Wikipedia is a compendium of the world's knowledge. If you know what you are looking for, type it into Wikipedia's search box. If, however, you need a bird's eye view of what Wikipedia has to offer, see its main contents pages below, which in turn list more specific pages.

Wikipedia's main navigation subsystems (overviews, outlines, lists, portals, glossaries, categories, and indices) are each divided into the following subject classifications:

• Reference works – compendiums of information, usually of a specific type, compiled in a book for ease of reference. That is, the information is intended to be quickly found when needed.
• Culture – encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits of the individuals in these groups.
• Geography – field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth and planets.
• Health – state of physical, mental and social well-being in which disease and infirmity are absent.
• History – the past as it is described in written documents, and the study thereof.
• Human activities – the various activities done by people. For instance it includes leisure, entertainment, industry, recreation, war, and exercise.
• Mathematics – the study of topics such as quantity (numbers), structure, space, and change. It evolved through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, from counting, calculation, measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects.
• Natural science – branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation.
• People – plurality of persons considered as a whole, as is the case with an ethnic group or nation.

• Philosophy – study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.
• Religions – social-cultural systems of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.
• Society – group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members.
• Technology – the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation.

Overview articles

Overview articles summarize in prose a broad topic like biology, and also have illustrations and links to subtopics like cell biology, biographies like Carl Linnaeus, and other related articles like Human Genome Project.

• Wikipedia:Contents/Overviews lists overview articles from covered fields in a single page.

Outline pages

Outline pages have trees of topics in an outline format, which in turn are linked to further outlines and articles providing more detail. Outlines show how important subtopics relate to each other based on how they are arranged in the tree, and they are useful as a more condensed, non-prose alternative to overview articles.

• Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines is a comprehensive list of "Outline of __" pages, organized by subject. It is itself an outline, that links (almost) exclusively to other outlines.
• Outline of academic disciplines covers subjects studied in college or university, and provides links to prose overview articles and their corresponding outlines.
• Outline of knowledge is the top-level outline, its subject being the broadest one of all. It is the ancestor of all other outlines, and they branch out from it, in successive levels.

Vital articles

Vital articles are lists of subjects for which Wikipedia should have corresponding high-quality articles. They serve as centralized watchlists to track the status of Wikipedia's most important articles.

• Vital articles level 1 – 10 most important articles
• Vital articles level 2 – 100 most important articles
• Vital articles level 3 – 1,000 most important articles
• Vital articles level 4 – 10,000 most important articles
• Vital articles level 5 – 50,000 most important articles

Various third-party classification systems have been mapped to Wikipedia articles, which can be accessed from these pages:

• Library of Congress Classification
• List of Dewey Decimal classes
• Figurative system of human knowledge
• Outline of Roget's Thesaurus
• Propædia
• Tree of knowledge system
• Universal Decimal Classification

Wikipedia has several types of pages which provide content in a non-prose form, for reference purposes.

List pages

List pages enumerate items of a particular type, such as the List of sovereign states or List of South Africans. Wikipedia has "lists of lists" when there are too many items to fit on a single page, when the items can be sorted in different ways, or as a way of navigating lists on a topic (for example Lists of countries and territories or Lists of people). There are several ways to find lists:

• Wikipedia:Contents/Lists – A limited single-page collection of lists and lists of lists
• List of lists of lists – A broad single-page collection of lists of lists
• Category:Lists – Browse lists comprehensively via the multi-page Wikipedia category system

Timelines

Timelines list events chronologically, sometimes including links to articles with more detail. There are several ways to find timelines:

• List of timelines has a long single-page collection
• Category:Wikipedia timelines has a comprehensive multi-page collection via the Wikipedia category system

Of particular interest may be:

• List of centuries
• List of decades
• List of historical anniversaries – e.g. events on January 1 of any year
• Category:Graphical timelines – graphical timelines in the category and subcategories, arranged alphabetically

Glossaries

Glossaries are lists of terms with definitions. Wikipedia includes hundreds of alphabetical glossaries; they can be found two ways:

• Wikipedia:Contents/Glossaries – A single-page list of glossaries
• Category:Wikipedia glossaries – Browse glossaries comprehensively via the Wikipedia category system

Bibliographies

Bibliographies list sources on a given topic, for verification or further reading outside Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia:List of bibliographies is a list of bibliographies
• Category:Wikipedia bibliographies has a complete multi-page listing of bibliographies on Wikipedia

Category:Discographies

Discographies catalog the sound recordings of individual artists or groups.

• Category:Discographies has a complete multi-page listing

Portals

Portals include featured articles, images, news, categories, excerpts of key articles, links to related portals, and to-do lists for editors. There are two ways to find portals:

• Wikipedia:Contents/Portals – A single-page list of portals
• Category:Portals – Browse portals comprehensively via the Wikipedia category system

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.

• Category:Wikipedia books (community books) – an alphabetical list of the books
• Category:Wikipedia books – a list of the books, categorized by topic

Spoken articles

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

• Category:Spoken articles – an organized list of all spoken articles
• Wikipedia:Spoken articles – some general information about the spoken article technology

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:

• Category:Main topic classifications – probably what you are looking for: Arts, History, Technology, etc.
• Wikipedia:Contents/Categories – a hand-crafted list of first- and second-level topic categories

For biographies, see Category:People.

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

• Special:Allpages lists all of the current pages in Wikipedia.
• Wikipedia:Contents/A–Z index provides an easy way to skip to a particular part of the alphabet in the list of all articles.
• Lists of alphabetical indexes
  • Category:Wikipedia indexes – alphabetical list of topic indexes
  • Wikipedia:Contents/Indices – indexes sorted by topic area

Current history entries

You can help us keep Wikipedia up to date!! The list below is for encyclopedia entries that describe and pertain to events happening on a current basis.

• 2024 – major events this year
• 2024 in politics and government  –major current political news and developments
• 2024 in science and technology  –major current news on science findings and technology developments
• Portal:Current events – featured current events and related project activities
• Category:2024-related timelines
• Category:2024 by country
• Deaths in 2024 – lists notable people who died this year
• Category:Contemporary history by country

Featured content

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

• Featured articles · Featured lists · Featured pictures · Featured topics

Most popular articles

• Wikipedia:Top 5000 pages (of the last week)