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Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
Discuss
About this book
Introduction
Part I: Editing, creating, and maintaining articles
Chapter 1: Editing for the first time
Chapter 2: Documenting your sources
Chapter 3: Setting up your account and personal workspace
Chapter 4: Creating a new article
Chapter 5: Who did what: Page histories and reverting
Chapter 6: Monitoring changes
Chapter 7: Dealing with vandalism and spam
Part II: Collaborating with other editors
Chapter 8: Communicating with your fellow editors
Chapter 9: WikiProjects and other group efforts
Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes
Chapter 11: Handling incivility and personal attacks
Chapter 12: Lending other editors a hand
Part III: Formatting and illustrating articles
Chapter 13: Article sections and tables of contents
Chapter 14: Creating lists and tables
Chapter 15: Adding images
Part IV: Building a stronger encyclopedia
Chapter 16: Getting readers to the right article: naming, redirects, and disambiguation
Chapter 17: Categorizing articles
Chapter 18: Better articles: A systematic approach
Chapter 19: Deleting existing articles
Part V: Customizing Wikipedia
Chapter 20: Customizing with preferences
Chapter 21: Easier editing with JavaScript
Part VI: Appendices
Appendix A: A tour of the Wikipedia page
Appendix B: Reader's guide to Wikipedia
Appendix C: Learning more
Each page on Wikipedia includes links in a number of places: at the screen's top right; across the top in tabs; on the left side in boxes, and disclaimers and other
boilerplate text
at the bottom of the page.
These features are discussed in detail where they come up throughout this book. This appendix serves as a quick reference when you have a question about what an onscreen element does.
Note:
The placement of the links and tabs described in this appendix are based on the use of the
Vector
skin, the standard way that all new editors see Wikipedia. If you're using one of the other skins, some of these elements will be in a different place on your screen, and some may not be visible at all. (If you're not sure which skin you're using, see
the section about skins
.)
The upper-right links
edit
The upper-right corner of your screen contains six links when you're logged in, and four links when you're not logged in. Each of these links takes you to one of your personal account pages, or those of your IP address if you aren't logged in.
Note:
If you have windows open to multiple Wikipedia pages, logging out on one page logs you out completely. Each of the other open pages continues to
display
as if you were logged in corner until you refresh the page. Beware: If you edit one of those pages—whether you refresh the page or not—you're
editing anonymously
),, since you're not logged in.
[Your username]
edit
Opens your user page;
User:Your username goes here
. If the page doesn't yet exist, the link is red.
"Setting Up Your User Page"
describes how to create and use this page. This link only displays if you are logged in.
Talk
edit
Opens your user talk page;
User talk:Your username goes here
. If the page doesn't yet exist, the link is red.
"User talk page postings"
discusses user talk pages. If you are not logged in, then this link instead opens a link to the talk page associated with your IP address.
Sandbox
edit
Points to your sandbox (see
the section about personal sandboxes
), assuming that it exists. This link only displays if you are logged in.
Preferences
edit
Opens a page with lots of tabs. Starts out showing the contents of the first tab, User Profile. The options listed on these tabs let you customize how you experience Wikipedia, as both a reader and an editor. Chapter 20 discusses this customization in detail (
"Customizing with preferences"
). This link only displays if you are logged in.
Watchlist
edit
Shows the
Special:Watchlist
report, used for monitoring edits by other editors to pages you're interested in. A lengthy discussion of the use of this report begins on
"Wikipedia's standard watchlist"
. This link only displays if you are logged in.
Contributions
edit
Shows the
Special:Contributions
report, preloaded with your user name (or IP address if you are not logged in) in the "IP Address or username" field. The report lists all your edits in reverse chronological order, going back to the first edit you ever did.
"Monitoring changes"
shows what the report looks like.
Note:
If you edited a page that was subsequently deleted, you don't see the edit listed in this report. Only administrators get to see such edits.
Log out
edit
Clicking this link logs you out of Wikipedia immediately. If you continue editing while logged out, Wikipedia records the edits under the IP address of the computer you're using, rather than under your user name. (
"Why register?"
discusses implications of editing using an IP address.) If you are not logged in, a "Log in" link is displayed instead, which points to a form where you enter your username and password to log in.
Create account
edit
Clicking this link (only present when you are not logged in) shows you the form for creating an account. See
the section about registering
for more details.
The top tabs
edit
At the top of every page in Wikipedia, you can expect to see six tabs (seven tabs if it's a talk page). These tabs let you switch between the main article page, the talk (discussion) page, the page history, and so on.
Note:
Pages with the "Special:" prefix, such as the
Special:Watchlist
page, don't have tabs. Special pages, which Wikipedia's software automatically generates, don't have a history, and you can't edit them. Think of them as one-time reports.
Article, category, or project page
edit
The name of the leftmost tab indicates the
namespace
you're in. For example, if you're looking at an article, it says "article". If you're looking at a Project page, it says "project page". (All Project pages have the prefix "Wikipedia:".) if you're looking at a Category page (
Chapter 18: Better articles: A systematic approach
), it says "category", and so on.
Note:
You may hear other editors use the term
projectspace
. That just means all Project pages. If the leftmost tab says, "project page", you're in projectspace. If you want to get the terminology right, articles are in
mainspace
, not "articlespace" (though if you slip up and use the latter word, other editors will understand what you're talking about).
Talk
edit
Displays the talk page associated with an article, Wikipedia instructional page, category, or whatever. (See
Chapter 8: Communicating with your fellow editors
for details on how to properly use talk pages.)
Edit (or View source)
edit
Clicking this tab takes you to the page's editing screen (
the section about the edit page
). The vast majority of Wikipedia pages have an "Edit" tab, and you're free to do so.
If you see "View source" rather than "Edit", the page is protected against editing. If you click that tab, you see the page's wikicode and an explanation as to why you can't edit the page.
Note:
Don't confuse "View source" with your Web browser's Source or Page Source command (which is usually under the View menu). That command shows you the page's HTML code, not the wikisource.
"+" or "New section" (discussion pages only)
edit
The "+" tab is for adding a new section to talk pages and a few project pages, such as noticeboards and the Help desk. When you click on it, Wikipedia starts a new section at the bottom of a page. As discussed in
Chapter 8
, use this tab when starting a discussion of a new topic (rather than clicking "edit this page" or editing the existing bottom section, and adding a new heading). User preferences offer the display choice "+" or "New Section".
View history
edit
Shows all edits of the page, going back to the first edit that created the page. (In Wikipedia, an edit is simply the difference between one version of a page and the previous version.) You can also use this page to see all previous versions of the page, with the most recent listed at the top, going back to the very first version.
Chapter 5: Who did what: Page histories and reverting
explains in detail how to interpret the history pages of articles.
The "edit this page", "move", and "watch" tabs don't apply to history pages—you can't edit them, rename them, or put them on your watchlist. If you click one of these three tabs, you're really acting on the page whose history you were looking at, not the history page itself. That's why when you select the "history" tab, the "article" or "discussion" tab is selected as well, so you can tell what the history page pertains to. Also, that selected tab shows you what page is affected when you click, say, the "move" tab.
Watch/Unwatch (star)
edit
Watching a page means adding it to the list of pages in your
Special:Watchlist
report.
Chapter 6: Monitoring changes
explains how to monitor pages using your watchlist.
Move
edit
The "move" tab is found in a drop-down menu labelled "More".
Starts the process of renaming a page. Renaming is extensively discussed in
Chapter 17: Categorizing articles
If you don't see a "Move" tab, the page is protected against being renamed. For example, you can't rename Wikipedia's Main Page. Move protection normally happens when pages have been vandalized by renaming, or where there's been a big controversy over the name.
Search box
edit
Wikipedia's search box is handy for the shortcuts mentioned throughout this book, but, frankly, the underlying search engine isn't very good for general searches. If you don't get to the page you want when you click the magnifying glass, and don't see what you're looking for in the search results, it's time for plan B—using an external search engine—as described in the box at the top of
Chapter 4: Creating a new article
Left side
edit
The left side of every Wikipedia page has four boxes, three containing a number of links. The links in some of the boxes change depending on what type of page you're looking at (article, user, and so on). If you come across technical documentation, you'll find that these boxes and links are referred to, collectively, as the Quickbar or the sidebar.
Navigation box links
edit
These links take you to various Wikipedia entry points. They're intended more for readers than for editors.
Main page
edit
Takes you to Wikipedia's Main Page, which changes daily. You see the day's featured article and picture, lists of new articles and hot news topics, an "on this day" section, and links to other parts of Wikipedia.
Note:
Although the page's left tab says "Main Page", not "article", the Main Page is in mainspace, where all articles reside. (Occasionally editors propose that the Main Page be moved to portalspace, since it has portal-like aspects.)
Contents
edit
This page describes all the reference lists (overviews, lists, glossaries, and so on) and indices available to browse Wikipedia. It's lengthy, comprehensive, and fairly boring.
Current events
edit
Shows the "Current events" portal, which has links to new or updated Wikipedia stories about headline news and other current events.
Wikipedia's mission isn't to supply breaking news, so there's a link to a separate project, Wikinews, for those who want to write news stories. The news coverage at Wikinews is much less than at Wikipedia, though, due to the relatively few active editors at Wikinews.
Random article
edit
Takes you to a completely random article among the three million-odd articles on Wikipedia. Clicking the link 20 or so times will give you a pretty good idea of the range of Wikipedia articles, in terms of both topic and quality.
About Wikipedia
edit
This page has all the facts and figures about Wikipedia. This information may interest readers and potential editors, but it's especially good if you want to use Wikipedia for research or citation, or if you're just curious about Wikipedia's history and ownership. You can learn more about these topics in this book's Introduction, and
Appendix C: Learning more
edit
A wide range of links for the press, readers, and editors. (No, Wikipedia doesn't have an 800 number to call with complaints. Neither does the Wikimedia Foundation.)
Donate
edit
Wikipedia runs solely on donations. Credit cards and other forms of payment are gladly accepted.
Contribute section
edit
This section has a grab bag of links, all loosely related to different ways you can edit Wikipedia.
Help
edit
Goes to the
Help:Contents
page, an organized overview of Wikipedia for editors. This page is discussed extensively in
Appendix C
Learn to edit
edit
Goes to
Help:Introduction
, the beginning of a (significantly shorter than this manual) tutorial on how to edit Wikipedia.
Community portal
edit
Clicking this link is like going backstage at Wikipedia. Just as if you wander backstage at a busy theater, someone's sure to put a prop in your hand or ask you to help raise the curtain, the
Community portal
page is buzzing with gobs of links to projects that need a hand, groups that want help with articles, and more. There is also a link to Wikipedia's internal newsletter—
The Wikipedia Signpost
Recent changes
edit
The
Recent changes
page (
Special:RecentChanges
) takes a dip into the stream of Wikipedia edits—the more than 100,000 daily changes to Wikipedia. You can change the namespace to limit what you see; for example, you can choose "(Main)" to see just edits to articles. You can narrow which edits you see; for example, showing only edits by IP (anonymous) editors, in case you're on the prowl for vandals. In fact, the
Recent changes
page is primarily for vandal-fighting, as discussed in
the section about dealing with vandalism
Upload file
edit
Starts the process of uploading an image to Wikipedia (for details, see
Chapter 15
).
Tools section
edit
The first three links in the Toolbox are primarily for editors, the last three for readers.
What links here
edit
Lists all the
incoming
links to the page where you are. As an editor, you'll find this useful in several ways:
When you're creating an article (
Chapter 4
) or improving one (
Chapter 18
), you can identify
outgoing
links to improve the article.
When looking at a disambiguation page, you can identify incoming links that need to be fixed (
Chapter 16
).
When you're trying to figure out how a template works by looking at pages that use it. (All pages that use a template link to the template page.)
When you're trying to figure out whether a Wikipedia instructional page is often cited or virtually ignored.
Related changes
edit
Shows the page
Special:RecentChangesLinked
. Here's an example of how it works: Suppose you're looking at article A, which has wikilinks to articles X, Y, and Z. Clicking the "Related changes" link displays a report showing recent edits to those three articles.
Chapter 6
describes using this page as part of an additional watchlist.
Note:
If you type
Special:RecentChangesLinked
into the search box on the left, then you get a "No target" error page. The search box doesn't know what page you're looking at in the window.
Special pages
edit
Lists about 60 of these pages, essentially one-time reports, which are like snapshots and can't be edited. Among the most common that you'll use as an editor is the
Special:Contributions
report (
the section about user contribution pages
) and the
Special:Watchlist
report (
the section about watchlists
).
Permanent link
edit
Equivalent to clicking the most recent version of a page in the page's history tab. The URL points to that version, so you can use it as a permanent link.
Page information
edit
Takes you to a page with a summary of information about the page you are viewing. This includes the page's size, how many redirects point to it, who created it, when it was last modified, the number of distinct users who have edited it, and a list of the templates used by the page.
Wikidata item
edit
Takes you to the
Wikidata
item about the article, if one exists. For example, the Wikidata item for this appendix is
d:Q8616106
. Wikidata items are used primarily to store
interwiki links
, but can also store other miscellaneous data for use in templates, such as infoboxes.
Cite this page
edit
Appears only when a page is an article. It provides a cut-and-paste citation for that article in a wide variety of formats (APA style, MLA style, BibTeX entry, and so on).
Note:
When you use "Cite this page", you see a disclaimer advising you not to use Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia) as your only source for information in professional or academic settings, like published articles and term papers. As the disclaimer says, "Citing an encyclopedia as an important reference in footnotes or bibliographies may result in censure or a failing grade."
Print/export Links
edit
Contains two different methods of exporting the content of an article. This section only appears on articles.
Download as PDF
edit
Downloads the current page as a PDF file, which you can read or print using software such as Adobe Reader.
Printable version
edit
Generates a page without all of the tabs, boxes, and links described in this Appendix, which is more suitable for printing. For non-article pages, this link instead appears in the "Tools" section.
Languages
edit
This link appears only when an editor has included at least one link within the English Wikipedia page to a comparable page in another language version of Wikipedia. Such links are called
interlanguage
links. Most articles in the English Wikipedia don't have a link to a comparable page on another language Wikipedia. Most of the larger articles, such as featured articles, do have such links.
Links in the body of the page
edit
The body of a Wikipedia page is where the content goes. It's a blank page Wikipedia provides for editors to fill in. On regular Wikipedia pages, category links always appear at the very bottom of a page's body. All other types of links, including the table of contents, can show up wherever the editor wants to put them.
However, as discussed in
Chapter 14: Creating lists and tables
, there are standards for article pages: which sections go where, and how sections should be named, and where the table of contents goes. Still, these are human-monitored standards, not software-determined formats, so if you see something unusual, take a look—it may be something that needs fixing.
There are two kinds of pages where human editors can't add or edit links:
Special pages
. Special pages are automatically generated one-time reports. Since you can't edit these pages, you can't add links to them.
Category pages
. The body of a Category page is essentially a bunch of links that the software has kept track of.
Bottom links
edit
At the bottom of every Wikipedia page you'll find a standard set of links, as shown in
Figure A-1
. These links take you to Wikipedia's privacy policy,
about page
, disclaimers,
Contact Us page
, an information page about the developers of Wikipedia's source code, various statistics, and finally the mobile version of the website.
Figure A-1
The standard links at the bottom of each Wikipedia page include ones to the license under which content can be legally copied, to the home page of the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, and to Wikipedia's privacy policy and disclaimers.
Additional features in edit mode
edit
When you click the "edit" link, the page's format changes.
Edit toolbar
edit
At the top of the page when you're in editing mode, you see the edit toolbar (
Figure A-2
).
Figure A-2
The edit toolbar is always just above the edit box, near the top of the page. If you're not sure what an icon does, just move your mouse pointer to one of the icons and see what the tooltip says.
Most icons on the toolbar work in either of two ways:
If you select text and then click an icon, then you format the selected text.
If you don't select any text, then when you click on an icon, the software adds and formats some sample text for you, highlighting it so you can replace it with your own text.
Some icons, instead of adding text to the edit window, open a dialog box you fill out. Some other icons, such as signature icon (
), insert specific text into the edit box, wherever the cursor is, instead.
One preference lets you hide the edit toolbar if you never use it (see
the section about the "Editing" section of your preferences
). If you haven't turned the toolbar off, but you don't see it, or it doesn't function correctly, then you may not have JavaScript turned on (see
the section about enabling JavaScript
).
Edit box
edit
The edit box is where you find (or enter) the wikicode that creates content for a Wikipedia page. If you're creating a page, it starts out as a big, empty box. You can specify the size of the edit box in your preferences (see
the section about the "Editing" section of your preferences
).
Below the edit box
edit
Below the edit box, you find a large amount of text in blue, as shown in
Figure A-3
. Clicking one of these items inserts something into the edit box—something that would otherwise require a lot of typing or cryptic codes. At the left side of the toolbar, these is a drop-down menu, allowing you to select a large number of different sets of characters.
Figure A-3
There are lots of symbols and other text below the edit summary box, which appear in the edit box when you click them. These include wiki markup, symbols, special characters, the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols, and so on.
A number of important buttons are located below the text in blue (
Figure A-4
).
Figure A-4
Below the edit box is a box to enter the edit summary for the change you're making to the page you're editing, plus two checkboxes, three buttons, and a bunch of links.
Cancel
. Cancels your edit and goes back to reading mode.
Edit summary
. As explained on
in Chapter 1
, always explain your edit by putting something into the edit summary box.
"This is a minor edit" checkbox
. Turn on this box if you're making an edit that's so tiny it could never be the subject of dispute—like changing a misspelling or punctuation.
"Watch this page" checkbox
. Adds a page to your watchlist (
Chapter 6
).
"Publish changes" button
. Click here when you've finished your edit. (Don't forget to enter an edit summary and preview the page first.)
"Show preview" button
. It's always a good idea to check your work before publishing it (
the section about previewing
).
"Show changes" button
. Shows the difference, above the edit box, between the current version of the section or page you're editing and the section or page as you've changed it. (In other words, it's a diff of your yet-to-be-published edit.) It's useful if you've forgotten what you've done; or to check whether you've deleted some text by mistake; or to recover some deleted text without having to go back to the article, in another window, and copy from there.
List of transcluded pages
edit
Finally, at the very bottom of the edit window is a list of
transcluded pages
—generally, but not always, these are templates (
Chapter 1
). This list is extremely helpful in figuring out, on the rare occasions that page displays are odd, whether the problem might be in the wikicode that a template adds to a page.
Additional options on user pages
edit
When you're viewing a user page or user talk page, you'll see three more links in the middle of the toolbox.
User contributions
edit
Shows all edits by the editor whose user or user talk page you're looking at.
Chapter 6
shows what the report looks like. This report lets you check for unreverted vandalism or spam by someone who just vandalized or spammed an article. It also help you get a more general sense of whether an editor is doing constructive edits or not.
Chapter 7: Dealing with vandalism and spam
discusses a "revert, review, report or warn" process for vandalism; this report is one of the major parts of the review step. It also has a link to a page that shows whether the editor has been previously blocked.
Logs
edit
Shows a combined display of a number of different logs: upload, patrol, page move, user creation, deletion, protection, user block, user renaming, and user rights. (The last five are logs of actions that normal editors can't do.)
You can narrow the list of edits in three ways:
By selecting a log type
By selecting the user name for a user of interest
By selecting a page name ("Article", or "User talk:Username", for example)
Normal edits aren't in any of those logs; for those, see the
Recent changes
special page (filterable by namespace), or use the
User contributions
special page, or use a page history.
Email this user
edit
If an editor has not set up email with Wikipedia, you don't see this link. If you do see it and you've also turned on email, then you can email that editor. Details on this email process are in
the section about email
Keyboard shortcuts
edit
If you like to keep your hands on your keyboard, typing key combinations to save time rather than using the mouse, you may be surprised not to find many keyboard shortcuts sprinkled throughout this book. Wikipedia does have such shortcuts, but the exact key combinations depend not only on your operating system (Mac or Windows) and your Web browser, but even the version of the Web browser you're using.
The page
Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts
(shortcut:
WP:K
) tells you what special keys to press in combination letter or number keys to do something. For example, in Internet Explorer for Windows, Shift+Alt+Z takes you to the Main Page. A number of the keystrokes work for administrators (sysops) only. But you'll find keyboard shortcuts for the Wikipedia features in the following locations:
The search box
Buttons below the edit box, like "Show preview" and "Publish changes"
The standard tabs along the top of the page
The six links at the upper-right of the screen
Top of page
Wikipedia help pages
Visit the
Teahouse
or the
Help desk
for an interactive
Q & A
forum.
FAQs
(?)
Reference desks
(?)
Noticeboards
(?)
Cheatsheet
(?)
Directories
(?)
Village pumps
(?)
About Wikipedia
(?)
Administration
Purpose
Principles
Policies and guidelines
What Wikipedia is not
Disclaimer
parental advice
Making requests
Who writes Wikipedia?
Help for readers
(?)
FAQ
Books
Glossary
Mobile access
Other languages
Saved pages
Searching
Students
Viewing media
Contributing
to Wikipedia
(?)
Advice for young editors
Avoiding common mistakes
Etiquette
Simplified Manual of Style
Simplified rule-set
"Ignore all rules"
"The rules are principles"
Style-tips
Tip of the day
Your first article
article wizard
Getting started
(?)
Why create an account?
Introductions by topic
Graphics tutorials
Picture tutorial
IRC
(live chat)
tutorial
VisualEditor user guide
Dos and don'ts
(?)
Biographies
Biographies (living)
Categorization
Consensus
Discussions
Disambiguation
Images
Leads
Links
Lists
References
Tables
Titles (of articles)
How-to pages
and
information pages
(?)
Appealing blocks
Article deletion
Categories
Citations/references
Referencing for beginners
Citation Style 1
Cite errors
References and page numbers
Convert
Diff
Editing
Minor edit
toolbar
edit conflict
Find sources
Files
Footnotes
Image deletion
Infoboxes
Linking
link color
Logging in
Merging
New page review
Page name
Renaming pages
Redirect
Passwords
Email confirmation
Reverting
Simple vandalism cleanup
Talk pages
archiving
simple archiving
User contributions
WP search protocol
Coding
(?)
Wiki markup
Barcharts
Calculations
Characters
Columns
Elevation
Hidden text
HTML
Lists
Magic words
Music symbols
Sections
Sounds
Tables
Templates
Transclusion
URL
Visual files
Directories
(?)
Abbreviations
AI
Departments
Editor's index
Essays
FAQs
Glossary
Guidelines
Manual of Style
Policies
Tasks
Tips
Tools
Missing Manual
Ask for help on your talk page
(?)
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