Page semi-protected

Portal:Contents

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Explore Wikipedia's Contents

Shortcuts:

Below are content navigation systems to help you browse the encyclopedia. They serve as an alternative to the search box, and are especially useful when you don't know exactly what you are looking for, or for when you want to see everything on a particular subject.

Topic lists

Presenting article links, list articles provide the function of tables of contents.

Overviews

  • Overview—outline of Wikipedia, summarizing knowledge in a single page, listing key topics
  • Outlines—subject summaries, as follows:
    1. Ease of discovery—outlines show which topics belong to a subject and why
    2. Subject structure—outlines show topic relationships (what belongs to what)
  • Outline of academic disciplines—subjects studied in college or university
  • Classification systems providing an outline or overview of knowledge:

Item lists

Timelines

Lists of articles by quality or popularity

Featured content

Featured content is the best Wikipedia has to offer, via vigorous peer review. Presented by type:

Most popular articles

Vital articles

Topics considered most essential, from 10 articles in Level 1 to approaching 10,000 in Level 4.

Vital articles
Level 1     Level 2     Level 3     Level 4

Articles are also categorized by importance in their field(s)

Alternate formats

Portals

A portal introduces the reader to a subject by presenting images, categories and excerpts of key articles. Portals also guide editing by providing to-do lists.

Wikipedia books

Wikipedia books are collections of Wikipedia articles that can be viewed, downloaded, or printed into a book. They provide a roadmap for a course of study in a particular subject.

Spoken articles

Growing collections of Wikipedia articles are starting to become available as spoken word recordings as well.

Glossaries

Glossaries are lists of terms with definitions. Wikipedia includes hundreds of alphabetical glossaries.

Wikipedia's index systems

Category system

Wikipedia's collection of category pages is a classified index system. It is automatically generated from category tags at the bottoms of articles and most other pages. Nearly all of the articles available so far on the website can be found through these subject indexes.

If you are simply looking to browse articles by topic, there are three top-level pages to choose from:

For biographies, see Category:People categories by parameter.

Category:Contents is technically at the top of the category hierarchy, but contains many categories useful to editors but not readers. Special:Categories lists every category alphabetically.

Alphabetical lists of articles

Wikipedia's alphabetical article indexes