Legal:Wikimedia Foundation Legal and Safety Contact Information

This website and other Wikimedia Projects are hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a United States 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation is incorporated in Florida, entity code N03000005323, and headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Do you need to contact the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Department (including to report something that you believe is unlawful)? The following guidance is for you.

The Wikimedia Foundation operates the servers and provides technical support for websites like Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Projects. However, it is important to understand that the Foundation, generally:

• Does not create, edit, or manage content on these websites.
• Does not control or directly supervise the actions of website users (including user groups like "administrators").
• Does not set or enforce editorial policies for the projects.

All of these activities are done by the user community — the general public who contribute to and maintain the Wikimedia Projects.

The Wikimedia Foundation does not accept responsibility for the actions of these community members. In rare cases, when somebody is acting officially on behalf of the Foundation on the websites we host, this will be made clear. Their account name will usually include "-WMF", "(WMF)", or "WMFOffice".

Most issues can be resolved directly with the user community.

On Wikipedia, for example, the community can decide to rewrite articles if they are insufficiently "neutral" or "encyclopedic" – whereas normally, the Wikimedia Foundation would only remove content for strict legal reasons.

The user community can therefore do much more for you, than the Wikimedia Foundation will. You are therefore strongly encouraged to first discuss any concerns with the community. Guidance is below.

You normally do not need a lawyer in order to speak with the community or the Wikimedia Foundation.

You can share your concerns by posting a message on the Talk Pages of the relevant project. You usually do not have to register an account in order to post messages on those pages – just click the "Edit" or "Add a subject" link on the page in question. Some of the Projects have additional, special functionality to help resolve content complaints. For example:

• On Wikimedia Commons, you can click "Nominate for Deletion" next to an image or other file.
• On English-language Wikipedia, you can use the Edit Request Wizard to ask for article changes.

If you are not sure how or where to do this, or if you would prefer to discuss your issue using email, then you can contact the Volunteer Response Team (VRT) at info@wikimedia.org. There are also specific VRT addresses for certain languages and Wikimedia Projects — you can find them listed here. Note: this contacts members of the user community. Contacting a VRT is not a way to contact the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation will probably be unaware of any email sent to VRT addresses.

When communicating with the user community, be patient, respectful and cooperative. Users are part of the general public, and they will not tolerate harassment or legal threats.

If you have already tried to resolve your issue through the community and still need formal assistance, you can contact the Wikimedia Foundation directly.

Emails should be sent to legalwikimediaorg.

The Wikimedia Foundation's registered office address can be found here. However, please ensure that you only send physical legal correspondence to: Wikimedia Foundation c/o CT Corporation System, 330 North Brand Boulevard, Glendale, California 91203-2336, USA

Email is preferred. Please send electronic documents in machine-readable format.

If you need information about a specific website user, please refer to the Wikimedia Foundation's Procedures and Guidelines for Requesting User Information.

Additional information for persons in the European Union can be found here.

In some parts of the world, supporters of the Wikimedia Projects run local chapters, usergroups or other "Movement affiliates". These are independent of the Wikimedia Foundation. They do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation, and they are not responsible for operating the Wikimedia Projects. Please only send legal or formal correspondence to these local groups if your issue concerns their own activities. They should not be formally contacted about problems concerning the Wikimedia Projects.

If you have a safety-related concern, you can reach out for support by emailing dedicated inboxes, 24/7:

• Threats of imminent physical harm: emergency@wikimedia.org
• General trust and safety inquiries and reports of abuse: ca@wikimedia.org
• Assessment of child protection concerns: legal-reports@wikimedia.org

To report a software security issue involving this website, email securitywikimediaorg or use the Report Security Issue form on Phabricator. See the detailed bug reporting guidance.

If your own account has been compromised, see the account recovery guidance.

Do you have a general question for the Wikimedia Foundation? Get in touch with our team by emailing answers@wikimedia.org.

See information about the answers@wikimedia.org process.