Special pages are pages generated by the software on demand for special purposes, usually related to project maintenance. They are found in the Special: namespace, a virtual namespace whose pages lack corresponding talk pages. They are not written in wikitext and can't be edited in the normal way; but elements of their pages can sometimes be edited through corresponding pages in the MediaWiki namespace. If you make a normal redirect to a special page, the redirect will not be immediately followed (though special pages can be targets of soft redirects), and creating any pages beginning with the Special: prefix is also not possible.

Special pages often take parameters. Sometimes these can be supplied after a slash (as in Special:Log/block); in other cases an index.php call is used; for example https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=3&limit=10. Also, the content of most special pages depends on preferences that have been set by the user, e.g. classic or enhanced Recent Changes, the number of titles in Recent Changes and the watchlist, etc.

A directory of special pages can be accessed from Special:SpecialPages, which is found in the sidebar of every page on Wikipedia in the Tools section.

Modifying special pages

Although special pages are not themselves editable, they generally contain standard text which is modifiable (although only by administrators). To find the right portion of text, append ?uselang=qqx to the special page URL, and append &uselang=qqx instead if the URL already contains a ?, This will reveal message names in parentheses. Then, go to that name in the MediaWiki namespace. For example, Special:BookSources?uselang=qqx reveals "(booksources-summary)", so MediaWiki:booksources-summary is used on that page. To propose a modification, leave an {{edit protected}} request on the talk page of the relevant MediaWiki page. An administrator will make the change if it seems appropriate.

Available special pages

General information

• Special:SpecialPages: a list of most special pages currently available to all users.
• Special:AllMessages (System messages): displays all pages in the MediaWiki namespace. See Help:System message
• Special:Statistics: total number of pages and users in various categories.
• Special:Version: shows the version of the software the site is currently running and lists the extensions, skins, and libraries currently installed.
• Special:SiteMatrix (Wikimedia wikis): lists all Wikimedia projects (such as different language Wikipedias) and their codes.

Page listings

• Special:AllPages: allows the user to access a portion of an alphabetical list of all Wikipedia pages in a specified namespace. A starting point can be given as a parameter, e.g. Special:AllPages/T (pages in the main namespace, from "T"), Special:Allpages/Template: (pages in the Template: namespace, from the start). For the order in which pages are listed, see Help:Alphabetical order.
• Special:PrefixIndex (All pages with prefix): similar to AllPages. Lists all pages of a specified namespace beginning with a given prefix. Useful to find subpages, for example: Special:PrefixIndex/User:Example.
• Special:Categories: shows an alphabetical list of categories, with numbers of members.
• Special:CategoryTree: displays categories in a tree structure.
• Special:ListFiles (File list): list of images and other files uploaded; can be sorted by size or date. Special:ListFiles/Example lists files uploaded by User:Example.
• Special:ListRedirects (Redirects): lists all redirects.
• Special:ProtectedPages: lists protected pages.
• Special:ProtectedTitles: lists titles which have been protected to prevent pages being created there.
• Special:StablePages (Pages using Pending Changes): lists pages under pending changes protection.
• Special:PagesWithProp (Pages with a page property): lists pages that use a particular page property.
• Special:UnconnectedPages (Pages not connected to items): lists pages not connected with any item from Wikidata.

Tools

• Special:Search: for searching Wikipedia. See Help:Searching.
• Special:WhatLinksHere: enables listing all pages linking to a given page (including transclusions and redirects). The target can be specified as a parameter, e.g. Special:WhatLinksHere/Swaziland. See Help:What links here.
• Special:ComparePages: to compare two pages (diffs between two pages).
• Special:Diff: e.g. [[Special:Diff/611653557|<text>]] gives diff between version 611653557 and the preceding version of the same article, or [[Special:Diff/583498451/611653557|<text>]] gives diff between version 583498451 and 611653557, not necessarily of the same article, e.g. Special:Diff/330350877/611653557.
  • Special:MobileDiff/id1...id2: diffs in mobile version. e.g., Special:MobileDiff/548289653...567368971
• Special:MovePage: for moving (renaming) a page (see Help:Moving a page). The page must be given as a parameter.
• Special:Upload (Upload file): upload a file to the wiki.
• Special:Export (Export pages): 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.
• Special:MIMESearch: filters files for MIME type.
• Special:Nearby: to see a list of articles around you (articles near your geographical location)
• Special:Random: redirects to a random page from the main namespace which is not a redirect. Other namespaces can be specified as a parameter, e.g. Special:Random/Talk.See Wikipedia:Random for more details.
• Special:RandomRootpage: redirects to a random root page, that is, excluding sub-pages. Some wikis, such as Wikibooks, use a sub-page hierarchy. This function can be used there as a substitute for Special:Random, so it can be used to show "random books" in Wikibooks, instead of random pages.^[1]
• Special:RandomInCategory (Random page in category): redirects to a random page within the specified category (can be from any namespace).
• Special:RandomRedirect: redirects to a random redirect page.
• Special:Gadgets: lists gadgets that users can enable in their preferences.
• Special:Book (Manage your book): gives access to functionality for creating personalized sets of Wikipedia pages. See Help:Books.
• Special:VipsTest (VIPS scaling test page)
• Special:ApiHelp: MediaWiki API help
• Special:TemplateSandbox
• Special:ApiSandbox

Latest changes

• Special:RecentChanges: lists the latest edits in the project. Changes to watched pages appear bold. See Help:Recent changes.
• Special:RecentChangesLinked (Related changes): enables listing of the most recent changes in pages linked from a selected page, or belonging to a selected category. Changes to watched pages appear bold. The page can be supplied as a parameter, e.g. Special:RecentChangesLinked/Lesotho. See Help:Related changes.
• Special:PendingChanges (Articles with edits awaiting review ): articles with edits awaiting review. See Wikipedia:Pending changes.
• Special:NewPages: newest pages with creation date and time, current size, user who created the page, and first edit summary, in reverse order of creation. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol.
  • Special:NewPagesFeed: for new page patrolling. See Wikipedia:Page Curation
• Special:NewFiles (Gallery of new files ): gallery of new uploaded files.
• Special:Log (All public logs): combined display of various logs. The type of log, user and page affected can be specified. Parameters "block", "delete", "protect" and "upload" are available. e.g. Special:Log/block displays the block log directly. For more information, see Help:Log.
• Special:AdvancedReviewLog: lists recent approvals and deprecations of pending revisions.
• Special:AbuseFilter (Edit filter management): a set of tools for detecting problematic edits. See Wikipedia:Edit filter.
• Special:AbuseLog (Edit filter log): the log generated by the Abuse Filter.
• Special:Tags: lists the tags with which edits may be marked. See Wikipedia:Tags.

Users

• Special:ListUsers (Users): lists all registered users. Can be filtered by group (e.g. administrators) and other criteria. Note that Special:ListAdmins redirects to Special:ListUsers/sysop.
• Special:ActiveUsers (Active users list): lists editors who have performed at least one action in the last 30 days.
• Special:BlockList (Blocked users): blocked IPs and usernames.
• Special:Contributions (User contributions): enables listing of a user's contributions, or all new users' contributions. The user can be supplied as a parameter, e.g. Special:Contributions/Example. See Help:User contributions.
• Special:ListGroupRights (User group rights): shows the rights assigned to user groups.
• Special:EmailUser: e.g. Special:EmailUser/Example. For emailing users, see Wikipedia:Emailing users.

Global users

• Special:CentralAuth (Global account information): global user statistics through the unified login or SUL (single user login). e.g. Special:CentralAuth/Example
• Special:GlobalUsers (Global accounts list): lists users across all Wikimedia wikis, along with global user group membership, and whether their account exists locally on English Wikipedia. Can also be filtered by global user groups.
• Special:GlobalBlockList (List of globally blocked IP addresses): all IP addresses with global blocks.
• Special:GlobalGroupPermissions (Global group management): lists the rights associated with global user groups. Also lists the members of global user groups, and allows for management of rights.

Personal

• Special:UserLogin (Log in): to log in to Wikipedia. Special:UserLogin/signup (Create account) to create an account. See Help:Logging in.
• Special:UserLogout (Log out): to log out of your account.
• Special:CentralLogin (Central user log in)
• Special:ChangePassword, Special:ChangeEmail (Change or remove email address), Special:ConfirmEmail (Confirm email address) and Special:ResetTokens
• Special:Preferences: allows you to view and modify your personal settings. See Help:Preferences.
• Special:Contributions (User contributions)
  • Special:MyContributions: links to your contributions page. See Help:User contributions.
• Special:MyUploads (File list): lists files you have uploaded.
• Special:MyPage: links to your user page.
• Special:Notifications: links to your notifications page
• Special:MyTalk: links to your user talk page.
• Special:Watchlist: shows recent changes to the pages you are watching. See Help:Watching pages.
• Special:EditWatchlist and Special:EditWatchlist/raw: To edit your watchlist.
• Special:MergeAccount (Login unification status): to create a unified account to log on to any Wikimedia project. See Help:Unified login.

Maintenance

• Special:BrokenRedirects: lists redirects that point a non-existent page. May contain false positives.
• Special:DisambiguationPages: lists all the disambiguation pages.
• Special:DisambiguationPageLinks (Pages linking to disambiguation pages), which lists all of the pages that link to disambiguation pages. (This is a replacement for the old Special:Disambiguations page which is deprecated.)
• Special:DoubleRedirects: lists redirects that redirect to another redirect. May contain false positives.
• Special:LongPages: pages in the main namespace, with size in bytes, in order of decreasing size.
• Special:ShortPages: pages in the main namespace, with size (of the wikitext excluding that of templates used) in bytes, in order of increasing size.
• Special:MostLinkedFiles (Most linked-to files): lists images and other files linked from the largest number of pages.
• Special:WithoutInterwiki (Pages without language links): pages without links to other language Wikipedias.
• Special:UncategorizedPages: pages without category tags. Note that after adding a tag to a page, refreshing this page does not immediately reflect the change. Note also that Special:UncategorizedCategories is disabled; use Wikipedia:Database reports/Uncategorized categories instead.
• Special:UncategorizedFiles: images and other files without category tags (see above).
• Special:UncategorizedTemplates: templates without category tags (see above).
• Special:UnusedCategories
• Special:UnusedFiles
• Special:UnusedTemplates: templates which are not transcluded (however, they may be used for substitution).
• Special:WantedCategories: categories with members but no category page.
• Special:WantedFiles: missing image files and others.
• Special:ListDuplicatedFiles: See all duplicated files on Wikipedia.
• Special:FileDuplicateSearch: Check to see if a certain file has a duplicate.

Miscellaneous

• Special:BlankPage: a blank page.
• Special:Random: a random page.
• Special:Cite (Cite This Page): generates bibliographic citations, in several formats, for citing a Wikipedia article as a reference.
• Special:BookSources: search sources for a book by inputting the book's ISBN number.
• Special:Captcha (CAPTCHA help): shows "Captcha" help.
• Special:ExpandTemplates: an extension used to produce expanded wikitext, i.e. templates, parser functions and variables in the input text are expanded recursively. See also mw:Extension:ExpandTemplates.
• Special:FilePath (Redirect by file, user, page or revision ID): returns the complete path for a file.
• Special:LinkSearch (External links search): for searching for external links. See Help:Linksearch and MW:Help:Linksearch.
• Special:MobileOptions (Settings): change settings for Mobile view.
• Special:Permalink/Oldid: for linking to a specific version of a wiki page. See Help:Permanent link.
• Special:Redirect (Redirect by file, user, page or revision ID): Special:Redirect/revision/532639569 is equivalent to Special:Permalink/532639569
• Special:Interwiki (View interwiki data): view interwiki data.
• Special:SecurePoll
• Special:WikiSets, shows a list of wiki sets
• Special:ValidationStatistics (Page review statistics): page review statistics for pending changes.
• Special:Hieroglyphs (Try hieroglyph markup): to try out hieroglyph markup.

Restricted special pages

The following pages can be accessed only by users with certain privileges.

• Special:Block: available to administrators. Used to block or unblock users, IPs and ranges of IPs.
• Special:Import: available to administrators and importers. See Help:Import.
• Special:Undelete: available to administrators. Provides one way to undelete a page.
• Special:DeletedContributions: available to administrators.
• Special:UnwatchedPages: available to administrators.
• Special:MassMessage: allows administrators and mass message senders to send a message to a list of users (help).
• Special:Nuke: available to administrators.
• Special:LockDB and Special:UnlockDB: available only to developers. Used to switch the database between read/write and read-only modes.
• Special:UserRights: can be read by anyone, however only administrators can use the page to assign and remove user access rights (e.g. rollbacker status).
• Special:CheckUser: available to users with the checkuser privilege.

Inactive

The following special pages are updated on a less regular schedule. Some of these pages may have analogues on cloud services.

• Special:FewestRevisions (Pages with the fewest revisions): lists articles with the fewest revisions. Updated on the 13th and 27th of each month ^[2]
• Special:MostCategories (Pages with the most categories): lists articles whose number of categories is largest. Updated on the 16th of every month ^[3]
• Special:MostRevisions (Pages with the most revisions): lists articles with the most revisions. Updated on the 11th and 25th of each month ^[4]
• Special:DeadendPages: pages without any outgoing links. Updated on the 9th and 23rd of each month ^[5]
• Special:MostLinkedCategories (Most linked-to categories): lists categories with the most pages. Updated on the 17th of every month ^[6]
• Special:MostLinkedPages (Most linked-to pages): lists pages linked from the largest number of other pages. Updated on the 10th and 24th of each month ^[7]
• Special:MostLinkedTemplates or Special:MostTranscludedPages (Most transcluded pages): lists templates for which the number of pages in which the template is transcluded is largest, not counting transclusions through redirects. Updated on the 18th of every month ^[8]
• Special:LonelyPages (Orphaned pages): i.e. articles with no links to them in the wiki. Updated on the 15th of every month ^[9]
• Special:WantedPages Updated on the 12th and 26th of each month ^[10]
• Special:WantedTemplates Updated on the 20th of every month ^[11]
• Special:AncientPages (Dormant pages): pages in the main namespace, in order of last edit. See Wikipedia:Dusty pages. Updated on the 8th and 22nd of each month ^[12]
• Special:UncategorizedCategories Updated on the 19th of every month ^[13]

Linking and transcluding

To create a link to a special page:

• [[Special:PrefixIndex/HMS]] → Special:PrefixIndex/HMS

It can take a label:

• [[Special:PrefixIndex/HMS|All HMSs]] → All HMSs

To present the list on a page, transclude the name:

• {{Special:PrefixIndex/HMS}}

However, some pages cannot be transcluded and would produce only a wikilink (e.g., {{Special:Random}} → Special:Random). When non-existent pages are linked or transcluded, a red link is produced (e.g., Special:Red link example).

More information on transcludable special pages can be found at Wikipedia:Transclusion#Special pages.

Links containing URL query strings

Because the ampersand character (&) is disallowed, it is not possible to create an ordinary link containing &action=edit or &redirect=no in the URL query string.

Special pages in other languages

The term in the site language equivalent to English "Special" is used in each project, for example:

• "Especial" in Spanish
• "Spécial" in French
• "Speciaal" in Dutch
• "Spezial" in German

These also appear in the URLs. The English word "Special" always works, even on foreign-language sites.

See also

• Writing a new special page on the MediaWiki site
• Special page extensions: MediaWiki category
• Special page extensions: Meta category
• Help:Special page on Meta

References

External links

• MediaWiki special page class definitions