Communication/en

There are several ways to get in contact with other MediaWiki users, or to get instant help. The recommended options are listed below.

Landing
This is what most MediaWiki contributors do in their first day:


 * Register and add some info about yourself in your user page.
 * Follow the News and our social media channels.
 * Subscribe to mediawiki-l mailing list and perhaps more.
 * Join IRC channel and perhaps more.


 * Make sure you have an email confirmed and email notifications enabled in your mediawiki.org preferences.
 * "Watch" (click the star icon of) the pages you want to follow and perhaps contribute to.
 * All the better if you find a MediaWiki Group that matches your location or interests!

Chat
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net is the around-the-clock IRC channel for realtime communication. If you don't have an IRC client, use web chat.


 * Please read the FAQ before asking.
 * State your problem immediately and wait for a response. Don't ask "is there anyone here" or "can someone help me". This is normal IRC etiquette and allows participants to multitask effectively.
 * Expect to wait for some time for an initial response, especially in off-peak times. Despite this, out of courtesy for the volunteer who is helping you, try to answer their questions promptly.

If you don't get an answer, this could mean one of a number of things:


 * Nobody was around at the time of day you chose. If the channel is generally quiet, come back later.
 * You're asking a question which nobody knows the answer to, or which requires a lot of work to answer.
 * You're asking a question which is in the FAQ, the help, the manual, or other documentation, and the volunteers in the channel feel it would be best if you found it yourself.

Questions relating to problems with your particular installation of MediaWiki are generally best answered on IRC, since they often require a back-and-forth exchange to isolate the problem, which is tedious when performed on the mailing lists.

Mailing lists
There are several mailing lists available. The recommended ones are:


 * mediawiki-l (or via Gmane) (or via your newsreader) is the high-traffic mailing list to ask for support.
 * wikitech-l (or via Gmane) (or via your newsreader) is the high-traffic mailing list for software development, especially when it relates to Wikimedia (not just MediaWiki) wikis.
 * mediawiki-announce (or via Gmane) (or via your newsreader) is a low-traffic list for announcements of new MediaWiki releases and security updates (all messages also go to mediawiki-l).

Please check the archives first! All three lists are also available through Gmane which provides access as newsgroups or in various web-based formats, and includes its own archives and archive search. 

Twitter/Facebook/Identi.ca
Follow the MediaWiki accounts:

More details at Social media.
 * @MediaWiki (Twitter)
 * @MediaWiki (Identi.ca)
 * MediaWiki (Facebook)

Blog
The Wikimedia Blog has a tech section specifically for news and information from the Wikimedia Foundation’s Technology department (link - RSS feed).

Newsletter
English Wikipedia's Signpost has a regular technology report with content related to activity within Wikimedia Foundation’s Technology department.

Websites

 * Wikimedia's Meta-Wiki was formerly where documents were managed and proposals were discussed before this site was started. There is still a lot of content there that has yet to be moved.
 * Bugzilla is where feature requests and bugs may be reported or browsed.

For help with the MediaWiki software
There is no "official" forum or discussion board, but there are some private ones, e.g. mwusers.com and the MediaWiki Developers Facebook group.

You can also post support questions at Project:Support desk, though this is less frequented than the other sources of help listed on this page.

To discuss this site, MediaWiki.org

 * Project:Current issues