Wikipedia:Problems FAQ

Overview FAQ -- Readers' FAQ -- Contributing FAQ -- Editing FAQ -- Administration FAQ -- Technical FAQ -- Problems FAQ -- Miscellaneous FAQ -- Help page

Note: If you're trying to get help for a specific technical problem that isn't answered by the FAQs, try asking in Wikipedia:Troubleshooting or at the village pump.

If you think it's a bug in the software, you can send a bug report to the developers. See Wikipedia:Bug reports for directions. It may also be a problem with your browser; see the next question.

My web browser and Wikipedia aren't playing nice!

Report at Wikipedia:Browser notes. Include a description of the problem, the name of your browser, the version number, and the operating system you are running.

How do I know if the problem is in the Wikipedia software or my browser?

If you have another web browser installed, you can try to reproduce the problem in both. Failing this, you can describe your problem at the Wikipedia:Village pump and ask other Wikipedians if they are having a similiar problem. If no one else is, it's probably a problem with your particular browser setup.

Some, but not all, images don't show up, such as Marthastewart-1.jpg. What's wrong?

Usually this is caused by ad-blocking software; uploaded files are distributed into random subdirectories, and 1/256th of all images on the server end up in /upload/a/ad/, which trips off some advertisement-blocking proxies. Configure your proxy to allow this directory, and you should be fine.

I have a billion objections to the very concept of Wikipedia. How can you expect me, or anyone, to take it seriously?

See replies to common objections for the most common objections, and answers given by participants.

Is it possible for a vandal to delete all Wikipedia pages?

Not really. You need to be an administrator to permanently and totally delete pages. Any other users could remove the text of a page, but any other user could restore the text from the history archive. If someone did an extensive attack, they could be blocked from further editing by the admins. Moreover, there are periodic backups kept of the server itself. For more on this topic, see this discussion of "wiki wipeouts" (http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWipeout) at the original Wiki.

Overview FAQ -- Readers' FAQ -- Contributing FAQ -- Editing FAQ -- Administration FAQ -- Technical FAQ -- Problems FAQ -- Miscellaneous FAQ -- Help page