Help:Special page

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Special pages are created by the software on demand. They are located in "Special:" namespace and have no corresponding wikitext. Automatic list of most special pages is available by the Special pages link on every wiki page.

Below is an arranged list of special pages available on most Wikimedia projects. Page names are case-insensitive; their default names were converted from capitalized lowercase to CamelCase in March 2008.

For many special pages the option Preferences→Recent changes→"Number of edits to show in recent changes, history and log pages:" determines the number of titles per page.

[edit] Lists

[edit] All pages

Mediawiki searches all pages in a specified group of names in a special ASCII order. Capitals come before lowercase letters and unique characters such as "é" come after "z".

Mediawiki searches include redirects (Example: #REDIRECT[[Page name]]) These redirects are usually displayed in a different style than normal pages because of allpagesredirect class.

If a person uses "Display pages starting at:" to search, both Special:Prefixindex and Special:Allpages will show the list of pages starting with this word, then Allpages will display all of the other pages in ASCII order which don't have this word.

For example, if a person types in "Computer" in the "Display pages starting at:" box on the Special:Allpages page, mediawiki will first list all pages that start with the word computer:

Mediawiki will then list all of the other pages that don't start with "computer" in ASCII order.

[edit] Protected

[edit] Categories

List of all categories, alphabetically ordered, showing the number of top elements in each category. Not very convenient, so many projects create index pages like w:Portal:Contents/Categorical index.

The tree of pages and subcategories, using mw:Extension:CategoryTree. The same tree functionality is used on categories pages, and can be inserted into any page with <categorytree> tag.

[edit] Images

List of uploaded files with descriptions, can be sorted by date, name or size.

Gallery of uploaded files with thumbnails, sorted by upload date.

[edit] Cached lists

All these lists are updated periodically (not in real time). They say "The following data is cached" and show the day of the last update.

All these lists are limited to 5000 titles, on several large Wikimedia projects to 1000 titles.

[edit] Record pages

These lists only show main namespace pages:

The following lists are no longer updated in Wikimedia projects due to big server load:

[edit] Problematic

Pages that link to a disambiguation page, which should link to the appropriate topic instead. A disambiguation page is defined as a page on which a disambiguation template (defined in MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage) is transcluded.

Redirects to non-existant pages, usually left after deletions. Periodically fixed or deleted by administrators.

Redirects to other redirects. May contain false positives. Double redirects are fixed by bots in many projects.

Main namespace pages with no links to them in the wiki.

Main namespace pages without any outgoing internal links.

Main namespace pages without Interlanguage links

Non-existant categories used on wiki pages. These should either be created (by adding category description and upper categories) or those wiki pages should be fixed (e.g. if someone mistyped a category name).

The following lists are no longer updated on Wikimedia projects:

Non-existant pages that have at least 2 incoming internal links.

A list of links from a page in the main namespace to a page in other namespaces (except for Special, Talk, Meta and Template namespaces), which are not advisable to use.

[edit] Without categories

Usually these pages need to be either categorized or deleted.

[edit] Unused

If the pages are not used, they probably need to be deleted. Note however that images might be used externally, and templates may be used for substitution.

[edit] Tools

This link is available on every wiki page, see Help:What links here.

Available only to autoconfirmed users on most projects.

Returns the complete path for a file, previously was mw:Extension:Filepath.

By mw:Extension:ExpandTemplates. Provides an input box to enter wikitext, and another one to enter a page name, and produces expanded wikitext, i.e., templates, parser functions and variables are expanded recursively; variables depending on page name are expanded based on the supplied page name.

ISBN Book Sources

mw:Extension:Cite/Special:Cite.php is not enabled on Meta, but enabled on Wikipedia, see w:Special:Cite and w:wp:Citing Wikipedia.

Produces an XML file containing the wikitext and metadata of either the current version only, or all revisions, of one or more pages, specified in the form of a list; the XML file is in the format required for Special:Import; exporting is typically done either in preparation of applying the latter at another MediaWiki project, or for searching within old page revisions. See Help:Export.

[edit] Search

See Help:Search

By mw:Extension:LinkSearch. See Help:Linksearch.

Filters files for its MIME-type.

[edit] Random

These links redirect to a random page/redirect from the main namespace. Other namespaces can be specified as a parameter.

[edit] Users actions

See #Logs below.

See Help:Recent changes. Limited to 30 days on Wikimedia projects, just like two following special pages and the watchlist.

See Help:Related changes.

Newest pages with creation date and time, current size, user who created the page, and first edit summary, in reverse order of creation. Can be patrolled on Wikimedia projects.

[edit] Project

[edit] Account

Creates new login cookie.

Destroys cookie, see also Privacy policy. This link is not included in the automatic list because it is present on every page.

Pages available only to registered users:

[edit] Users

Alphabetic list of all registered users, can be shown by group. There also is Special:Listadmins, which is a redirect to Special:Listusers/Sysop. For some project families, notably Wikia, this applies for the whole family.

Blocked IPs and usernames

Requires a target user: e. g. Special:Contributions/Example. This link is also present on every user/user talk page. Registered users also have the link to their own contributions on top.

A special mode newbie contribs shows recent changes made only by new users.

[edit] MediaWiki

Shows MediaWiki version the site is currently running, and a listing of extensions installed.

Project statistics, appearance is defined by MediaWiki:Sitestatstext.

Automatic list of most special pages. See also SpecialPages grouped into categories - modification that can sort the SpecialPages into categories.

All pages in the MediaWiki namespace, see Help:System message.

By mw:Extension:Gadgets.

[edit] Wikimedia

By mw:Extension:SiteMatrix. Displays all sites of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Voting software for Wikimedia Board of Trustees elections.

[edit] <restrictedpheading>

These pages are only available to users with special rights. Most of them are linked from the corresponding places in MediaWiki interface.

Sysops

Block or unblock users, IPs and ranges of IPs.

Restore all or some revisions of deleted page

Show user's contributions to deleted pages, see mw:Extension:DeletedContributions.

Imports the wikitext and metadata of one or more revisions of one or more pages by uploading an XML file in the format produced by Special:Export (typically after applying the latter at another MediaWiki project). See Help:Import.

List of pages not watched by anyone.

Mass deletions of pages recently added by a given user or IP. This is mw:Extension:Nuke, enabled only on some Wikimedia projects.

Bureaucrats

CheckUsers

Oversight

Stewards

Developers

[edit] Other pages

These pages are not listed in the automatic list because they are already present in MediaWiki interface.

Also, by definition these pages can be considered special:

[edit] Not enabled on Wikimedia wikis

Arbitration committee election 

Special:ArbComVote : ditto for the finished Arbitration Committee elections.

Popular pages 

Special:Popularpages : The most visited pages. Currently disabled.

SQL query 

Special:Asksql : Sysop only. Database interface for running queries. Currently disabled.

Unicode Converter 

Special:UnicodeConverter : Converts Unicode to HTML entities : Not currently available outside of the test wiki

[edit] Links to special pages

Special pages can be linked to as usual, like Special:Recentchanges. Instead of "special" prefix, a localized namespace name can be used, e.g. "Speciaal" in Dutch, "Spezial" in German, "Speciális:" in Hungarian and "מיוחד:" in Hebrew. The localized name also appears in the URLs.

Redirects to Special pages have been disabled because of their complications.

Some special pages accept (and some require) a parameter after /. For other pages and parameters the full URL has to be given, for example http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&days=3&limit=10 (last 10 changes).

Special:Allpages/Template:Z — all templates starting with "Z" and all templates after that. Special:Prefixindex/User:Example/ — all subpages of user Example; this is the most popular usage of Prefixindex.

Besides, these special pages can be transcluded into wikitext, so the result appears as the part of the page, e.g. {{Special:Prefixindex/User:Example/}}.

Two special pages Mypage and Mytalk exist specially for internal links, they redirect to the pages of a user who follows these links. Examples: Special:Mypage, Special:Mypage/monobook.js.

[edit] Transclusion

[edit] Logs

Special:Log - combined display of various logs. You can narrow down the view by:

It does not seem possible to search by editor for edits of deleted pages. They can only be seen by a sysop with Special:Undelete if the exact page name is known.

There are no logs available on the site for:

[edit] See also

Old logs on Meta, until Dec 2004:

[edit] Links to other help pages

Help contents

Meta | Wikinews | Wikipedia | Wikiquote | Wiktionary | commons: | mw: | b: | s: | mw:Manual | google

Versions of this help page (for other languages see below)

Meta | Wikinews | Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Special_page | Wikiquote | Wiktionary

What links here on Meta or from Meta | Wikipedia | MediaWiki

Reading

Go | Search | Stop words | URL | Namespace | Page name | Section

Backlinks | Link | Piped link | Interwiki link | Redirect | Category | Image page

Logging in and preferences

Logging in | Preferences | User style

Editing

Advanced editing | Editing FAQ | Edit toolbar | Export | Import | Shortcuts

Tracking changes

Recent changes (enhanced) | Related changes | Watching pages | Diff

Page history | Edit summary | User contributions | Minor edit | Patrolled edit

Style & formatting

Wikitext examples | Reference card | HTML in wikitext | List | Table | Sorting | Colors

Special input and output

Inputbox | Special characters | Displaying a formula | Images (uploads) | EasyTimeline

Advanced functioning

Template | Advanced templates | Parser function | ParserFunctions | Parameter default

Variable | Magic word | System message | Substitution | Array | Calculation

Page management

Starting a new page | Renaming (moving) a page | Protecting pages | Deleting a page

Special pages

Talk page | Testing | Sandbox

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