Help:Suggestion mode - MediaWiki
Jump to content
From mediawiki.org
Translate this page
Languages:
Bahasa Indonesia
русский
العربية
中文
For detailed technical information, see
VisualEditor/Suggestion Mode
Suggestion Mode
is a software feature that proactively suggests various types of edits that people can consider making to improve content in Wikipedia articles. It is connected to the
Edit check
feature that suggests improvements while someone is writing new content.
As of early 2026, all types of Suggestion are available as a
Beta Feature
, to collect feedback from experienced editors. In the near future, most types will become available to newcomers by default, and/or available to experienced editors depending on how the local administrators configure each type.
For editors – list of suggestion types
edit source
Convert reference
edit source
This suggestion highlights references that are just bare links. You can click the "Convert" button to automatically create a more detailed reference. The tool will attempt to lookup the metadata, such as the author and date of publication, at the link's destination.
You should check the details that the tool fills in to ensure that they are accurate before publishing your edit.
There may be more local documentation available in your language via:
Help:Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor/1
Disambiguation links
edit source
This suggestion highlights links that point to disambiguation pages (which help readers navigate when a title could refer to multiple possible topics). Links to disambiguation pages from within the main content of Wikipedia articles are typically errors. These links can usually be corrected by linking to some page with a more specific title that can be found on the disambiguation page.
For example, if a page has a link within a phrase such as "a type of mathematical set", but "set" is linking to a disambiguation page, then the link could be corrected to point to the more specific article titled "Set (mathematics)" while retaining the link label of "set".
There may be more local documentation available in your language via:
Help:Disambiguation
Project:Disambiguation
Duplicate links
edit source
This suggestion highlights when there is more than one link to the same destination page within close proximity. In written prose content, it is preferable to only link a term/destination at most once per major section. This helps readers understand that any link is indicating "new context" that they may wish to visit.
There may be more local documentation available in your language via:
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking
External links
edit source
This suggestion highlights when an external link to a site elsewhere on the internet appears within the main content of an article. External links should not normally be located within the body of an article, except as citations that help with verifiability, or at the bottom of the article if they are officially related links.
There may be more local documentation available in your language via:
Project:External links
Heading levels
edit source
This suggestion highlights when heading levels may not follow the correct sequential structure. Headings should be nested sequentially, beginning at level 2 (==) for the main headings, then level 3 (===) for sub-headings, and so on. Level 1 headings are automatically reserved for the article title, and should not appear within the article's body text.
For example (showing the wikitext source markup for clarity):
Examples of correct and incorrect use of nested headings
Correct
Incorrect
[Article intro here]
== Section ==
[level 2]
===
Sub
-section ===
[3]
== Section ==
[2]
===
Sub
-section ===
[3]
====
Sub-sub
-section ====
[4]
== Section ==
[2]
[Article intro here]
==== Section
====
[4]
=== Section
===
[3]
== Section
==
[2]
== Section
==
[2]
==== Section
====
[4]
=== Section
===
[3]
There may be more local documentation available in your language via:
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout
Image caption missing
edit source
This suggestion highlights images that do not have a caption. A caption is text that appears below an image thumbnail. Most captions draw attention to something in the image that is not obvious, such as its relevance to the text. A caption may be a few words or several sentences. Writing good captions takes effort; along with the lead and section headings, captions are the most commonly read words in an article, so they should be succinct and informative.
There may be more local documentation available in your language via:
Help:Introduction to images with VisualEditor/4
Help:Pictures
Wikipedia:Captions
Year link
edit source
Sometimes a previous editor has attempted to update a link, but they have only changed the link label. This may have been an accident, or vandalism. You can help to fix these instances by checking which year is meant to be referred to and then making sure the link and the link label match. If you are unsure, then ask on the article's
talk page
For experienced editors – review tags
edit source
You can review the edits which were made by someone who saw or used a Suggestion in recent changes and your Watchlist.
The following tags are available:
Editsuggestion-seen
: At least one edit suggestion was likely seen by the user
Editsuggestion-used
: At least one edit suggestion's button was used as part of the edit
Other types of edit tag are in development.
For administrators – local customization
edit source
Administrators can configure each type of Suggestion that is available. Existing configurations are listed at each wiki at their
Special:EditChecks
page, and can be adjusted at the linked json page. See
Edit check/Configuration
for documentation about the available parameters that can be changed or added.
Configuration happens on a per-wiki basis so that volunteers can ensure each Suggestion aligns with local policies and conventions and is integrated with existing moderation processes.
The aspects of a Suggestion that are community configurable will vary on a case-by-case basis.
Please customize these tools:
Localize the configuration for your wiki
Localize the documentation links for your wiki
Create unique Suggestions for your language
Create a local configuration page
edit source
Each wiki needs to define some basic details, such as which standard "section heading" titles to exclude from each type of default suggestion. You should create a page for this at your local
MediaWiki:Editcheck-config.json
. For example, below is a good default to start with, after you replace the "heading names" with your local language versions, plus add any additional headings (in lower-case). The last entry in each array (list) must not include a comma. The example below, in Spanish, excludes the "external links", "notes", "references", and "see also" headings from two types of suggestion.
"addReference"
"ignoreLeadSection"
true
"ignoreSections"
"enlaces externos"
"notas"
"referencias"
"véase también"
},
"externalLink"
"ignoreSections"
"enlaces externos"
"notas"
"referencias"
"véase también"
},
"disambiguation"
"ignoreSections"
"véase también"
],
"ignoreDisambiguationPages"
true
Localize the links
edit source
Most types of Suggestion have one or more associated links for the editor to learn, or to be reminded, of relevant documentation. By default these links point to this page.
If your community has a relevant local documentation page about a suggestion type, you should override the default links
. You need to use the same protocol-relative partial URLs that the default is using (not short internal wikilinks) for technical reasons. See
this example edit
for reference.
The links for each type are located on your wiki at these locations:
MediaWiki:Editcheck-convertreference-descriptionlink
MediaWiki:Editcheck-disambiguation-descriptionlink
MediaWiki:Editcheck-duplicate-link-descriptionlink
MediaWiki:Editcheck-external-link-descriptionlink
MediaWiki:Editcheck-external-link-convertlink
(second link)
MediaWiki:Editcheck-headinglevel-descriptionlink
MediaWiki:Editcheck-image-caption-descriptionlink
MediaWiki:Editcheck-tone-descriptionlink
Create custom local types of Suggestions
edit source
Each community can create custom Suggestions.
TextMatch
is a locally-customizable feature that enables creating community-determined edit checks. It searches for predetermined queries and, when a match is found, displays the regular edit check dialog along with the corresponding message, title, and actions for that query.
Your community can create anything. Example ideas: Detect cliches or idioms, or relative-time references, that normally should not appear in encyclopedic writing; plus, teach the editor about local writing guidelines.
See the TextMatch documentation page for details on a few examples, or view the
demonstration-configuration at beta cluster Wikipedia
Other communities are expanding their configuration to include local textMatch suggestions, for example:
w:ru:MediaWiki:Editcheck-config.json
- common typo detection, common grammer-error detection, non-standard country-name detection, and more
w:he:MediaWiki:Editcheck-config.json
- common typo detection
If you have ideas for new types of Suggestion that are more complex than can be achieved with TextMatch, and require custom code, please
add your ideas to the list
Feedback
edit source
If there are particular aspects of Suggestions that you think need to be configurable on-wiki, please share what you are thinking in
T327959
or on
the project talk page
For translators
edit source
You can
help to translate the guidance
that is shown to editors via translatewiki.
See also
edit source
VisualEditor/Suggestion Mode
– Detailed project information
Retrieved from "
Help
Suggestion mode
Add topic