Good places to find answers

You can find the answers to many of your questions at the following places:

  • Search — for many questions it's fastest and easiest to use the search box.
    e.g. To find the capital of South Africa, fill in south africa in the box on the left and click Search.
  • FAQ- Frequently Asked Questions
  • Reference Desk — for general questions (not about Wikipedia) you can ask our volunteers.
    e.g."What kept Hitler from invading Switzerland and Sweden?"
  • Help:Contents — information about using Wikipedia.
    e.g. "How do I add an image to an article?".

    Help Desk — for questions about using Wikipedia you can ask our volunteers.
  • Newcomers help page, a range of help services directed to new Wikipedia users

Other places to ask questions

  • Each article has a Talk page — click on the article's discussion link at the top of the page — for questions, reporting vandalism or discussions about the article.
  • Village pump is the place for technical and policy issues.

IRC help

You are also welcome to ask questions in one of Wikipedia's IRC channels. If you have an IRC client installed you can join a channel by connecting to #wikipedia-bootcamp (a help channel for new Wikipedians) or #wikipedia (for general chat).

Please do not post your question here.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

See below to get all the facts, or rather FAQs, about Wikipedia. Answers for these Frequently Asked Questions refer primarily to the English Wikipedia; the Wikipedias in other languages may have their own FAQs. If you can't find the answer to your question here, there are several other options:

  • If you are new to Wikipedia, you may want to read the Welcome page which provides information and links to get you started. The Help page, which is available at all times on the navigation menu (usually on the left-hand side of your screen), has links for explaining almost everything about Wikipedia.
  • Or, you can just try things out. There are over one million (1,000,000) Wikipedians who can set things right, so be bold. We invite you to participate. Type in your subject in the "search" box on the left, then click Go.

General and particular FAQs

  • Overview FAQ – General questions about the Wikipedia project.
  • Readers' FAQ – Finding, reading and using Wikipedia material.
  • Schools' and Teachers' FAQ – Using Wikipedia in the classroom.
  • Contributing FAQ – Why you might want to contribute to the Wikipedia project, and how you can do it.
  • Editing FAQ – The ins and outs of creating and editing Wikipedia pages.
  • Administration FAQ – What an administrator (or "sysop") is, sysop status, and server administration.
  • Technical FAQ – Questions about Wikipedia software and hardware and their limitations.
  • Forking FAQ – How to download Wikipedia content and/or software and/or create derivative works of Wikipedia.
  • Copyright FAQ – Questions pertaining to copyright issues.
  • Problems FAQ – Questions relating to past or present difficulties and criticism.
  • Miscellaneous FAQ – Everything else.

Specific FAQs

See also

Shortcut:

What not to do

Please do not overload any of our contact addressees. Our in-box is overloaded. We do not have staffers capable of answering your questions, whatever the topic (medicine, history, law, etc.). All emails concerning such questions will be returned with a message to see the Reference Desk.