Help:Contents

Getting Started

• Introduction to Wikipedia
• Sandbox
• About Wikipedia
• Account benefits
• Choosing a username
• How to log in
• New user log
• Donations

Browsing Wikipedia

• Who writes Wikipedia, essential information to understand when reading articles (for new readers)
• How to search for an article (including "Go" button)
• How to explore Wikipedia
• How to use the "what links here" browsing tool
• 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 do research using Wikipedia
  • see also category of resources for researchers).
• How to play media files in Wikipedia
• Other Wikipedia languages

Navigation System

• Basic topics
• Navigation browse bar (see very top of this page)
  • Almanac
  • Categories
  • FAQs
  • Glossaries
  • Lists
  • Portals
  • Overviews
  • Site news
  • Index

Featured content

• Featured articles
• Featured pictures
• Featured lists
• Featured portals

Changing your settings
and account maintenance

• How to customize your Wikipedia experience
  • How to Change your preferences
• How to change your signature
• How to and Changing a username
• How to delete your account
• Logging in
• Advanced customization
  • Customizing your display with CSS

More about Wikipedia

• Welcome!
• Overview of Wikipedia (All about Wikipedia)
  • Category:Wikipedia
• About Wikipedians
  • Wikipedian culture
  • Wikipedian humor
  • Wikipedian games
• Category-based access to pages about Wikipedia
• Glossary of common Wikipedia terms
• What Wikipedia is not
• another way to browse help topics
• Category:Wikipedia how-to (a full list of help topics)

Finding Answers
(to frequently asked questions)

• FAQ list
• Overview FAQ
• Administration FAQ
• Contributing FAQ
• Editing FAQ
• Schools FAQ
• Misc FAQ
• Problems FAQ
• Readers' FAQ
• Technical FAQ

Communication

Asking questions

• Requests for administrator attention, to get help from an administrator.
• Reference desk, request an article or information you can't find. See also Requested articles.
• Help desk for users with questions about Wikipedia or editing.
• Each article has a Talk page — click on the article's discussion link — to read or take part in discussions about the article.
• General Complaints, for discussing problems with the way Wikipedia is designed and making suggestions for improvement.
• Village pump is the place for technical and policy issues.
• The Helping Hand Group is the place for requests for improvement or creation of Wikipedia tutorials or help files.

Getting in touch

• Contact us
• Discussion pages
• User pages
  • Babel - multi-lingual Wikipedians
• Wikipedia mailing lists
• Chat with other users on IRC
• Get involved at the Community Portal
• Village pump
  • News
  • Policy
  • Technical
  • Proposals
  • Assistance
  • Miscellaneous
• Bug reports and feature requests
• Wikipedians
• Surveys
• 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
• Instant Messaging
• In person meetings

Keeping informed: News

• The Signpost - Wikipedia's newspaper
• Wikipedia in the media
• Goings-on
• Announcements
• Press releases
• Stats
• Milestones
• Regional notice boards

Tracking changes

• Special pages
• Recent changes
• Enhanced recent changes
• Related changes
• Watching pages
  • Public watchlists
• Page history
• Diff
• User contributions
• Edit summary
• Minor edit

Editing Wikipedia

• Tutorial
• Simplified ruleset, essential information to understand when editing articles (for new editors)
• How to edit a page, including markup details. You can experiment with editing pages in the sandbox. (You can also carry out editing experiments "in situ" by editing the page itself and using the "Show Preview" button. Be careful * not to accidentally save the page though! If you do, then revert your changes.)
• How to use sections in an article
• How to Test edits, and other things
• How to revert a page to an earlier version
• How to use categories
• How to use redirect pages
• How to do a purge
• How to edit an article so long that you can't edit
• How to edit with an external editor

Formatting

• How to use Wiki markup codes
• How to use tables
• How to use special characters
• How to use easy timeline syntax
• How to edit mathematical formulae using TeX

Creating links

• How to link Wikipedia articles
  • How to use an alternate link descriptor (the piped link)
• How to link together Wikipedia articles in different languages
• How to link words in articles to articles on sister projects
• How to create links to external pages
• How to use page names
• How to use namespaces

File management

• How to move and merge a page
• How to delete pages/images/categories
• How to protect/unprotect pages (sysops only)

Creating pages

• How to start a new page
• How to name a page
• How to create pages for topics with several different definitions

Templates

• A quick guide to templates
• How to use templates
• List of available templates
• How to add boilerplate text

Using images

• How to use images (and the image use policy)
• Image list
• How to upload files to Wikipedia
• Image description page
• How to produce graphics for pages
• Images and multimedia

How to resolve conflicts

• Stay cool!
• Be nice to newcomers
• Alert others
• Request assistance from a members' advocate
• Dispute resolution
• Arbitration policy

Advanced editing

• Help:Editing shortcuts
• Tools
• Variables

Contributing to Wikipedia

• How to improve an article
• Writing your first article
• How to write a great article
• Style
  • Manual of style
  • Category:Wikipedia style guidelines
  • WikiProjects, writing and style guidelines for specific disciplines
• Policies and guidelines for contributors
• Contributing to articles outside your native language
• Resolving disputes
• Wikipedia:Comunity Portal - find out where your help is needed

Sources

• Sources for articles
• Citing sources: How | Why | What is a reliable source
• Category:Wikipedia resources for researchers
• Public domain resources
• Newspapers and magazines request service

Common procedures

• Featuring an article
• Featuring pictures
• Featuring lists
• Peer review
• Deleting a page (full policy)
• Moving a page (naming policies)
• Protecting a page (full policy)
• Reverting a page
• Administrator nominations

Policies, conventions and guidelines

• Overview of policies
• Neutral point of view (NPOV)
• Copyright
• Editing policy
• Manual of Style
  • Layout
  • Naming conventions
  • Disambiguation
  • Captions
• Image use
• Citing Wikipedia
• Libel
• Wikipedia etiquette
• Be bold!

Technical information

• About Wikimedia
  • The MediaWiki software
  • 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.
  • Requests and bug reports
• Browser notes
• Bots
• How to download Wikipedia content
  • Database download
• Export page(s) in XML

Public relations

• Wikipedia:Press Kit, resources for press enquiries