Wikipedia:Help portal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This page is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, process, or informational page. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. References or links to this page should not describe it as "policy". |
It is proposed that help-related material be removed from Wikipedia:Community Portal and merged with Help:Contents. This page is a draft for the proposed replacement of Help:Contents.
All Wikipedia help pages are listed under Category:Wikipedia help. The help category has organized subcategories, but they span many different pages. This page is intended as a quick portal into the most frequently needed help pages, organized by topic. Feel free to use whichever system you find more convenient.
Wikipedia is an open content, free encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by people from all around the world in several languages. The following articles contain useful guidance and information about reading, authoring, and participating in the Wikipedia community.
Done
Partly done
Ways to communicate
Contact (overview) · Village pump (News, Policy, Technical, Proposals, Assistance, Miscellaneous) · Discussion pages · Mailing lists · IRC chat · Instant Messaging · In person meetings · User pages · Surveys · Ask a question·
Asking questions
- Reference desk, request an article or information you can't find. See also Requested articles.
- Help desk for newcomers with questions about Wikipedia or editing.
- General Complaints is for addressing problems on more than one page.
- Village pump is the place for technical and policy issues.
Getting in touch
- Contact us
- Wikipedia mailing lists
- Chat with other users on IRC
- Bug reports and feature requests
- Wikipedians
- Meta Wikipedia, a site that works alongside the main Wikipedia project. Here you can post essays and discussions about topics related to Wikipedia.
- Contingency page for when the main Wikipedia server is down
Help
New user information
Welcome! · Tutorial · Sandbox · Help · New user log · Wikipedia:How to edit a page
Advanced help for contributors
User's Guide · Table format · TeX and math formulae · Images and multimedia · Customizing your display with CSS
Frequently asked questions
FAQ list and Overview · Administration · Contributing · Editing · Schools · Misc · Problems · Readers' · Technical · Glossary · What Wikipedia is not
Common procedures
Featuring an article, pictures or lists· Peer review · Deleting a page (full policy) · Moving a page (naming policies) · Protecting a page (full policy) · Reverting a page · Administrator nominations
Account maintenance
Account benefits · Choosing and Changing a username · Logging in · User preferences · Changing attribution for edits · Account deletion
Technical information
The MediaWiki software · Requests and bug reports · Browser notes · Bots · Database download · Export page(s) in XML
Writing/Reference resources
Policies, conventions and guidelines
Overview of policies · Neutral point of view (NPOV) · Copyright · Editing · Manual of Style (Layout, Naming conventions, Disambiguation, Captions) · Image use · Citing Wikipedia · Libel · Wikipedia etiquette · Be bold!
How to resolve conflicts
Stay cool! · Be nice to newcomers · Alert others · Request assistance from a members' advocate · Dispute resolution · Arbitration policy
Resources
How to edit a page (Wiki markup) · Special pages · Basic topics · Contributing · Improving articles · Writing a great article · Sources for articles · Templates · Image list · Tools
Using Wikipedia
- How to explore Wikipedia
- How to download Wikipedia content
- How to search for an article
- How to use talk (discussion) pages
- How to create talk archive subpages
- How to use the Recent Changes page
- How to use the Related Changes page
- How to use the Go button
- How to log in
- How to do research using Wikipedia
- How to customise your Wikipedia experience
- How to play media files in Wikipedia
- How to change your signature
Modifying a Wikipedia page
- Tutorial
- How to edit a page, including markup details. You can experiment with editing pages in the sandbox
- How to start a new page
- How to name a page
- How to use categories
- How to use images (and the image use policy)
- How to use redirect pages
- How to use tables
- How to use templates (and the available templates)
- How to upload files to Wikipedia
- How to add boilerplate text
- How to create pages for topics with several different definitions
- How to move and merge a page
- How to delete pages/images/categories
- How to link together Wikipedia articles in different languages
- How to link to sister projects
- How to revert a page to an earlier version
- How to edit an article so long that you can't edit
- How to edit with an external editor
- How to edit mathematical formulae using TeX
- How to produce graphics for pages
- How to protect/unprotect pages (sysops only)
- How to do a purge
Information and resources for contributors
- Who writes Wikipedia, essential information to understand when reading articles (for new readers)
- Simplified ruleset, essential information to understand when editing articles (for new editors)
- Category:Wikipedia
- Category:Wikipedia resources for researchers
- Frequently asked questions
- Policies and guidelines for contributors
- Glossary of common Wikipedia terms
- Style and How-to Directory
- Wikipedia's How to for a full list of help topics
- How to write a great article
- Public domain resources
- Manual of style
- Contributing to articles outside your native language
- WikiProjects, writing and style guidelines for specific disciplines
- Resolving disputes
MediaWiki
- MediaWiki User's Guide (links to another website) For those who have installed the MediaWiki software that runs this site, and need help using it.
Dump from Wikipedia:Topical index
Mostly merged
- Category:Wikipedia help forums
- Category:Wikipedia community forums
- Category:Wikipedia vandalism
- Category:Wikipedia awards
- Category:Wikipedia deletion
- Indexes: Wikipedia:Category schemes
- Problems in need of fixing, things to watch: Wikipedia:Maintenance.
- Category:Wikipedia featured content
- Category:Wikipedia resources for researchers
- Privacy policy
- Category:Wikipedia statistics
- Category:Wikipedia publicity
- Category:Wikipedia essays
- Category:Wikipedia proposals
- Category:Wikipedia culture
- Category:Wikipedians
- Category:Wikipedia history
- Category:Wikipedia multilingual coordination
Policies and guidelines
About us
- Wikipedia:Designated agent
- Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License
- Wikipedia:Verbatim copying
Guidelines and information
Boilerplate
- Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission
- Wikipedia:Confirmation of permission
- Boilerplate text (various texts)
- Spoiler warning
- Boilerplate request for permission
- Standard user greeting
- Standard GFDL violation letter
Policy, advice, and help
- Category:Wikipedia help
- Category:Wikipedia policies and guidelines
- Category:Wikipedia how-to
- Category:Wikipedia style guidelines
- Category:Wikipedia naming conventions
- Category:Wikipedia dispute resolution
- Wikipedia:Guide to improving articles
Key policies
- Be bold in updating pages
- Wikiquette
- Neutral point of view (NPOV)
- Manual of Style
- Policy on permanent deletion of pages
- What Wikipedia is not
How-to
- How does one edit a page
- How to add content to Wikipedia with minimal effort
- How to edit an article so long that you can't edit
- How to reduce colors for saving a JPEG as PNG
- How to rename a page
- How to revert a page to an earlier version
- How to start a page
- How to archive a talk page
- How to archive Current Events
- How to use tables
- How to log in
Information
- Algorithms on Wikipedia
- Browser notes
- Bots
- Canonicalization
- Contributing FAQ
- Copyrights
- De-adminship
- Disambiguation
- Edit conflicts
- Guide to writing better articles
- Image use policy
- Including corporate logos
- Interlanguage links
- ISBN
- Lists in general
- List pages - How to create them
- Lists in articles - How to create them
- List of common misspellings
- MediaWiki namespace
- Multimedia
- Searching
- Go button
- Special characters
- Tables
- TeX markup
- Troubleshooting
- How to use redirect pages
- How to set preferences
- What is an article
Policies and guidelines
- Policies and guidelines
- Alternate text for images
- Always fill summary field
- Avoid statements that will date quickly
- Avoid weasel terms
- Build the web
- Check your facts
- Cite your sources
- Contribute what you know or are willing to learn about
- Contributing to Wikipedia
- Don't include copies of primary sources
- Editing policy -- Perfection not required; or, the joy of editing
- Explain jargon
- Follow highlighting conventions
- Footnotes
- Foul language
- Guide to Layout
- Headlines
- Ignore all rules
- Image markup
- Make articles useful for readers
- Make omissions explicit
- Make only links relevant to the context
- Make smart use of soft line breaks
- Measurements Debate
- News style
- Page size
- Talk page
- The perfect article
- The perfect stub article
- Pronunciation guide
- Sign your posts on talk pages
- Summarize discussion
- Timeline standards
- User page guidelines
- Use short sentences and lists
- Use subheads sparingly
- Warn readers about spoilers
- Why aren't these pages copyedited
- Wikipedia is not a dictionary
Editing
Advice and information
- Wikipedia:Guide to improving articles
- Wikipedia:How to write a great article
- Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes
- Wikipedia:Perfect stub article
- Wikipedia:The perfect article
Rule stubs
Rules to consider
What to write on
Things to do
Things not to do
Deprecated in favor of MediaWiki pages at Meta (or Wikimedia Foundation)
- Wikipedia:Special characters
- Wikipedia:TeX markup
- Wikipedia:Turkish characters
- Wikipedia:Donation addresses
- Wikipedia:Donations
Misc
- Wikipedia:Annotated edit page announcement (proposal) rev. 1.1
- Wikipedia:Article size
- Wikipedia:POV
- Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial
- Wikipedia:Text editor support
- Wikipedia:URLs
- Wikipedia:How to use tables
- Wikipedia:How to break up a page
- Wikipedia:How to import articles
- Wikipedia:Improving WikiWeb
- Wikipedia:Long article layout
- Wikipedia:Proper names
- Wikipedia:Committee of Wikipedians
Style and How to series
- Wikipedia:How to edit a page
- Wikipedia:How-to
- Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly
- Wikipedia:Guide to layout
- Wikipedia:Make articles useful for readers
- Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context
- Wikipedia:Words to avoid
- Wikipedia:Bypass your cache
- Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia
Wikipedia Manual of Style
- Wikipedia:Style and How-to Directory
- Wikipedia:How to link to sister projects
- Wikipedia:Footnotes
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (legal)
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)
- Wikipedia:History standards for China-related articles
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia medicine standards
Wikipedia Dictionaries
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/symbols - B
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/C - D
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/E - H
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/I - K
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/L - N
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/O - Q
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/R - S
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/T - W
- Wikipedia:Free On-line Dictionary of Computing/X - Z
Wikipedia features/techniques
Protection
Disambiguation
Lists
- Wikipedia:Links to (disambiguation) pages
- Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages
- Wikipedia:Non-unique personal name
- Wikipedia:Undisambiguated abbreviations/CIA World Factbook
- Wikipedia:Undisambiguated abbreviations/Country codes
- Wikipedia:Undisambiguated abbreviations/Currency codes
- Wikipedia:Undisambiguated abbreviations/Elements
- Wikipedia:Undisambiguated abbreviations/file extensions
- Wikipedia:Undisambiguated abbreviations/State codes
- Wikipedia:Undisambiguated abbreviations/units of measurement
Using links
- Wikipedia:Links
- Wikipedia:Build the web
- Wikipedia:External links
- Wikipedia:Piped link
- Wikipedia:Self link
Administrator information
Lists of Wikipedia namespace pages
American - British Pages
- Wikipedia:Articles using American English titles
- Wikipedia:Articles using British English titles
- Wikipedia:List of spelling variants
Naming conventions
Non-text content
Images
Image inclusion guidelines
- Wikipedia:Extended image syntax
- Wikipedia:Alternative text for images
- Wikipedia:Image copyright tags
- Wikipedia:Image description page
Image creation resources
- Wikipedia:Basic bitmap image editing
- Wikipedia:ASCII art conversion tool
- Wikipedia:Blank maps
- Wikipedia:Chemical ASCII-art
- Wikipedia:Graphics tutorials
- Wikipedia:How to draw a diagram with Dia
- Wikipedia:How to draw a diagram with Microsoft Word
- Wikipedia:How to draw a diagram with OpenOffice.org Writer
- Wikipedia:How to keep image file sizes as small as possible
- Wikipedia:How to reduce colors for saving a JPEG as PNG
- Wikipedia:How to use the GIMP
Image finding
- Wikipedia:Choosing appropriate illustrations
- Wikipedia:Finding images tutorial (Part of Style and How to series)
- Wikipedia:Maps
Lists
- Wikipedia:Images with missing articles
- Wikipedia:Images from Amazon.com
- Wikipedia:Imported pictures (includes links to pages arranged by source)
- Wikipedia:Plant photo collection I
- Wikipedia:Unidentified flowers
- Wikipedia:Wing Commander (computer game) images
- Wikipedia:List of images
Blank
Other
Bibliographies/Works cited
- Wikipedia:Cite sources
- Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia Turabian-style
- Wikipedia:Fair use
- Wikipedia:Foldoc license
- Wikipedia:GFDL History (unofficial)
- Wikipedia:GFDL upgrade
- Wikipedia:List of bibliographies
- Wikipedia:References
- Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter
Proposals
General proposals
Legal proposals
- Wikipedia:Copyrights and Warranty Disclaimers (proposal)
- Wikipedia:Submission Standards
- Wikipedia:Terms of use
- Wikipedia:Terms of use (proposal)
Editing proposals
- Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Examples
- Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Examples Debate
- Wikipedia:Web comics
- Wikipedia:Technical terms and definitions
- Wikipedia:English phonetic spelling
- Wikipedia:Geographical names naming policy (proposed)
- Wikipedia:Algorithms on Wikipedia
Dispute resolution proposals
WikiMoney
Discussion
- Wikipedia:Copyright issues
- Wikipedia:Copyright violations on history pages
- Wikipedia:When people complain rather than edit
- Wikipedia:Pronunciation guide
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation)
- Wikipedia:Designation of capitals
- Wikipedia:Guidelines for the spelling of names of Polish rulers
- Wikipedia:Measurements Debate
- Wikipedia:Language-independent images
- Wikipedia:Offensive image
- Wikipedia:Approval mechanism
Active(requesting, voting, discussing) pages
Work requested
- Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English
- Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress
- Wikipedia:TeX requests
- Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub
Discussion requested
- Wikipedia:Requests for comment (includes archives)
Voting requested
Congratulations requested
Lists of articles to be fixed
Tag pages (describing article tags)
Behavior
Advice
Jargon
Dealing with problems
Advice
Mediation and arbitration
- Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee
- Wikipedia:Arbitration rationale
- Wikipedia:Mediation
- Wikipedia:Mediation Committee
- Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration (includes links to specific cases)
- Wikipedia:Requests for mediation (includes links to specific cases)
Deletion related
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion
- Wikipedia:Categories for deletion
- Wikipedia:Images for deletion
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion
- Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion
- Wikipedia:Speedy deletions
- Wikipedia:Templates for deletion
- Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops
- Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion
Misuse of the system
The Wikipedia community
Communication
- Wikipedia:Emailing users
- Wikipedia:Instant Messaging Wikipedians
- Wikipedia:IRC channel cloaks
- Wikipedia:IRC channels
- Wikipedia:Mailing lists
- Wikipedia:Meetup
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost (Wikipedia's internal newspaper)
News
- Wikipedia:Announcements (includes links to pages with archived announcements)
- Wikipedia:Goings-on
People
- Wikipedia:Wikipedians (includes subpages for groupings by continent, country, region, state, etc.)
- Wikipedia:Alphabetical list of Wikipedians
- Wikipedia:Facebook
- Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians
- Wikipedia:Long usernames
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects
Proposals
- Wikipedia:Deletion requests
- Wikipedia:Deletion requests/mock-up
- Wikipedia:Deletion requests/mock-up2
Community groups
Administration
- Wikipedia:List of administrators
- Wikipedia:Administration FAQ
- Wikipedia:Administrators
- Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list
- Wikipedia:Bureaucrats
- Wikipedia:Elections
- Wikipedia:Meta
Activity logs
- Wikipedia:Log (see also Special:Log)
- Wikipedia:New user log
- Wikipedia:Recently created admins
- Wikipedia:Recently created bureaucrats
- Wikipedia:Upload log archive
- Upload log
- Deletion log
- Old deletion log
- Protection log
- Block log
- List of currently blocked IP addresses and usernames
International
Wikimedia related
- Wikipedia:Projects of Wikimedia
- Wikipedia:Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation
- Wikipedia:List of interwiki redirects
- Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Other projects similar to Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Simple English Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Things to be moved to Wiktionary
- Wikipedia:TourBusStop
- Wikipedia:Transwiki log
Publicity
Statistics
Technical issues
- Wikipedia:Technical FAQ
- Wikipedia:Troubleshooting
- Wikipedia:Database download
- Contingency Page For When The Main Wikipedia Server Is Down
- Magic Button
- Text editor support for Wikipedia syntax (Emacs and Vim)
- Translator from HTML to Wikipedia
- User:hfastedge offering free off-server custom coding (1 request per person) as part of an research project.
Technical request pages
- Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit (includes links to subpages with old logs)
- Wikipedia:Changing username
- Wikipedia:SQL query requests
Specific problems
- Wikipedia:List of pages whose correct title is not allowed by MediaWiki
- Wikipedia:Browser notes
- Wikipedia:Browser page size limits
- Clear your cache
- Wikipedia:Scripts
- Wikipedia:Technical assistance for katakana
Technical details
- Wikipedia:Canonicalization
- Wikipedia:Common words, searching for which is not possible
- Wikipedia:Database queries
- Wikipedia:History of Wikipedia bots
- Wikipedia:Types of bots
- Wikipedia:TomeRaider database
- Wikipedia:TomeRaider database - download instructions
- Unicode numeric conversion
- Database download
- Database queries
Wikipedia hardware
Wikipedia software
- Category:Wikipedia templates
- Category:MediaWiki
- Wikipedia:Bug report - Report problems and request new features
- m:How to become a Wikipedia hacker
- m:MediaWiki roadmap
- Wikipedia:Tools - Enhancements for use with Wikipedia
Tasks and resources for Wikipedia
Ideas for contributing
- Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week
- Wikipedia:Most wanted articles
- Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs
- Wikipedia:Peer review
- Wikipedia:Requested articles
- Wikipedia:Requested pictures
- Wikipedia:Requests for summaries
- Wikipedia:Translation into English
Main Page and current events
Coordinating related subjects
- Wikipedia:Article series
- Wikipedia:Classbox
- Wikipedia:Companies, Corporations and Economic Information
- Wikipedia:Incumbent series
- Wikipedia:Infobox
- Wikipedia:Page footers
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject (includes links to separate WikiProjects)
- Wikipedia:Year in Review guidelines
Research resources
Wikipedia research resources. | |
Indexes
Lists
Not Sorted Yet
- Wikipedia:Eurovision
- Wikipedia:History of computing/Permission
- Wikipedia:Mirroring content
- Wikipedia:Organizations with .INT domain names
The below is from Wikipedia:Recentchanges.
This page: | Discuss this page - What does this page mean? |
Projects: | Meta - Wiktionary - Quote - Books - Source - Species - Commons - News |
Utilities: | New - Deadend - Needy - Cleanup - Vandalism - RC patrol - Deletion - RfC - Community |
About us: | Welcome/FAQ/Policy - Stats - Announcements - Village pump - Mailing lists - Chat |
Requests: | Stretch fabric - Fairstead - Debt for equity - DCDC2 - Surveillance state - Magnolia (color) |