Many Wikipedians/articles require the help of an expert on a specific subject area. This page documents how such help can be requested, found and offered.
Experts are people with a significantly high level of knowledge or expertise. They aren't necessarily professionals. The specific subject area of their expertise may range from topics in philosophy or economics to programming languages or any kind of inner workings of Wikipedia.
Professors might assign their students to edit Wikipedia for course credit in a well-managed fashion, and others could abstain from advocacy to fulfill Wikipedia's mission.
A similar list of images is at c:Category:Disputed diagrams
There are also several lists of fully missing articles, organised by topic at WP:Requested articles and
The need for expert help can be noted for a specific articles using the ((Expert needed)) template.
Many Wikipedians have already implicitly or explicitly declared their area of expertise. They can be found by the following categories:
Relevant editors may also be found by:
The most straight-forward way to finding experts on a specific subject area would be to search the Web for them. While the most prolific experts on a specific subject usually have less time it is also useful to ask the help of less prolific people engaged in the specific subject area. There are many ways such people may be found. This ranges from academic publications to Internet posts and publicized lists of members of organizations.
There are two main possible routes to take:
Typically the best way to ask for help by individuals is by email, clarifying:
Some Wikipedians think professors should become Wikipedians before they start assigning Wikipedia; see Wikipedia:Assignments for student editors.[relevant?]
It is also possible to post a public request for expert on relevant websites. Websites well suited for such requests are the most relevant subpages on reddit, so called "subreddits", for the specific subject area or Internet forums with own categories for the subject area. Before posting such a request please make sure that the website in question allows such to be posted (which is usually the case) and that it won't result in canvassing.
Experts can offer their help implicitly by adding relevant categories to their userpages so that people who look for help using the categories listed in #Experts on Wikipedia may find them. Or explicitly by responding to requests they get notified about by joining WikiProjects, by monitoring articles within the scope of their area of expertise or by browsing or monitoring additions to the category/ies of their expertise within Category:Articles needing expert attention.