Introduction to Wikipedia

Sandbox

About Wikipedia

How to log in

Why create an account?

Choosing a username

Sign the new-user log - introduce yourself!

The Help Desk - post questions, receive answers

Boot Camp - learn about how Wikipedia works without all that military training

Helping Hand Group - request a tutorial or help page be improved or created

Glossary of Wikipedia terms

Who writes Wikipedia (essential information for new readers)

Browsing - how to:

Search for an article (including "Go" button)

Explore Wikipedia

Use the what links here browsing tool

Use talk pages (discussion pages) ( full policy)

archiving talk pages to separate subpages.

Use the Recent Changes page

Patrolling the recent changes

Do research using Wikipedia

(See also Category of resources for researchers).

Play media files in Wikipedia

Other Wikipedia languages

Main Page alternates

PDA version

Text only

Links only

Simple

Blue boy

Classic

Executive

Italian-style

Misty breeze

Regal

Shades of blue

Edit me

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

Your Wikipedia account - how to:

Customize your Wikipedia experience

Change your preferences

Change your signature

Change your username

Delete your account

Log in (troubleshooting)

Customizing your display with CSS (advanced programming knowledge required)

Wikipedian culture

Wikipedians

List of Wikipedians

WikiProjects: groups of Wikipedians creating standards on specific subjects

List of WikiProjects

Collaborations: Wikipedians focusing on one article for a set amount of time

List of collaborations

Wikipedian humor

Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

Wikipediholism

Unusual articles

Editcountitis

The edit counter

Wikipedian games

Awards

Vandalism

Reverting a page to undo vandalism (and the Three-revert rule)

Reporting vandalism to administrators (urgent cases only)

Persistent vandals

Current vandalism

The Counter Vandalism Unit

Most vandalized pages

Don't provoke the vandals!

Voting and consensus

Feedback by editors, to editors.

Featuring an article

Featuring pictures

Featuring lists

Peer review

Administrator nominations

You can also ask the Wikipedia community to consider...

...deleting an article (full policy)

...moving a page or merging it with another (and how to actually do it)

...protecting a page (full policy)

...deleting, merging, or renaming a category

...deleting a template (or a stub type)

...deleting images and other media

File:Nuvola apps clanbomber.pngResolving disputes

Stay cool!

Be nice to newcomers

Alert others

Request assistance from a members' advocate

Dispute resolution

Arbitration policy

Welcome!
Overview of Wikipedia (All about Wikipedia)

Category:Wikipedia

What Wikipedia is not
Press Kit resources for press enquiries
About Wikipedians

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)

The Simplified Ruleset: Wikipedia in a nutshell

The Five Pillars that define what Wikipedia is...

...and is not

Wikipedia in eight words

Wikipedia etiquette

Be bold!

Neutral point of view (NPOV)

Wikipedia:Verifiability

Copyright

Editing policy

Image use policy

Citing Wikipedia

Libel

Page protection policy

Deletion policy

Policy on permanent deletion of pages

Privacy policy

List of policies and guidelines

List of official policies

List of guidelines

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.
  
• Computer help desk for questions about software related to Wikipedia, and automated tasks
• 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

FAQ list

Overview FAQ

Administration FAQ

Contributing FAQ

Editing FAQ

Schools FAQ

Misc FAQ

Problems FAQ

Readers' FAQ

Technical FAQ

Tutorial

Simplified ruleset, essential information to understand when editing articles (for new editors).

For more advanced policies and guidelines, see that section on this page.

Editing - how to:

Edit a page, including markup details.

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.

Cheat! (editor's cheat sheet - keep this open in another window)

Use sections in an article

Test edits, and other things

Revert a page to an earlier version

Use categories

Use redirect pages

Do a purge

Edit an article so long that you can't edit

edit with an external editor

See also Advanced editing below

File:Nuvola apps kcmdevice.png Saving - how to:

Report your change in the edit summary

Handle an edit conflict

Use minor edits

Creating links - how to:

Link Wikipedia articles

Use an alternate link descriptor (the piped link)

Link together Wikipedia articles in different languages

Link words in articles to articles on sister projects

Link to related articles on sister projects

Create links to external pages

Use page names

Use namespaces

Use headings as anchors' to link to

Creating pages - how to:

Start a new page

Naming conventions in general (full list of specific naming conventions)

Create pages for topics with several different definitions

Create subpages

Stub articles (List of Stub Styles)

Lifecycle of an article - how to:

Start a new page

Name and rename a page

Improve an article

Write your first article

Write a better article

Write a great article

Write the perfect article

Translate articles

Find out where your help is needed at the Community Portal

Style

List of style guidelines

Layout

Naming conventions

Disambiguation (pages which resolve ambiguity for articles with similar titles)

Captions

Image use

Manual of Style

Biographies

Command-line examples

Dashes

Dates & numbers

Disambiguation

Headings

Links

Mathematics

Pronunciation

Titles

Trademarks

How to link to Wikimedia projects

Sources

Cite the sources: How | Why | What is a reliable source?

Sources for articles

List of Resources for researchers

Public domain resources

Newspapers and magazines request service

File management - how to:

Start a new page

Move and merge a page

Delete pages/images/categories

Protect and unprotect pages (sysops only)

Formatting - how to:

Use Wiki markup codes

HTML codes in wikitext

Use tables

Use special characters

Use easy timeline syntax

Edit mathematical formulae using TeX

Templates

A quick guide to templates

Templates

Boilerplate text

List of available templates

Images

Place images into articles

How to upload files to Wikipedia (and the actual form)

Understand the image description page

Create graphics for pages

Image use policy

Images and multimedia

Image list

Administrator privileges

Administrator nominations

Administrators page

List of administrators

Administration FAQ

Administrator's reading list

Bureaucrats

Elections

Meta

Purge

Fix cut & paste moves

Page protection

The Wikipedia syntax

• Tables
• Quick guide to templates
• Templates
• Redirect
• Mathematical markup in TeX
• Infobox

Super-advanced editing

Help:Editing shortcuts

Tools

Editing toolbar

"Magic words"

Variables

Special pages

Recent changes (and the recent changes patrol)

Enhanced recent changes

Related changes

Watching pages

Public watchlists

Page history

Diff

User contributions

Edit summary

Minor edit

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

Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

Department of Fun

Wikipedia:List of really, really, really stupid article ideas that you really, really, really should not create

Wikipedia:Talk page highlights

m:Really Reformed Church of Wikipedia