Under the "Date and time" tab in Special:Preferences, you may specify the format in which you view dates. This applies primarily to dates on your watchlist and other lists of changes.
It also affects dates in Wikipedia articles and other pages, but only if the day, month and year are wikified (e.g. [[May 14]], [[2007]]). Current recommended editing style is not to wikify dates for this purpose—most years and dates appearing in articles should not be wikilinked, and their format will therefore not be customized.
Articles created without a category should be tagged with a maintenance tag. Use the {{Uncategorized}} tag to put articles in a maintenance category. Optionally add a date parameter like {{Uncategorized| to put articles in by-date maintenance categories.
Such tagged articles are found at Uncategorized pages. You can try to categorize articles yourself. One useful technique is to follow links in the article to other similar articles and see how they are categorized, so you know what to copy.
The lead section is an essential summary of an article, located above the first heading.
In the source text (the text in the edit window), a heading looks like this:
== This is a heading ==
The lead section is a very important part of every article. The length should correspond to the overall length of the article: an article of 50,000 characters might well have a three paragraph lead, while one of 15,000 or less should limit itself to one or two paragraphs. The text should give a good overview of the article, but it should also get the reader hooked and interested in learning more. Take a look at some featured articles for inspiration.
It is often a good idea to align a representative image with the lead by placing [[File:Filename.jpg|thumb|caption]] just before the first heading. (Filename is the name of the desired file and caption is a description of the image).
When you create an article through Wikipedia's Articles for Creation process, it creates a draft in the Drafts area. The purpose of AfC process is to help new editors learn how to write better articles.
If accepted, your draft can be a valuable contribution to the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is over 17 years old and has well over five million articles. The vast majority of those articles never went through AfC which is only a few years old.
AfC works as a peer review process in which registered editors can either help create an article submitted or decline the article because it is unsuitable for Wikipedia. To nominate an existing draft or user sandbox for review at Articles for Creation, add the code {{subst:submit}} to the top of the draft or sandbox page. The AfC process allows others to review the draft when you are ready, and also to create the article for you, if it is suitable.
When working on an article, please strive for consensus with other contributors. When a disagreement occurs, try to find out what it is that the other side wants, and work towards finding a solution that is mutually acceptable. While maintaining neutrality and factual accuracy is essential, there are often ways to accommodate others without sacrificing either.
When both parties in an argument are slightly unhappy with the outcome, that is very likely an indication that a compromise has been reached.
Wikipedia has index pages called Categories, in which links to articles are provided based on category tags included in each article.
To add an article to a particular category, add [[Category:Category name]] to the article's text (preferably at the bottom). The assigned category should now show up at the bottom of the article, and a link to the page should show up on the indicated category page in Wikipedia's category system. If the category shows up as a blue link it is an active category; if the link shows up red then the category has yet to be created. Click on the red link to create the category page.
You can focus your searches by using the intitle: parameter. Here's how:
- (1) In the Wikipedia search box, type the word intitle followed by a colon, then the word or phrase you are looking for. When you click on "Search," then, you'll be presented with a list of articles that have your search term in their titles.
- (2) You can also search for one word or phrase in the title and for others in the text of the articles. For example:
Query Result intitle:airport All articles with airport in their titles intitle:international airport Articles containing the two words international and airport anywhere in their titles—which will give you a list that includes, for example, the article World's busiest airports by international passenger traffic parking intitle:airport Articles with parking in the text, and airport in their titles. intitle:"international airport" Articles containing the exact expression international airport in their titles.
An even more powerful tool for searching titles is Grep. It lets you search titles using regular expressions, and in the results it lists the titles only.
If you have requested an article, are waiting for an article that someone else has requested, or are concerned about a deleted article being re-created, you can add the non-existent page to your watchlist and find out when it is created! Follow the red link, then click the "watch" tab.
Help others keep track of what is happening to a page by filling in the edit summary.
Abbreviations may bewilder newcomers and old-timers alike. The Wikipedia system will help you make repetitive summaries: It keeps track of what you have written previously in your summaries, so you can type just a few characters, then choose from a popup menu for ease of completion.
Let us say you have thought of a new category you want to place some articles in. To create this new category, go to one of the pages that you wish to put there, and add a category tag naming the new category to the end of the article, like this:
[[Category:Category name]]
...where in place of category name you type the actual name of the category. When you save the page, the category should appear on the bottom line of the page. If it is indeed a new category, it will turn up in red. But this does not mean there is no such category: it might exist but with a slight difference in naming. Before you create a new category, make sure it does not already exist. In a new browser window, click on Special pages in the toolbox menu on the left side of your screen. Then click on All pages. Pick Category from the Namespace dropdown menu, and then enter the name of the category. Look over the index for synonymous categories.
Once you are sure your new name is good to go: Click on the redlink, and then click on the article creation link provided in the instructions that appear on your screen.
You will need to put a parent category on the new page, and then save the page. Going forward you can put your newly named category at the bottom of pages that you wish to add your new category to. Categories with too few pages in them are usually nominated for deletion.
To limit Google or Bing searches to the English Wikipedia, include this in your search string: site:en.wikipedia.org.
You can even do a Google search of Wikipedia from Wikipedia's own search box! For example, to use Google to search for pages with "geology" in the title, type this into WP's search box: google:geology+site:en.wikipedia.org
This link does the same thing: google:geology+site:en.wikipedia.org.
Another way is to use Google's or Bing's advanced settings. (To get there from Google's or Bing's search page, click on the gear icon).
Pages intended to be reused as portions of other pages are called templates. The names of template pages start with the prefix Template:. A template can be included on another page using the syntax {{Page name}} (including the curly brackets), but leave out the Template: prefix between the curly brackets!
On Wikipedia, templates are created to serve a variety of purposes, such as navigation boxes (e.g. Template:Europe topic), infoboxes (e.g. Template:Infobox person), and notices (e.g. Template:Controversial).
If you wish to make a personal boilerplate (such as a personalized welcome message, or the like), you make it in your own userspace. Simply create the page as a subpage of your userspace (in the format User:Foo/something). To put it onto a page, use the curly brackets as usual, but remember to use the syntax {{User:Foo/something}} rather than {{something}}. This is because the curly-bracket syntax automatically looks in the Template namespace, so if you want to use one from your own userspace, you need to tell it to look there.
Do you need to know what an acronym or initialism stands for? See Wikipedia's List of acronyms and initialisms.
Search for the category on that subject, by entering "Category:subject" (where "subject" is the category you want to see) into Wikipedia's search box.
To see if Wikipedia has an outline on the subject, check Portal:Contents/Outlines. For other lists, type "list" and your subject into the search box, or check Portal:Contents/Lists.
The <nowiki> tag is used to suppress the interpretation of Wiki markup. This is often useful to demonstrate or explain Wiki markup language to another user.
Wiki markup (and Wiki tags that resemble HTML tags) that are placed between <nowiki> and </nowiki> are not interpreted, and are displayed on the page just the way they are typed. For example, [[this]] would ordinarily form a wikilink, but since it is placed between <nowiki> and </nowiki>, like this: <nowiki>[[this]]</nowiki>, no such link is formed. This is rarely of use in an actual Wikipedia article.
The <nowiki> tag is helpful, for example, when asking questions at the Teahouse and explaining issues at the Village Pump as well as on an article's Talk page. In this case 'the markup code' can be displayed without being actionable.
There are two ways to create subcategories.
- Add a category tag to an already existing category page. For example, add the text
[[Category:Animals by common name]]to the bottom of the page Category:Apes by common name. Then "Apes by common name" will show up as a category in the list at Category:Animals by common name. - If the sub-category page does not already exist, then you have to create it first (see the tip How to create a category). For example, after you create the Category:Apes by common name page, then you click edit and add
[[Category:Animals by common name]]to the bottom of it.
What is an appropriate length for a Wikipedia article? This is discussed at Article length. An article can be as long as 10,000 words or more, if there are enough sources on the topic to provide for that much content. Undoubtedly there are articles that reach 20,000 words. The recommended maximum length is around 100kB of text. There is no standard for minimum length, an acceptable stub article could be as short as three or four sentences.
If you look at the menu on the right-hand side of any page on Wikipedia, there is a link to Page information. Clicking on that link shows lots of information about the page including its total size as well as how often it has been viewed. There is also this tool - you just copy and paste the text into there, and it counts it for you.
To see how Wikipedia compares to the work of its competitors (and colleagues), a good place to start is the List of online encyclopedias.
Besides the Tip of the day collection page, here's a dozen places to find out more about Wikipedia, and become proficient fast:
- Help:Contents
- Wikipedia:Community portal
- Wikipedia:Department directory
- Wikipedia:Quick directory
- Wikipedia:FAQ
- Wikipedia:Help desk *
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style
- Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines
- Wikipedia:Shortcut directory
- Wikipedia:Templates
- Wikipedia:Tools
- Wikipedia:Village pump *
* Those with asterisks after them are places to ask questions, and read the answers to questions posed by others.
Are you curious about how the rest of the world sees Wikipedia?
This project is frequently discussed in publications in many languages. Take a look at our press coverage. (Wikipedia also gets used as a source in the press, in books, in academic studies, and even in court.)
It is pretty good, and getting better. But...
...it is inappropriate to cite Wikipedia as a source, because it is updated in real time. So from the time you cite a Wikipedia page to the time another person looks up your citation, the page may have changed. Citations are usually only applicable to static publications that do not change once they are published. Wikipedia is not a static publication, it is dynamic!—it changes every minute. In this sense, Wikipedia is not a reliable citable source.
How reliable is Wikipedia as a general resource? Very reliable. Most of the content on Wikipedia is accurate, and many subjects are updated faster than the news. But, Wikipedia is subject to being edited by almost anyone and any time, and the edits may be biased, out of date, incorrect, or malicious (vandalism). Therefore, it is advisable to double-check what you learn in Wikipedia against other sources.
Keep in mind that many volunteers monitor Wikipedia for errors. Since there are so many people reading the articles and monitoring contributions using the Recent Changes page, and using watchlists, incorrect information is usually spotted and corrected quickly.
Some argue that new errors are also introduced all the time, so that the overall accuracy rate is not really improving. Nevertheless, by encouraging people to help with correcting articles, validating content, and providing useful references, errors will eventually be greatly reduced.
The more accurate Wikipedia becomes, the more it attracts additional contributors. It is a self-reinforcing cycle!
Add -wiki to your Google searches to exclude Wikipedia from your search. This is useful for finding sources, or for when you are already familiar with what Wikipedia has to say about a subject, and you want to see what else there is out there.
Tip: add markers "my text" around your search phrase.
To add a link to a category in an article (as opposed to adding the article to a category) create a normal link to the category page but place a colon at the beginning of it, just after the double opening square brackets. Here's an example:
To provide a link to Category:Animals (just like this one), add the text [[:Category:Animals]] where you want the link to appear. (Notice the extra colon at the beginning of the link).
Guess what the power users of Wikipedia use to edit...
The AutoWikiBrowser (AWB), of course.
AWB is a semi-automatic Wikipedia editor. It works on lists (batches) of pages, automatically edits the first page the way you specify, and then takes you to the next page once you approve the changes to the current page. It has powerful features. It can even run an external script, regex (regular expression) on each page it processes.
In order to use AWB, you must either be an experienced editor with over 500 edits, or a Wikipedia administrator.
AWB is very useful and helps perform repetitive WikiGnome tasks very quickly, like stubs sorting, substituting templates, and searching/replacing.
For on-the-fly general discussion and support requests for AWB, try the AWB IRC channel: #AutoWikiBrowser connect
The best place to look depends on what kind of help you need:
- If you're doing research and need to know where to find a particular piece of information, or just want the answer to a trivia question, try Wikipedia:Reference desk.
- Are you a contributor who wants to get help with the editing process and understanding Wikipedia's policies and guidelines? If so, ask a question at Wikipedia:Help desk.
- Visit the Teahouse if you are a new editor looking for interactive help. Ask questions about using Wikipedia and volunteers will respond as soon as possible.
- Ask about technical issues at Wikipedia:Village pump, which is a page where folks especially knowledgeable about Wikipedia hang out. The village pump is a metaphor for a place where lots of people gather to discuss interesting topics.
Sometimes it is necessary to refer to a specific section of a page when linking, rather than to the whole page.
You can create a link to any subheading on any page in Wikipedia by including a # character followed by the subheading at the end of a link. For example:
In all section links, be sure to use a piped link for readability, like this:
[[Wikipedia:Community Portal#Collaboration|Collaborations]]
which looks like this:
If a section title changes, rather than go red/inactive, the link will lead to the top of the linked page.
Note that redirects support sections links.
One way that many users like to contribute to Wikipedia is by patrolling recent changes (RCP) for vandalism or other common problems.
While this task can be done with a variety of tools it is as simple as looking over the Recent changes link (in your navigation box on the left side of your browser window).
Subsets of Recent Changes Patrol include New Page Patrol and Newimages.
It is important that the information in Wikipedia be true and accurate. To help ensure this, we have the Verifiability Policy, which states that all facts presented on Wikipedia must be verifiable.
When writing facts, it is very important that you cite your sources! Stick to a factual style even when writing about fiction or opinions. Providing references is particularly important for controversial opinions—instead of using weasel words like some people believe... you should cite sources to help readers learn who believes what, and why.
Keep in mind that the folks at Wikipedia's Reference desk are very knowledgeable across a wide range of subjects, and they may be able to help you track down source references for a particular detail.
To give you an idea of how Wikipedia compares in popularity to the other websites on the Internet, check out Size comparisons, and also Alexa traffic measurements, Usenet posts, and Google's news services.
To search the English Wikipedia with Google, cut and paste the following customized Google search link/command to your User page, or click on it and save it as a button on your browser's toolbar:
Category links work in a special way; they determine which categories an article shall belong to. The categories are displayed at the very bottom of the page, no matter where the link is inserted on the page.
Sometimes you may want to create a link to a category page without putting the current page in that category. This may arise on discussion pages or draft articles. To create such a link, place a colon (:) at the beginning of the link, like this: [[:Category:Physical exercise]], which shows up like this: Category:Physical exercise.
So if your link does not appear where you expected, it just means that you forgot the leading colon.
The same trick applies to links to Wikipedia in other languages. To create a visible link to the Indonesian Wikipedia article "Teknologi," use the id prefix for Indonesian, with a colon before it to keep it visible: [[:id:Teknologi]], which creates id:Teknologi.