Daniel Mayer wrote:
Such a page already exists on the English Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us but since it it not linked
prominently, few people who would find such a page useful know about it.
Yes... There are many things that actually are on Wikipedia, but are
difficult to find for the non-savvy.
I don't think that the biggest issue are calm people who are used to the
Internet, how it works etc. Those people will use Google or whatever
until they find good contact links, or at least they'll ponder their
actions.
The problem is people who, for some reason, are angry about our content,
don't find a clear way to talk to us, get really really angry and send
legal threats to random addresses they find on our pages.
This, especially, is compounded by the lack of a clearly identifiable
publisher/editor (which is a legal requirement in many countries for
books and periodicals, and could well be construed to be for large
Internet sites such as ours). If I take the front page of the French
language Wikipedia:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accueil
I don't know where to get this information from!
* There's a "A Wikimedia Project" (in English) icon hidden at the bottom
left. 99% of people won't know what this means (well, how is that
different from "A Mediawiki Project" and a link to some technical
computing site?). Furthermore, it links to a site in English, which most
people around the world don't read (at least, don't read fluently).
Remember, most "angry readers" will not be the kind that speak multiple
languages, know their way around the Internet, know how to use Whois,
Google etc. in order to find people.
* At the very bottom of the page, just under some big label about some
license (in English; most people don't even know what a license is
anyway) there's a link "about wikipedia" [translated]. Needless to say,
one has to look for it to find it. It links to a page that links to a
page "contact us" [translated], which is... blank! (I may fix that.)
So I think we should have a very clear text: "All text published by
their respective authors under their responsibility on servers
maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. [[How to contact us]]."
The page "how to contact us" should first explain how to use talk pages
for mundane matters, then give the coordinates of *restricted lists* of
*responsible people* who can deal with really important matters.
There seems to be an objection to having a list for legal complaints.
What is the alternative? Currently, people make legal complaints to
public mailing lists, get not so informed, unofficial answers, etc. That
makes the situation worse.
-- DM