable for me.) I don't object to the speech bubble either.--Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I've put into the sandbox a suggestion for the page. I've always found the use of varying font styles and the abrupt change to two columns further down the page very distracting. My proposal at the sandbox uses two columns throughout, does away with the varying font sizes, and tries to group like information more effectively. Thoughts? --Bsherr (talk) 23:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
And Hugahoody, if you happen to like it, feel free to beautify it. --Bsherr (talk) 23:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Oh, I like that approach! I think it's much easier for people to get to the important stuff, and the dual column layout keeps the other stuff from getting lost. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Two columns - nice. Go with that :-) Witty Lama 00:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks very much, all. I've implemented it. Let's see how it goes. --Bsherr (talk) 16:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I like the look of it. Good work. Hugahoody (talk) 18:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Ooh, very classy. All I need now is a smoking jacket and a cocktail. --Bsherr (talk) 20:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I added a refined version of the box back in. Hope you like it. Hugahoody (talk) 20:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
(That is to what I refer above.) --Bsherr (talk) 20:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, just checking :) Hugahoody (talk) 20:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I've reverted for a non-aesthetic reason. The main reason this page exists is to provide self-resolution and answers to common questions so that people don't have to email OTRS (which regularly gets backlogged) about them, and also filters out emails with issues that OTRS can't or won't help with (e.g. "please correct this page about some random topic", "I want to challenge a deletion", "this article is badly written", "can you research XYZ for me", and "do you have the contact details for <random celebrity>?". If the email address is immediately accessible then people will email in preference to self-resolving their queries, and there is not enough capacity to answer those emails as well as the more intractable problems that OTRS gets (e.g. libellous BLP articles). There would be no problem with a box saying "welcome to our contact page, please choose from the options below" or indeed anything that doesn't link directly to the email address. Stifle (talk) 19:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Stifle, I don't see any direct link to an OTRS e-mail address in the revision you reverted. Could you identify where it is? --Bsherr (talk) 22:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
There wasn't one, but there was one at the top of the page linked-to. The new box is absolutely fine. Stifle (talk) 09:27, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Image Size

Should the image really be that large? It seems very obtrusive to me. Herr Beethoven (talk) 02:28, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Image? The only image I see on the page is the Wikimedia logo File:Contactus-wmcolors.png and it's at 60px, which isn't really that large.. at least it's not for me.. how large is large for you? If it's not scaling to size for some people it could have something to do with the recent Mediawiki 1.17 deployment.. try bypassing your cache. -- Ϫ 12:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
For some reason it was showing up as large as the page yesterday, but it's back to normal now. Herr Beethoven (talk) 15:42, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Consensus is that this should stay at its current location. Dpmuk (talk) 11:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Contact us → Help:Contact us — Due to the audience (newer editors and readers) that this page is directed at, I believe it would be better suited to the help namespace.--Mono (talk) 01:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

  • Oppose. It's simply easier to find in Wikipedia space. Users are much more likely to use the WP: prefix when trying to get somewhere (WP:CONTACT). It's also linked from the side menu bar, where it would be more consistent with the other links, like Wikipedia:About and Wikipedia:Community portal, to just keep it where it is. Finally, the need just isn't there, and I don't see how moving it to Help: would increase readership, there's no point in shuffling things around when there's no clear benefit. -- œ™ 04:11, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
  • I doubt this is necessary. It sounds fine as "Wikipedia:Contact us" and doesn't imply that one is looking for help as "Help:Contact us" does. Contacting can be for press reasons or other such things, not just for help; I know the help namespace is for helping users and not documenting help links, but a new user would likely not realize this. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:28, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose; the Help namespace is for guidance on using Wikipedia. Contact information is not part of that. Powers T 13:54, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Per Wikipedia:Help namespace, the help namespace primarily contains information intended to help use Wikipedia or its software. Contact information should instead be listed in the Wikipedia namespace, since, as per Wikipedia:Project namespace, it is information about Wikipedia. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:45, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Opppose per above. This page belongs here, but those who go seeking it at Help:Contact us will nevertheless wind up where they need to be, as it is a redirect. I would suggest a speedy resolution if at all possibel to this conversation, as I also think the tag may be confusing to those who do wind up here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:42, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Shortcut

{{Edit protected}}

On the specific sub-page, Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from subject) (whose talk redirected me here)...

Please add {{shortcut|WP:FEFS}} title is long. Shame to have to use 4 letters, but WP:FAS and WP:FES are both kinda used. I did consider boldly taking-over FES, but...then I'd have to add complicated 'other use' stuff, and...anyway. FEFS seems harmless?  Chzz  ►  20:26, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

 Done MBisanz talk 20:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Contact Us/Blocked - text revision

Wikipedia:Contact us/blocked says: Now might be a good time to take a break from Wikipedia and do something else; for example, go to the library. I understand the intent but shouldn't it be mentioned that a blocked user can still read articles? I don't want to change it without consensus. -- Alexf(talk) 13:52, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

What about altering it to read "break from editing Wikipedia" and then changing "for example, go the library" to read "however, you can still read Wikipedia"? I would imagine, though, that the language is geared for those who are obsessed and really do need a wikibreak; reading Wikipedia might not help them. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:01, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
I like your change: "however, you can still read Wikipedia". For the ones suffering from this addiction (don't we all?) it might not help :-) -- Alexf(talk) 14:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Query about usage of image

Recently, I got permission from the librarian from Special Collections at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library to release this image for fair use in the article California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She e-mailed to both "permissions-en@wikimedia.org" and myself the following:

"Hello,
The photo of WK Kellogg and his horse Antez may be used in the article about Cal Poly Pomona being written by student Marco Guzman. We will supply him with a copy to upload in the near future. The image can be released under “Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)”
Best regards,
D****** C*** A****** [name censored to maintain librarian's privacy]
Special Collections Librarian"

She didn't add the link itself. Is this a constrain for its usage, or can I upload the image? Regards, -- Marco Guzman, Jr  Chat  19:01, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

You can go ahead and upload the image. I've received the email and will tag the photo once you upload it. After that I'll reply and indicate which image you uploaded to confirm that it's the appropriate image at that point. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
"Wikipedia has no affiliation whatsoever with the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks."

Wikileaks

Is this necessary? I don't think it would be that common of a mistake, and even less useful now that wikileaks is being quickly forgotten http://www.google.com/trends?q=wikileaks .  jorgenev (talk) 22:28, 11 April 2011

We can probably take it down sometime soon. Gigs (talk) 03:27, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
The number of emails we're getting confusing us with Wikileaks is down to the normal background level of "one every now and again" - removing this seems entirely worthwhile, and I'll do it just now. Shimgray | talk | 19:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Add pointer to talk

After the second bullet point in "Important information" we might consider adding the following, or something like it:

  • For questions about the content of individual articles, see the "Discussion" page (link in the upper left corner above an article's title), and add a New Section to that page if your question has not already been raised. If you are still waiting for a response, consider inquiring on the pages of any associated WikiProjects that are linked to from the discussion page.

Thoughts? Was this there and removed? WBTtheFROG (talk) 23:26, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the general concept is fine, but we should really find a much, much, much shorter way to phrase it. The page is already dangerously close to TL;DR territory as it is. - Jredmond (talk) 20:59, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Interwiki

Can you please add interwiki to hr:Wikipedija:Kontaktirajte nas, and add there the missing ones. Thanks--Gdje je nestala duša svijeta (talk) 19:30, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I've added hr: to this page, but the corresponding page on hrwiki is protected and I don't have the rights. However, one of the interwiki bots should be through before long, updating hr with links to all the other language "Contact us" pages, and updating all the other language "Contact us" pages with the link to hr. - Jredmond (talk) 23:13, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, we do need bot on this pages.--Gdje je nestala duša svijeta (talk) 13:07, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia search is very incompetent

greetings, i dont know where to report this so i put it here:

The wikipedia search function has become increasingly stupid over the last 2 months it seems where can i suggest improvements to its functionality ?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Odarcan (talk • contribs) 14:36, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

There are several options; the Wikimedia Tech email list (or some of the other email lists at http://lists.wikimedia.org ) might be a good bet. Or the WP:Village Pump. -Pete (talk) 23:38, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Suggest changing the wording

This item (emphasis mine) is technically accurate, but I believe it could be phrased better:

  • Wikipedia is free and without advertisements. It is operated by a private, privately funded, non-profit foundation.

For a newbie, I believe this would sound as though we are funded by a secretive, rich sponsor, which couldn't be further from the truth! I suggest the following change:

  • Wikipedia is free and without advertisements. It is operated by a private, non-profit foundation, mainly supported hundreds of thousands of individual donors.

-Pete (talk) 23:38, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

How about "It is operated by a private non-profit foundation, and supported mainly by individual donors"? We could also provide a link to a generic donations page. - Jredmond (talk) 04:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree, your version is generally better -- but some indication of the vast scale of the number of donors is needed. I think one link is enough; but maybe we should link to the donations page (people can get to the WMF page through that if they like). How about:
  • It is operated by a private non-profit foundation, supported by hundreds of thousands of individual donors.
That looks good to me. I'll make the change now. - Jredmond (talk) 20:52, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 Done. I tweaked the link a bit; this one should be more generic currency-wise, and detect the user's local currency based on their geoIP results. (I swiped that code from the foundationwiki "Donate" link.) If it doesn't work, and people outside the US are only able to donate in USD from that link; then please let me know here. - Jredmond (talk) 21:03, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Site is Case Sensitive

Site is case sensitive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Bold and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_bold are to different pages on wiki it should not do that (web links should not be case sensitive), was not sure where I should place this queston (I changed Bold to bold, i was looking at wiki curve page link so i just replaced it with bold when i found this minor issue as it sayed there was not article) Leexgx (talk) 09:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:Questions - that's the main place to ask questions about how to use the site. This page doesn't get nearly as much traffic as that one, so if you ask a question here then we may not see it right away.
For what it's worth, though, it's often useful to distinguish between a capitalized word and a lower-case word; see MAVEN and Maven for an example of this. We also use a lot of redirects, including the ones I just put on BlackBerry bold and Blackberry bold, when we don't need to make such a distinction. - Jredmond (talk) 03:15, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, just to be precise, the WP:QUESTIONS page itself isn't a place to ask questions, but rather it is a directory of links that will direct you to the proper place to ask questions. :) -- œ™ 06:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
True. But WP:QUESTIONS is the link given in the editnotice and at the top of the page, just below where it says "This is not the place to ask questions". :) - Jredmond (talk) 15:10, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Permission by email

Wikipedia:Contact us/Top questions says, "We are aware that some school students have been told to email and request permission before using content from a site in their projects, but we simply cannot give you this permission." The last part could make it sound like they don't have permission, which they do (except for non-free content). How about, "but we simply cannot email you proof of permission"? Superm401 - Talk 07:15, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

That might make it sound more confusing. I guess the wording is a little weird and could be better but I'm not sure how. - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:08, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 Done Stifle (talk) 22:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Article not showing on google search

{{admin help}} Dear Administrator

I create 2 article name Nadia Samdani and Dhaka Art Summit but it not showing on google search result please advice what I need to do to showing it on google search.

Taslim ahmed (talk) 07:48, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Not the place for this but a help tag has been added anyway. Rcsprinter (rap) 10:33, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
Yes. Taslin, please note that this is a talk page for discussing the Wikipedia:Contact us project page. The helpme request properly goes on your talk page. In any event, the page for Dhaka Art Summit is showing up on Google right now and we have no control over how high or low Google displays it in its results. Also, Google results vary based on your edit history, cookies and possibly your location. I don't know exactly how its algorithms work but what one person sees on Google, and how high a page appears in the result, changes between different users on different computers. For me, the article is the twelfth Google result. As for Nadia Samdani, that was deleted on June 13, 2012 as a result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nadia Samdani.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:13, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Delete account

Can someone delete this account because I don't need this anymore. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Simbaha2 (talk • contribs) 03:09, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

You cannot delete your account on Wikipedia. For more details see the following page: Wikipedia:FAQ#4 How do I change my username/delete my account?. If you have more questions see WP:Questions or you can ask me on my talk page. Hope that helps. meshach (talk) 01:31, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

"Main contact address"

I've reverted an edit proudly displaying a "main" contact address. I don't think this is a good idea. While it might seem like a maze trying to get to an address on these pages (and believe me, I'm the first one to say that all of these contact us pages need work) but this actually helps us. First, it puts their messages in the correct queue. Second, a lot of times I would imagine people find answers to their questions on the way to email us, so they end up not needing to send us a note. I'm open to discussion on this, of course. Rjd0060 (talk) 18:10, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I think our current system is pretty terrible. My primary concern is I'd rather have the next Roth-type incident actually hit OTRS than hit a byzantine system of navigational links that no sane person would ever plough through. I've used it to try and retrieve an address and failed. I am not a big fan of customer service systems that actively discourage people from contacting customer service people.
Have you ever called a customer service phone system and gone through seven different options with three subtrees of options trying to work out which one is most likely to get you through to a human. That's what we're currently doing in text form. And it really sucks. While Roth isn't blameless in the whole affair, we should make it as easy as possible for someone to actually contact us without them having to go through bureaucratic gymnastics trying to figure out which of a bunch of options they need to click.
If we get queries to OTRS that are easily answered, they are easy to answer. We have template messages just for that purpose. I'd rather spend 20 seconds sending a template email back to someone and actually answer their question than have them get lost in bureaucracy. —Tom Morris (talk) 19:34, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
Agree with Tom. JN466 22:47, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
I also agree with Tom. I see no reason not to have the main contact address noted front and center. Furthermore, we should really get to work on reorganizing the rest of this page and all those it links to, so it's easier for readers, subjects, and editors to navigate it. SilverserenC 01:18, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
I have no hand in OTRS but I would love to see a cleaned up contact page, too. heather walls (talk) 06:26, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

[Note: I've tweaked the talkpage headers, to make accessing the info (for us) a little easier.]

  • There are 23 subpages currently. 10 of them contain email addresses (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). None of them mention the address that was added in the OP's diff.
  • As Wikipedia:Contact us/other says: "We get over 10,000 emails per day. 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." -- that's a LOT! (and, {{citation needed}}! ;)
  • Burnout is one of Wikipedia's most complicated problems. So is getting newcomers to become regulars. Both are tangentially related to this discussion. -- Some people like to teach themselves how to fish. Some people prefer to be shown how to fish. And some people just want to be handed pre-caught/pre-cleaned/pre-cooked fish! Catering to all demographics is inherently messy.

That's some of the background. Now what are the options?

  1. We could do some A/B testing, to see how adding that base email address, to this root page, changes the quantity and quality of OTRS messages. (That would require technical effort and time to set up, from WMF employees. Plus additional effort from the OTRS volunteers to give feedback on what qualitative changes were observed, during the testing period.)
  2. We could try to reduce the number of subpages. (I'm not an OTRS volunteer, so I don't have nearly enough context to know where we'd be best to start trimming - which are the most used addresses? etc.)
  3. We could try to improve this root page, so that the help-requestees are more effortlessly channeled to the correct subpage. (Again, this needs some people with rock-solid-background to give input, and some serious research to get it beyond a "best guess" level. I'm just a very interested bystander). Anything from wording tweaks, to layout changes. (Some people like multi-step wizards; Some like structured list/flowcharts that are all on one page)
  4. Something else?

—Quiddity (talk) 21:35, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

One complaint I hear all the time (in emails to OTRS from people who spent forever trying to find the address, emails to me personally from people who gave up and found contact info for a random admin, in #wikipedia-en-help, etc.) is that our contact info is near impossible to find. Although I recognize the advantages this has in reducing the load on OTRS, I think it's a net negative. I for one would be totally willing to chip in on trying to redesign the Contact us page (and subpages) to reduce the number of subpages and resulting inconsistencies. A clear set of email addresses (e.g., for x, email address A; for y, email address B and so on) would be a much-needed improvement. – GorillaWarfare (talk) 14:50, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Can't hurt to try! I'd suggest WP:Contact us/Sandbox as a place to experiment collaboratively. (It might help to make a napkindiagram of the current 23 subpages, and how they interrelate/flow) —Quiddity (talk) 21:31, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
As far as preventing the next Phillip Roth bit, I noticed there are contact categories for Readers, Website Admins, Press and Editors, but nothing for article-subjects. Companies and BLPs probably won't naturally identify themselves as a Reader or Editor.
I could imagine a wizard here. For example, if you click Contact Us as an article subject, it may first ask if your issue needs to be handled privately and - if not - it could ask you to use COIN first. Corporate 14:24, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Proposed replacement

So, I spent a chunk of my volunteer time today redrafting the "contact us" page. The draft can be found here. Driving aims:

  1. Minimise wikilinks. The current page has impressive degrees of overlinking. This virtually ensures that readers are sent down a rabbit-hole of link after link after link, leading to a game of 6 degrees of Wikipedia that doesn't necessarily even end them up with the info they wanted...assuming it was even there. We minimise links and keep them for the really important stuff, so that if we're driving someone down there it's worth it.
  2. Increased prominence for email addresses. The existing page assumes that wikimarkup is not evil. And sure, it wasn't...in 2001, when the only people who used the internet were used to kludge. But the internet has moved on, and we've become a wee bit pedantic about how people use it. We should be clearly and easily directing people to "human-useable" contact methods.
  3. Minimalist design. The existing design...oy. As well as fragmenting the data over a thousand different pages, it displayed it in two or three or four different boxes at a time. This makes it hard to read and easily identify what does what. The new layout contains one thing to read at a time, in one set of paragraphs.

What I'd propose is twofold. First: we implement this (obviously). Second, we do whatever analytics we can on the resulting mess. Find out what pages people go to, what our users are most concerned about, and increase their prominence if we can. Maybe look into a way to implement some kind of feedback thing so that we can see what we're missing. I've got a couple of ideas on that front, but none that don't run the risk of giving people a way of just, you know, leaving complaints or issues in that box. Ironholds (talk) 00:07, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

  • support, obviously. Ironholds (talk) 00:07, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Strongest support. It's desperately needed, and I think the draft is a very good start. Perhaps also add the general address for queries that don't fall under any of those categories. Goodness knows we get enough weird requests that someone will come here wanting something unusual. – GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    Good idea; shall tweak now :). Ironholds (talk) 00:47, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    I think we should leave a catch all email on a page at the bottom. You know quite a few internet users will just go "OH EMAIL ADDRESS, SWEET!" and start composing their email without effectively filtering it through the right categories. Then we get something called wasted volunteer time. :P -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 01:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. I like it. Much less cluttered, much more straightfoward. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 01:08, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support the idea of change, but it needs some more change first I agree with all three of the points listed above, and I don't want to trample on hours of work, but there is quite a lot of white space in that centre section and I forget where, but quite a few people have told me (and I agree), there has to be a balance between white space and non-white space. At least 50% of the screens are white space and not all the text fits on one screen for an average sized laptop (I might be off on the average part, but then again, assume people have GTB and a whole bunch of other bars in their web browser). Maybe instead, have links on both sides of the page like "links|blah...blah|links" to efficiently use space more. If you really don't like the idea, maybe consider the staff page design. Also commented above about use of email. I also don't see critical topics covered in the old one, in the new version like "You deleted my article" or "I'm blocked" or "I have technical issues (like maybe something WMF Tech has to deal with, not just a dilemma)". Sorry to ruin the party. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 01:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    Yeah, this cuts out some of the old issues, because, well...they're dumb issues. If you've been blocked, there's a notice left on your talkpage telling you what to do, and you get a bright orange bar appeared. If you have tech issues, we invite people to use bugzilla, an abhorrent, unfriendly mess, and in doing so generate more work for people who have to deal with "the site went down! zomg!" bugs if users ever actually get through. Tech issues tend to get noticed and identified by the 82k editors, and reported or resolved pretty fast - particularly anything severe enough to commonly impact on readers. Ironholds (talk) 01:46, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. Nice flow and easy to follow. The current pages are horrible. Rjd0060 (talk) 02:02, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Couple of Comments

  • How many of the existing 23 subpages are cut out of the loop, and do any/many of them need to be added to this draft before it goes live? (eg /blocked and /deleted_page and /Warning_messages and /Top_questions and etc - I don't know, but would guess, that many/most of these subpages exist because they're frequent-OTRS-requests...)
  • I strongly recommend that we replace existing pages, to increase the numbers of people watchlisting, and to decrease the number of abandoned/historic pages that someone might stumble upon via search. (Or - protect the new pages, and redirect their talkpages to here, and redirect the replaced oldpages, and widely announce the new pages somewhere with links for "add to watchlist").

HTH. —Quiddity (talk) 02:51, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

  • I agree with both of those :). So, almost all of them are cut out. To be honest, I'd avoid re-adding them: I can't find any evidence they were addressed as common concerns through OTRS rather than "well, I thought people might ask" (we had a question that dealt with PDAs, for example). I'd be pretty interested in gathering some quant and qual data from info-en after this goes live to investigate what we're missing. I agree we should wall off/delete/redirect anything that isn't being referred to any more, mostly the latter. Ironholds (talk) 02:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - Over encumbered at the present moment. James (Talk • Contribs) • 4:09pm • 06:09, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. Much better. Please add an assurance that OTRS mails by article subjects will be treated as private communications. JN466 08:55, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I think we'd want to qualify what that means. They are private in the sense that they are viewable only by the X number of volunteers who have access to that queue, and OTRS volunteers are asked to respect confidentiality (at m:OTRS/introduction). --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:46, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Certainly. JN466 11:27, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support I worked a bit earlier on a few of the pages. While I support the use of these, there are a few questions/issues for ironing out. :) The only address at Wikipedia:Contact us/draft2 for readers to report errors in articles is the vandalism queue. I think the majority of contacts we receive about errors are not vandalism, but BLP issues or standard errors and omission notices. Do we want to filter all corrections through the vandalism subqueue, or should we add complexity by listing the courtesy address? I also wonder if Wikipedia:Contact us/draft6 should be expanded a bit to include answers@wikimedia.org, which is for general questions for or about the WMF. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:46, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    Shall and shall :). Ironholds (talk) 13:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • General Support although tweaks are needed. On the positive side, it is much less cluttered (and I hope my proposed tweaks don't ruin that). Glad to see that the garish red has been changed. I like the concept of the left navigation box, to identify major sections. One observation, (with no obvious solution), after intro, it sounds like an attempt to identify different groups of individuals, e.g. Readers, Donors, Press, but Article Subjects and Licensing don't fit the paradigm. One thought is a Who and What distinction, but hard to do that without re-introducing clutter.(Oops, just realized that Article subjects is about a group of people, but the comment still stands)
My main concern is that the Licensing section addresses three unrelated groups of people, yet the content flow of three paragraphs suggests more of a relationship than actually exists. Some people want to re-use material. Those people are not here to report a copyright problem, and neither of those two groups is trying to donate material. I accept that you want to keep the number of items in the left panel limited, but that means the right panel needs clearer demarcation.
My second main point is that the Schools partnership should be listed, ideally as a separate item on the left, but it arguably fits into the Press and Partnerships section.
And third, shouldn't GLAM be mentioned (may fit neatly into Press and Partnerships)?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 11:25, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Oh, headdesk; thought I'd listed that - the glam thing, that is :). I totally agree with the licensing issues, but to be honest, I'm not sure how to better break it down :(. Ironholds (talk) 13:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Half the sidebar on the left goes off the bottom of the screen and for some reason not only is it (considerably) longer than the middle in all of them, but there's this mass of completely empty space on the right for no apparent reason. So the layout needs some work, but at least my first reaction to this version isn't to run away screaming (unfortunately because that was my reaction to the other I don't really have anything else to add). -— Isarra ༆ 15:35, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    Yeah, it was originally full width but I was advised to limit it, pixel-wise. There's not much we can do about the left sidebar other than massively compressing it, I think :(. Ironholds (talk) 15:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    Advised by whom? That just makes the weight disparity even worse, making the left even heavier by comparison than it already is. And perhaps just not using it as a sidebar would work better, since the way it's set up it contains more content than the content itself in some cases - and there is ample vertical space... -— Isarra ༆ 17:14, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Yes, oh yes. People hate long complicated phone tree menus. People hate the online equivalent. Kill it with fire and replace it with one email address that people contact. If we haven't got enough OTRS agents to handle that, the Foundation and the OTRS admins should actively recruit more. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:09, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    • We started with one address originally, but it caused major problems: important BLPy tickets got lost among simple questions. By separating incoming mail into relevant subqueues, we can give better attention to urgent things, and we can let n00b volunteers ease in with simple tickets without having to deal with the really nasty ones. - Jredmond (talk) 21:06, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support more brilliant work by Ironholds! Dougweller (talk) 16:34, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • SUPPORT. Cannot say this strongly enough. I'm sure there are tweaks that can be done before it goes live, but all in all, I can hardly wait to be able to use this helpful/easy-to-use tool with new editors, especially when I'm helping in the IRC -help channel (where many new/clueless/frustrated editors first wash up in their Wikipedia journey). Shearonink (talk) 16:39, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment I haven't read through the whole proposal yet, but I will note that there's been a reduction of the {{nospam}} template here and on commons recently to increase usability - letting people just copy and paste the addresses. We're probably already on everybody's spamlists by now, right? VernoWhitney (talk) 17:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    Well, OTRS doesn't actually *have* a spam filter. At the moment we use mailto, which is...rather ugly. I don't know if it kills spam at all. Ironholds (talk) 17:05, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    Yeah, I spend a good portion of my time on OTRS just triaging misdirected emails and killing spam. I don't know if it's a good idea, but I was just pointing out that the cat's already out of the bag for some addresses, and those supporting the changes do have a point about usability/user-friendliness. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:28, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
    Point :). I've got no objection to a change, then. Ironholds (talk) 17:33, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • About time. I may look more later, but full support from me. WormTT(talk) 17:18, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Strong support Well done Ironholds and others (and Peter for your excellent template). I will also help if needed. heather walls (talk) 18:12, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. It looks fantastic, and is so much easier to use than the prior cruft, but I have a few comments:
    1. I made an edit to draft2, the "readers" page, to emphasize editing. (Lots of people still don't know that's an option!)
      I've actually reverted this :). I agree that a lot of people don't know, but we want to be resolving things in the manner that is as non-frustrating for the end user as possible. If the person tries to edit, they're presented with wikimarkup (hella-scary), and if they then make the edit on their own, there's a good chance they'll have it undone if it's good-faith-but-fails-at-[thing], which isn't particularly encouraging. Email actually gets the issue fixed. I worry about directing more people to get involved until we've got a non-scary interface and help documentation that does its job. Ironholds (talk) 21:11, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
      That's a fair point about wikimarkup, especially once we throw in tables and transclusion. Most of the new-editor issues are less about the technical details of editing, though, and more about silly Wikipedia internals or working with other editors - and a new editing UI won't fix either of those. :( - Jredmond (talk) 21:16, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
      Indeed, but good help documentation can :). Wait until you see my next project ;p. Ironholds (talk) 21:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
      I think a compromise could be reached here by including a quick link to "help for editors" in that sentence on the readers draft: if you don't happen to know you can edit, and you do happen to want to know more, here are our help pages, for better or for worse. I'd continue to emphasize "anyone can edit" because there are two reasons for that message, after all: 1) you too can edit, and 2) contents of articles may vary, caveat lector. Personally, I'd drop or reword the sentence about 'wikitext being hard to edit, so...' -- it comes off as unintentionally patronizing to me, *particularly* if we are trying to reach the demographic that edits but is instantly reverted (they've generally figured out wikitext just fine, just not culture). What about "if you'd prefer to email our volunteer team about a problem with an article, email xxxx with the article title and a description of the problem". Lastly, is a note about the talk page worth it? Maybe not? -- phoebe / (talk to me) 04:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
      We have talk pages for the explicit purpose of discussing articles, and while some talk pages are like a guided sausage-factory tour, it's still worthwhile (IMHO) to direct feedback there. I do like the "for editors" idea, though, either as a link within the "readers" page or as a distinct page on its own. - Jredmond (talk) 14:03, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
    2. I made another edit to draft3, the "article subjects" page, to add some whitespace and indicate that we need specific details on e-mails. Details help everywhere, but especially on BLP issues (which tend to be much more time-sensitive).
    3. Draft4 (on reuse) needs a bit more work than I can give it right now, unfortunately. I'd start by discussing the reusability of text, and then point people to image description pages where they can see licensing details for the specific file(s) they want. Copyright is really complicated stuff, so we won't be able to keep this page too simple, but we can link to more in-depth discussions from here.
    - Jredmond (talk) 21:06, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. You've done a great job, Ironholds. I also think there are some good suggestions on this page, but you seem to be working through all of them. This will be much better once it's done. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 21:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support A desperately needed and well-done improvement. wctaiwan (talk) 03:16, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
  • support & comment -- cleaner, looks good. Comments: I'd retain a link to the general FAQ somewhere; I think having one link is better than trying to address "top questions" but removing it altogether seems extreme; I like to browse FAQs personally and I doubt I'm the only one. I'd also work on the text a bit; I think it can be cleaner and shorter even than what you've got. And lastly, does OTRS net many questions from editors? What about people whose edits are reverted? I'm not sure of the demographics; do 'questions about editing' need to be called out (either as a separate category: help for editors, or under 'readers'?) Anyway, all in all nice work. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 04:16, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
    In my experience, not particularly. I'm looking forward to doing some analysis of what kind of questions OTRS is getting after this has been in place for a while - it'll be nice to find out what the documentation is missing :). Ironholds (talk) 17:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Conditional support: only if "Article subjects / Help for the subjects of Wikipedia's articles." is changed to something more second-person-ish like "Article subjects / How to deal with articles about you or someone you represent". It is simply not clear enough as is. — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:10, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
    Tweaked; I agree with the change :). Ironholds (talk) 17:20, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Strong support as someone who is often on the article subject side of things - I'm confident this is an immense improvement. I have some very small nit-picky suggestions I'll put on the Talk page there. Corporate 17:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Support. The page is simply bad at the moment. mabdul 00:28, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I have been bold and now implemented this :).
  • I reluctantly oppose this implementation. The current version of the contact page encourages and facilitates self-resolution of problems, pre-filters problems we won't solve, and directs others to on-wiki resolution methods. Because of the staffing levels, emailing us should be a last resort rather than a first resort. The first reaction of someone hitting Contact Us and being presented with this new page is to scan through it, see the email address, and fire off an email saying "hi, do you have any more information on my dead grandmother that there's a two-line stub about?", ""I am a PR and attach the authorized bio of my client, please use this and his approved headshot in place of your existing article", and so on. These are filtered by the current structure. Stifle (talk) 06:36, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
    • This would be better put at the discussion on the "contact us" talkpage :). And, no, I disagree; it doesn't facilitate self-resolution, it facilitates trying to resolve yourself and buggering it up. Wikitext is difficult and unpleasant to use, and that's before we stick in the various community policies and principles and needs for X, Y and Z which we expect newbies to know by default. I'm happy to not put email first iff you can show me another human-readable place they could get help from. Ironholds (talk) 17:23, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
      • (Moved to the right place) Stifle (talk) 13:22, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
      • I think an FAQ is a basic requirement to put ahead of the email address, similar to the previous "top questions", to cut out the email types I mentioned above, plus "Can I really edit", "Can I copy your site", and "can you please add an article about foo". Stifle (talk) 13:25, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
        • A good middle-ground might just be a subtle shift in emphasis. Bring more emphasis to the Talk page and using it first and less emphasis on email, offer a couple more links to Help pages - that sort of thing. Minor tweaks. Corporate 22:26, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: I like this page, but when I start out by clicking "Help", I never come to it, but instead come to the rather horrible page at Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_problem. Shouldn't the Help path lead to this page too? JN466 19:48, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Tutorial etc still links there as well. Can we perhaps just redirect all the old subpages to the main new one? Andrew Gray (talk) 21:07, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Doing so now :). Ironholds (talk) 22:41, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
There seems to be more here and here - not sure if all these should go to the main page, or to one of the new subpages. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:27, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Now that everything is live: I've gone through and added a space between addresses and any punctuation. OTRS does most of its queue-sorting through the recipient address, but if the pattern isn't an exact match then the message isn't delivered properly. (I know, that's fundamentally broken. No need to preach to the choir.) We've already had a couple dozen badly-routed messages since the switch; in each case the sender copied/pasted the address from the new Contact page, and inadvertently included the period that closed the sentence. The extra space should stop the broken routing (at least from that cause). - Jredmond (talk) 16:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

The extra space has helped; no badly-routed info-en messages today. - Jredmond (talk) 16:28, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Just as a comment; correspondence to the main OTRS address appears to have skyrocketed since this change (In the region of 10 emails an hour-ish) --Errant (chat!) 14:27, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

To be fair, most of those are from people who haven't grasped the idea of decentralized content control - and they'd have written us anyway, even though that's the least efficient way to get content issues addressed. - Jredmond (talk) 16:28, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

New design is much better, but the talk pages of the new subpages need redirecting here. Rd232 talk 11:06, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Done :). Ironholds (talk) 11:34, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

edit break

Actually I am not that impressed. When I clicked on Contact Wikipedia I expected to see a short intro'/disclaimer and then a list of problems/issues and a link to click on for each that takes you directly to a corresponding page/message editor. Simple. Direct. Items like Licensing, Donors, Press and partnerships should be at the bottom of the list as the average reader is not concerned with those. -- I did not expect to do a lot of reading through multiple messages telling me to go some where else. As it is I have to search and read, and search and click to get to where I would like to go and I'm still not quite clear on that. Where do you report a tech problem? The 'Contact Wikipedia' main page/Readers section doesn't give you a clue. The Contact Wikipedia link should bring you to a page that allows you to, uh, 'Contact Wikipedia' without alot of extra hunting around and clicking to do so. i.e.
Contact Wikipedia:
1. Report a tech problem
2. Report a problem with a page article.
3. Report this..
4. Report that.
5. etc, etc...
-- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:12, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Outside of the mobile interface, which has its own "report a technical problem" mechanism, we only get about three or four reports of technical trouble per month - and most of those seem to be about either editing the lede section or asking why things look weird on IE. Technical issues are just not a significant source of messages, especially when compared with messages about factual errors, vandalism, procedural questions, BLP stuff, copyvios, reuse requests, photo submissions, permission grants, press inquiries, donation help, or snippy "YOU ARE SO BIASED AGAINST MY VIEWS" complaints. (Also: please read WP:CONTACT again; there's an address right there which is getting a lot of use.) - Jredmond (talk) 21:22, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Actually, you've demonstrated the point. 'Where' is the link to report tech problems? -- A direct link would have been nice -- esp on the 'Contact Wikipedia' page. I suspect the main reason you don't get many messages about tech problems is because the main page is no help. Could you please supply the direct link to report 'tech problems' if you know it? Thanx. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 21:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Prior to this changeover there was a tech link. It is from this that Jredmond is drawing his data. Ironholds (talk) 22:44, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Page editor issues

The 'Contact Wikipedia' page has five main choices: 1. Readers 2. Article subjects 3. Licensing 4. Donors 5. Press and partnerships. (No link for 'Editors'.) After clicking on 'Readers' the only thing I can see that even approaches the problem is directions to send an email about any 'other' problems to some unnamed person and/or place at WP. Unless I'm missing something, and I'm hoping I have, there seems to be more considerations on the 'Contact WP' page given to readers and other parties than there is for editors and contributors. In any event there are some serious problems to report. I was editing a section on the Bibliography of early American naval history page, and after hitting 'Save page', the system hung in limbo for more than a minute, and then after it was over, it saved the section, but whipped out the rest of the page. Twice this has happened. During the week prior to this, saving edits has taken about 30 secs to a minute to process before the page was returned to view -- and I don't have a slow rig by any means. This occurred right after some new features were added to the editor i.e. An idiot light that says 'Your edit was saved'. In any event, a link for reporting this would be nice. Still can't find one, so I suppose I'll have to email 'someone' at WP and hope for the best. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 00:21, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes. "contact us" is biased towards readers. Why? Well, because editors are already inside the machine: they are familiar with wikimarkup, they are (more) familiar with how wikimarkup works, and they have access to a variety of places for reporting technical problems that are (much of the time) beyond readers. I'd suggest the village pump: I'd also suggest not calling the new features "idiot lights" if you want to be taken seriously. Ironholds (talk) 13:41, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Insert : Thanks for your feedback Ironholds. Sorry for my less than congenial tone. Was just a little frustrated to see 'new features' (frivolous imo) using up resources while experiencing this problem. In any case I'm wondering if all the Url links on the page in question is causing the problems. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Sorry to hear you encountered that problem. :/ This seems to be related to bug 41280, which is currently undergoing repair. In terms of the "contact us", my first thought is that it might be useful to include a section for editors that has links to various help fora (including the VPT) or at least the WP:HD. I second-guessed that, wondering if most editors wouldn't visit "Help", which is the first link under "Interaction". The main issue with that is that "Report a problem" used to link to this page, which hosted a lot more editor-based links and included a link to the 'Help desk'. Somebody wanting to "Report a problem" with a technical issue who follows that link now will land now at Wikipedia:Contact us, which could be a bit frustrating. I'd think we either need to retool the older page or actually offer some guidance to editors who follow the "report a problem" link. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Insert : Hello (again) Moonriddengirl, yes the page needs to be 'retooled' and include a straight-forward link regarding tech/system issues to a page that will be read by people capable of looking into/handling such issues. It's good to hear efforts are being made to fix bugs. In any case, the Bibliography of early American naval history page comes up quickly, however, when an edit is made it takes forever to process and return to view -- even when only one section is being edited. Again, on two occasions when I went to edit/save a section the section was saved but the rest of the page was whipped out. (!) I'm wondering if the changes recently made to the page editor is causing part of the problem -- probably not, but it should be checked also. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
This is because the page you are saving is complex. Everytime you edit it, the server needs to do a lot of work to generate it (sometimes up to a minute yes). However, when it's done that, it is much faster to load the page any following times. You will find the same behavior on any other complex page (for instance the Obama page). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:39, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

All I have to say is that the new design is 1000 times better. I had attempted to make the email addresses easier to find years ago but was reverted. I'm glad that something has finally happened to address this (pun heh). Gigs (talk) 17:36, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! :). Ironholds (talk) 19:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)


A few tweaks needed:

Thanks. —Quiddity (talk) 20:16, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I've made most of the changes but haven't dealt with the three pages you mention because I'd rather have them useful somewhere than eliminate them. Thoughts? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:40, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps redirect them? The file download problem is....a massive edge case, to be frank. "deleted page" can go to Wikipedia:Why was the page I created deleted? fairly easily, but warning messages are a hard one :S. I can't believe we haven't generated a page on "what to do if you get an unexpected warning" given the number of queries we see about it, but I can't find one. Ironholds (talk) 15:29, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Warn about delays?

We have unanswered quality tickets dating back three months (for non-OTRS agents, these are the more tricky letters generally related to BLP). Should we put some kind of warning especially at Wikipedia:Contact us - Subjects? I wonder if we should encourage those who want speedy resolution to try BLP first. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:04, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

We do need to "discourage" (aka present other options to) people e-mailing us. Ticket numbers have shot dramatically and we're currently having a hard time keeping up. If we continue at this rate, people will become dissatisfied when they receive an increasing number of generic responses. Pointing people anywhere possible, including the BLP noticeboard, etc. would likely only cut the incoming mail down a small fraction, any bit would help. I'll also use this opportunity to invite users to consider volunteering to respond to e-mails. Rjd0060 (talk) 12:49, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
Much of the uptick I've seen is misdirected mail - people see an article about (say) a fast-food restaurant, and send us an email to complain about dirty restrooms at a particular location, or they'll send us fan/hate mail intended for an article subject. I'm not sure how to fix that, though, because the link to this page is already "Contact Wikipedia"; because this contact page already says "Wikipedia" at least a dozen times before one reaches any e-mail address, even in the mobile UI; and because the address they have to copy/paste includes "wikimedia.org". - Jredmond (talk) 13:45, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Well, I found two spots on the MobileFeedback page that said "Contact" or "Contact us". I'm not sure if it will help but I've changed them both to "Contact Wikipedia". Maybe this will help some? Rjd0060 (talk) 15:04, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I've emailed the mobile team to ask them to not let feedback process when no message has been given. I'm not sure why that wasn't done initially :S. Ironholds (talk) 15:28, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I did not realize that the mobile feedback links are just mailto: links, and open the users' email client. As Arthur explains at bugzilla:41502. Bummer. Another reason we wait for an upgrade (it should allow for such filters). Rjd0060 (talk) 01:57, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Copy-editing

Please change "alternately" to "alternatively" in the Readers and Subjects sub-pages, to match the correct form in the Licensing sub-page, and in the latter page remove the redundant hyphen from the caption ("freely-licensed") and add the missing "to" to "the content you wish donate" in the final paragraph. Also change the two instances of "e-mail" to "email" in the Readers sub-page, to match the form used throughout the Contact us group (including one instance on the Readers sub-page); I personally prefer "e-mail", but consistency is the primary concern here. Waltham, The Duke of 16:05, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

All done (-Subjects -Licensing -Readers) The extra hyphen in that caption was already removed. Rjd0060 (talk) 13:34, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you very much for attending to my request, but I don't understand what you are saying about the hyphen in the caption; it still says "freely-licensed". Waltham, The Duke of 15:47, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:04, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Cannot upload file

There are some errors for uploading file on Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia. I cannot upload files like on 7 Seeds. The extension is same with a file on Dr. Slump, but an error will be happened for uploading the file on 7 Seeds.

Relly Komaruzaman Talk 13:39, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

On the Indonesian Wikipedia, or here? Ironholds (talk) 14:03, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Simon N. Powell

Good afternoon Wiki Editors,

Can someone please review Simon N. Powell's biography at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_N._Powell ?

His bio has been updated with additional citations and links.

Please let me know if this is satisfactory to your guidelines and if so, can you please update your comments and approve the bio?

Thank you.

Davidthelion2 (talk) 22:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Refactoring

I notice that the "sections" of this project page mix target audiences ("Readers", "Article subjects", "Donors", "Press") with general topics ("Licensing" and "partnerships"). Perhaps this could be changed to make it more consistent/logical? I'm not sure how, but maybe adding "For" before the target audiences might help (e.g., "For readers", etc.)? Or maybe it's just me.... - dcljr (talk) 11:26, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Article problem

I recently made an article and when I went to submit it their was nowhere to submit it. I need help finding a way to do that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46rage (talk • contribs) 15:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Mailto Links

Please add mailto links for the email addresses on this page to make it easier for people to use them on mobile devices. Nekiko (talk) 02:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Email Isn't Valid

Guys, there's a problem with the email address info-enwikimedia.org, it is "not recognized". I have tried sending something a few times but wasn't able to, please check this and change the email if possible. Thanks, Yambaram (talk) 14:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Rename license section

I propose we rename the section with the header "Licensing" into "Copy and reuse". That is more in line with the other headers which also deal more with intent rather than technical details. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Comment

The graphic showing the talk tab is basically useless. It just shows a floating couple of tabs, out of context. A wider view of a page would be more helpful. This is exacerbated by the fact that if you look for those two tabs on the contact us page.... you won't find them. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Add Technical Support Links

I have been investigating how users who have technical issues get to the right place for support, specifically how they would get to Wikimedia's bug tracker, Bugzilla.

I looked at how the support pages linked in the side bar under "Interaction" relate to each other, and I found that users looking for technical support starting with the pages linked at the sidebar are not clearly directed to pages that would provide technical support.

I realize that users, new users especially, may be hesitant to create a Bugzilla account and file a report, so I would like to modify Contact us - Readers to include links to Bugzilla, Village Pump (Technical), and Bug reports and feature request.

I welcome your thoughts and suggestions. -Valeriej (talk) 07:07, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

At that point we're giving readers four different options for technical support - those three, and the village pump. Of those four options, one is an unfamiliar maze that requires our readers to surface their email addresses (frankly I don't think we should be recommending people use it until that is fixed), two require people to edit, and one is, well, OTRS. Based on the sort of bugs we get through OTRS ("your site gave me a virus!!!!!") I'm not sure if you guys would even want it transferred to bugzilla in the first place. Ironholds (talk) 19:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Spam?

Seriously, how on Earth do I report spam?

I get an e-mail DAILY from this clown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Potnpan123 — Preceding unsigned comment added by KenSharp (talk • contribs) 12:54, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Reader feedback: In the page belonging to Mr ...

59.161.181.65 posted this comment on 28 June 2013 (view all feedback).

In the page belonging to Mr Narayana Murthy, it is mentioned that he is born to Kulkarnis. It is wrong. His wife is born to Kulkarnis.

Any thoughts?


I have tagged that section of the article with a request for a citation on Murthy's birthplace. In the future, feel free to ask questions on an article's talk page (the tab just to the right of 'article' on the top of the page). Or, Be BOLD! and make the edit yourself. EBY (talk) 03:31, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

This page really shouldn't have feedback enabled. grr. Thanks. Ironholds (talk) 04:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
I just noticed that myself. I've disabled it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:18, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
And somebody re-enabled it. Can't tell who, because logs are broken.
Add [[Category:Article Feedback Blacklist]] to the end of the page, to prevent feedback from being re-enabled. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:19, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that's right. When I look at [1], it says feedback can't be used by any user. Is that not the right setting? Legoktm (talk) 05:13, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
As of right now, I'm able to leave feedback. Jackmcbarn (talk) 12:11, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
I was able to leave feedback too. So, I've gone to change protection and altered the "Article feedback" menu item to "Disable for all users", which Done seems to have worked; but I can't find a log entry for that action. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
I can confirm it worked. Thanks. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:50, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

account cancellation

can you please delete my account i don't want to use this anymore.

USERNAME Philliptruong1992 (Redacted) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Philliptruong1992 (talk • contribs) 08:59, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

We don't delete user accounts, see WP:Delete account. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:32, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Content Destroyed by two IP

the Hong Kong Tramways content was destroyed by two IP in these days, Admin please kindly protect the page, so that IP can't edit. Thanks a lot !!!!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by HKTL (talk • contribs) 06:39, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Contact us. Requests for page protection or unprotection should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:19, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Fixes

Replace [[File:Wiki talk tab.png|thumb|right|Location of the talk page tab]] with [[File:Wiki talk tab.png|thumb|right|Location of the talk page tab|link=]] Mono 20:17, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Question: Mono, which page do you want to be edited? The image you specify doesn't appear on Wikipedia:Contact us. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 23:49, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I would guess Wikipedia:Contact us - Subjects, but I would question the need to delink the image. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:20, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I'm not sure what benefit there is to delinking. Disabled request for now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:30, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
  • it is confusing people when they click for some reason. see the file page history on commons for evidence of this. Mono 00:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Link to Wikipedia:Requests

We should have a link to Wikipedia:Requests somewhere on the fist page. This may help with directing requests that can be handled by users and admins here.

    • Like..... "For a list of the services and assistance that can be requested on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Requests"

-- Moxy (talk) 19:23, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Not done for now: @Moxy: I see where you're coming from here, but I think this needs at least some discussion before we implement it. There are a number of different ways we could do this - for example, putting the link on one of the pages linked from the left-hand-side menu - and there are an awful lot of people who follow the link to this page, so it matters what pages are linked from where. Could you advertise this request in a few relevant places, perhaps at the village pump, and see what the discussion looks like after a week or so? Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 00:55, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
No problem Mr. Stradivarius...I understand your concerns. Will make a discussion on the topic after the holidays so we get lots involved...simply a bad time of year to do anything now. Moxy (talk) 02:51, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 23 December 2013

I have created an article under the title "Bodagama Chandima". As before it was below the article of mine, the Buddhist Cocnept of Familily (now it is deleted by myself), still the artile remains under this title. Please help me to maintain the article "Bodagama Chandima" as an independent one when it will be accpeted.

MingKuang (talk) 09:38, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi MingKuang, and thanks for writing your article! Unfortunately, this page is for discussion of the Wikipedia:Contact us page itself, and any discussions about articles will probably be referred to those articles' talk pages. I couldn't find an article under the title you specified, so I assume it doesn't exist yet. If that's the case, you can submit it at Articles for creation and ask for it to be reviewed and created. And if you have any other questions, the help desk is the place you want. Hope this has been helpful. All the best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:18, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
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