Help:Menu/Site map
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Help:Contents – Site map
Displayed below are the pages of the main help menu . For the main help page, see Help:Contents .
On this page: Navigating Wikipedia · Joining Wikipedia · Editing Wikipedia · Links · Images and media · Tracking changes · Policies and guidelines · Asking questions · The Wikipedia community · Resources and lists · Account settings and maintenance · Technical information
Navigating Wikipedia [Edit]
What is Wikipedia?
Basic navigation
- Navigation
- Browsing Wikipedia = scrolling, clicking on links
- Good starting points:
- To browse the encyclopedia: Wikipedia:Contents
- To browse the Wikipedia community: Wikipedia:Department directory
- To browse help resources: Help:Menu or Help:Contents/Directory
- Good starting points:
- Searching — type your search term into the search box (at the top right of every page)
- Go to the search screen — clicking on the magnifying glass will get you there too
- Browsing Wikipedia = scrolling, clicking on links
Browse the encyclopedia via the contents navbar:
Advanced navigation
- Advanced browsing
-
- Shortcut
- Tabbed browsing — open multiple links at the same time
- Tabbed browsing in Firefox
- Tab Mix Plus — add-on for Firefox
- Tabbed browsing in Firefox
- Advanced searching
See also
Joining Wikipedia [Edit]
Wikipedia is more than just an encyclopedia. It is a world-wide community of people who volunteer their time and share knowledge in order to make the world a better place. You are welcome to join us in this important mission...
Getting an account
- Why create an account? (to get more privileges and to make communication easier)
- Choosing a username
- How to log in
Teamwork
- Who writes Wikipedia? (Anyone with Internet access)
- We are Wikipedians
- Talk pages — how to communicate in Wikipedia
- WikiProjects — collaborate with others to develop your favorite subject areas
- Quick directory/Department directory
Getting started
Just go for it! — the easiest and fastest way to get involved is to click on the edit tab at the top of an article that interests you, and improve the article in the editor that appears.
- Keep in mind...
- The Five Pillars (the core rules)
- Tutorials
- Main tutorial — will help anyone become a Wikipedia contributor.
- Editing — almost every page has an "Edit" tab.
- Formatting — the basics on coding.
- Links — the basics on internal links.
- Sources — the basics on adding references.
- Talk pages — the basics on how to communicate with others.
- Policies — there are some things to keep in mind when editing Wikipedia.
- Registration — registering a username is optional, but encouraged.
- Graphics — the basics on how to use graphics.
- Images — the basics on how to use images.
- IRC (live chat) — to access the freenode IRC servers , follow the directions here.
- {{tutorials }} — place this on your user page to display a navigation box with helpful links
- Overviews
- Plain and simple — the basic mechanics of Wikipedia
- Primer for newcomers — an overview for new contributors
- Advice for parents
Where to next?
- For comprehensive help, see The Missing Manual and the Help directory
- If you wish to express an opinion or make a comment, Where to ask questions will point you in the correct direction.
- If you're looking for things to edit, the Community portal has lists of open tasks, or you can join a subject-specific WikiProject .
- If you would like to create a new article, Starting an article will explain how to create a new page, with tips for success and a link to Wikipedia's Article Wizard, which can guide you through the process of submitting a new article to Wikipedia.
Editing Wikipedia [Edit]
Basic editing
- If you can't find what you're looking for on this page, you can ask questions at the Help desk or at the Teahouse . Volunteers will respond as soon as possible.
- Be bold!
- Introductory tutorial
- Contributing to Wikipedia
- Experiment in the sandbox
- Show preview to review your edits before you save
- Editing sections
- Creating links
- Making categories
Saving your edits
- "Show preview" — always use this to avoid errors
- Edit summary — please explain your edits
- Minor edits — check this for typos and small corrections
- Edit conflict — what to do when another editor changes the page while you're editing it
How to write an article
- Starting an article
- Article development (advanced editing)
- Special page types
Style and formatting
- Article components
- Lists
- Tables
- Redirects
- Infoboxes
- Using templates
- Creating templates
- List of templates
- Modules, an advanced form of templates
- Pictures and videos
- Mathematical formulas
- Hatnotes
- Footnotes and references
Article standards
- Biographies of living persons
- Citing sources
- Copyrights
- Editing
- External links
- Image use
- Using redirects
- Include only verifiable information
- Deletion
- Manual of Style
- Neutral point of view
- What Wikipedia is not
Article maintenance
- Use talk pages (discussion pages)
- Tagging pages for problems
- Merge two or more pages
- Move or rename a page
- Delete pages/images/categories
- Stub articles
- Revert a page to an earlier version
- Dealing with vandalism
- Protect and unprotect pages (Administrators only)
- Link together Wikipedia articles in different languages
- Link words in articles to Wikimedia sister projects
- Use page names
- Use namespaces
- Use headings as anchors to link to
- Do a purge
- Test edits and other things
See also
- Tips on editing
- Simplified ruleset — Essential information to understand when editing articles (for new editors)
- Category:Wikipedia information pages and Category:Wikipedia how-to
Links and references [Edit]
Links
Types of links
- Category link
- Dates
- External link
- Internal link
- InterLanguage link
- InterWiki link
- ISBN, PMID and RFC
- Piped link
- Self link
Guidance
References
Images and media [Edit]
Creation and usage of media files
Upload an image to Commons (preferred) or to English Wikipedia .
Find
Help
- File description pages
- How to upload files to Wikipedia
- Images and other uploaded files
- Preparing images for upload
- Visual file markup
- How to insert and use pictures in Wikipedia articles
- Use the Extended image syntax to place an image in an article
- Sound file markup
- Graphics tutorials
- How to request images or media for deletion
- Category:Wikipedia image help
- Media copyright questions
Policy and guidelines
- Image use policy
- Guide to captions
- Guide to use of logos
- Guide to use of alternative text for images
Other
Keeping track of changes [Edit]
Tracking with the Wikipedia interface
Policies and guidelines [Edit]
The principles which the policies and guidelines are based on
- Five pillars — statement of our principles
- Jimbo's statement — historic principles
- Simplified ruleset — synopsis of our conventions
- Wikimedia principles — common to all projects
- Principles — other essays on Wikipedia's principles
Tutorial on policies
- Introduction to policies and guidelines — a quick introduction to the major policies and guidelines for very new users.
General policies
Procedural policies
- Policies & guidelines — how policies and guidelines should be developed and maintained.
- Mediation
- Bot policy
Content policies and guidelines
- Core content policies
- Neutral point of view
- No original research
- Verifiability
- Other content policies
- Article titles
- Biographies of living persons
- Deletion
- Image use
Behavioural policies and guidelines
- Behavioural policies
- Civility
- Child protection
- Incivility is not tolerated
- Edit warring
- Harassment
- Legal threats
- Personal attacks
- Ownership of content
- Sock puppetry
Editing policies and guidelines
- Editing policies
- Editing policy
- Editing guidelines
- Be bold
- Article size
- Hatnotes
- Signatures
- Subpages
- Talk page guidelines
- User pages
- Vandalism
- WikiProjects
Style and formatting conventions
Classification guidelines
See also
- List of policies and guidelines — a list of principle policies and guidelines.
- List of policies — a comprehensive descriptive directory of policies.
- List of guidelines — a comprehensive descriptive directory of guidelines.
- Manual of Style contents — a comprehensive descriptive directory of the pages which make up the Manual of Style.
- Related essays
- Simplified rule-set — some basic aspect of Wikipedia norms and practices.
- Eight rules for editing — if you start out by following these simple rules, the rest should come naturally.
- Ten rules for editing — Wikipedia can be daunting, but here we provide tips to make editing smoother.
- Trifecta — ultra fast overview of foundational principles related to policies and guidelines.
- The rules are principles — policies and guidelines exist as rough approximations of their underlying principles.
- Wikimedia Foundation policies
- List of policies
- Licensing and copyright
- Privacy
- Values
Asking questions [Edit]
First check these lists of frequently asked questions
- FAQ main page — questions about using and contributing.
- Administration — answers some questions related to Administrators.
- Article subjects — what to do about specific articles.
- Categories — about using Wikipedia's categories.
- Contributing — answers to questions commonly asked by contributors.
- Copyright — four most commonly asked questions about copyright.
- Editing — answers the most common questions about editing.
- Forking — how do I download and use Wikipedia content?
- IRC (live chat) — about "chat rooms" – real-time discussions.
- Organizations — editing without displaying a conflict of interest.
- Problems — solving problems you may encounter when browsing or editing.
- Readers — addresses concerns and questions readers may have.
- Schools — questions that teachers, librarians and administrators might have.
- Technical — answers some questions related to the technical workings of the site.
- (Miscellaneous) — questions that do not fit into any of above sections.
- If you can't find your question, then it's time to ask someone...
Where to ask questions
- Where to ask factual questions
- Reference desk — volunteers will attempt to answer any factual question you may have. They are organized into the following subject areas:
- Where to ask help-related questions
- Help desk — the volunteers here will help you with Wikipedia-related questions.
- Wikipedia:Questions — another help page
- Wikipedia:Teahouse — friendly place for new editors to become accustomed to Wikipedia culture, ask questions, and develop community relationships.
- Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) — the place to ask technical questions about Wikipedia and all related technology.
- Wikipedia:Media copyright questions — about images, audio files, and other media.
- {{Help me }} — write a question or request on your user talk page, and place {{Help me}} with it, and someone will be by shortly to help you on it.
- Live help — ask other editors questions in real time in a Wikipedia chat room.
See also
- Adopt-a-user — new users can find mentors here. Mentors are dedicated to answering questions and teaching.
- Questions and comments
- Requests department — for when you need assistance.
The Wikipedia community [Edit]
Community support
- Teahouse - peer support for new editors
- Harmonious editing club - keep the peace, peacefully
- Kindness Campaign - spread kindness and recognition of users
- Adopt-a-User - experienced editors can "adopt" newer editors, helping to mentor them along the way as they learn about Wikipedia
- Welcoming committee
- Editor assistance
- User pages
- How to report a bug
- Mailing lists
- In-person meetings
- Wikipedians
- Local Embassy – find a user that speaks your language
- Babel – Another way to find multi-lingual Wikipedians
- Surveys
- Expressing thanks
Voting and consensus
Feedback by editors, to editors.
- Featuring an article
- Featuring lists
- Featuring pictures
- Featuring sounds
- Featuring portals
- Featuring topics
- Good articles
Discussing
Keeping informed: News
- Community Portal – Bulletin board collaborations and updates – Wikipedia's hub of activity.
- The Signpost – Wikipedia's newspaper
- Wikipedia in the media
- Wikipedia milestone announcements
- Wikizine – news letter about the Wikimedia projects
- Press releases
- Stats
- Milestones
- Regional notice boards
- Goings-on
- Dashboard
- Administrator nominations
- List of administrators
- Administration FAQ
- Administrator's reading list
- Bureaucrats
- Elections
- Meta
- Fix cut & paste moves
- Page protection
- Wikipedians: the people who contribute to Wikipedia
- WikiProjects: where people interested in specific topics work together
- Collaborations: Wikipedians focusing on one article for a set amount of time
- Wikipedia essays
- Wikipedian humor
- Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
- Department of Fun
- Wikipediholism
- Unusual articles
- Editcountitis: a condition that can be fatal
- Wikipedian games
- Barnstars
- Awards programs
More about Wikipedia
- Overview of Wikipedia (All about Wikipedia)
- Category:Wikipedia
- Category-based access to pages about Wikipedia
- Another way to browse help topics
- Category:Wikipedia how-to (a full list of help topics)
The wider community
- Meta – The site that organizes all Wikimedia projects.
Resources and lists [Edit]
Categories
| Resource | Description |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia:Categorization | Introduction to categorization. |
| Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) | Discusses naming conventions for categories. |
| Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates | Discusses the three different ways to group and organize articles. |
| WikiProject Categories-related pages | |
| /uncategorized | Taskforce page for categorizing and patrolling for uncategorized articles. |
| Category:Wikipedia categorization | Category page listing our project pages. |
| Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/Current subprojects | WikiProject Categories subprojects. |
| Category:WikiProjects | Category page containing list of WikiProjects and helpful resources. |
| Category:Category needed | Category containing articles that need categorization. |
| Category:Uncategorized pages | Category containing pages that need categorization. |
| Special:UncategorizedPages | Special page for uncategorized pages. |
| Uncategorized Categories | Special page for uncategorized categories. |
| Advanced resources | |
| Wikimedia stats:Category Overview Index | Dumps of the category tree. |
| Wikipedia:Database_reports#Categories | Page containing generated reports about categories. |
| Wikipedia:Categories for discussion | Where deletion, merging, and renaming of categories is discussed. |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting | Similar WikiProject for stubs. |
| Wikipedia:Contents | Browse Wikipedia's contents. |
| Wikipedia:Contents/Overviews | Browse Wikipedia's contents overviews. |
- Wikipedia:Categories are different from articles
- Wikipedia:Categories vs lists
- Wikipedia:Categorising fiction
- Wikipedia:Do not write articles using categories
- Wikipedia:Overcategorization/Intersection of location and occupation
- User:Alan Liefting/Essays/On categorisation
Lists
General
- Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates
- Wikipedia:Lists
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works)
- Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists)
- Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)
- Wikipedia:Pro and con lists
Help
- Help:List
- Help:Table. External links section has free HTML-to-wiki converters.
- Wikipedia:When to use tables
- Help:Sorting. All about automatic sorting of table rows.
Rejected proposals
- Wikipedia:Overlistification
- Wikipedia:Proposed guideline for lists of people by ethnicity, religion, and other cultural categorizations
Essays
- Wikipedia:Lists in Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Listcruft
- Wikipedia:Write the Article First - one solution to cruft-y red links in lists
- Creating A Better List - A User Essay
- Wikipedia:Lists within articles
Stubs
Infoboxes
Templates
Wikiprojects & article series
Shortcuts & "magic words"
- List of shortcuts
- List of "magic words" - Magic words can be used to automate text or change the display of pages.
Other resources
- Cleanup resources
- List of Resources for researchers
- Public domain resources
- Wikipedia:Free online resources
- Wikipedia:Free or semi-free non-Public-Domain information resources
- Wikipedia:Public domain image resources
- Wikipedia:Free sound resources
- WikiProject Resource Exchange
- Web Browser tools - Tools for your Web browser
- Web colors
Administration
Administrators
Copyright
New user greetings
Essays
Account settings [Edit]
- Customize your Wikipedia experience
- Change your preferences
- Change your signature
- Change your username
- Confirm your email address
- Delete your account
- Log in (troubleshooting)
- User page help
- User page design
- Customizing your display with CSS (advanced web design knowledge required)
Technical information [Edit]
- Tools to make Wikipedia work better.
- Catalogue of CSS classes used on the English Wikipedia
- Editing articles of such length that you can't edit them
- The MediaWiki software
- MediaWiki User hub – help with installation and configuration of the MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia, for those looking to set up their own wiki.
- MediaWiki User's Guide – help with general use of the MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
- Requests and bug reports
- Bots
- Download Wikipedia content – how to download Wikipedia and Wikimedia content (Export page(s) in XML)
- Computer help desk – Help with computers and software generally (i.e. not related to Wikipedia)
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