Wikipedia:Utilities

This page is a repository for pages that are useful to "doing things" in Wikipedia. In contrast to the Main Page its focus is more for the benefit of regular editors and contributors, rather than the general public. Feel free to improve the categorization below if you believe you can, though discussing it on Talk first would be nice.

Table of contents 1 Newcomers 2 Content 3 Content requests 4 Discussion 5 Fun 6 Historical pages 7 International Wikipedia 8 Lists and Collections to Be Maintained 9 Manual of Style 10 Naming conventions 11 Organizational and other useful pages 12 Policy & Protection 13 Project Information 14 Resources 15 Software programs that may be helpful 16 Statistics 17 Technical 18 To Do Lists 19 Wikipedians 20 Writing and editing technique 21 Links

Newcomers

Welcome! Please see our help page.

Content

• Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Approval mechanism
• Brilliant prose
  • Brilliant prose candidates
• Dark side of Wikipedia
• GFDL History
• Image
• Library of Congress Country Studies
• List of controversial issues - a simple list of pages on controversial subjects, not a place to argue about them
• List of ongoing votes
• Multiple-place names
• Multiple-people names
• New pages
• NPOV dispute
• Nupedia and Wikipedia
• Selected Articles on the Main Page
• Spoiler warning
• Taboo articles
• Upload log
• Votes for article-of-the-day
• Votes for NPOVing
• Votes for rewrite
• Votes for wikification
• What is an article
• Why Wikipedia isn't so great
• Why Wikipedia is so great
• WikiBiblion

Content requests

• Boilerplate request for permission
• Fulfilled picture requests
• Public domain images with missing articles
• Reference desk
• Requested articles
• Requested articles deemed complete
• Requested pictures
• WikiMoney

Discussion

• Arguments
• Instant Messaging Wikipedians
• IRC channel
• Mailing lists
• No personal attacks
• Standard user greeting
• Talk page
• Talk page layout
• Village pump - ask your questions here
• Village pump archive

Fun

• Are You a Wikipediholic Test
• Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
  • Best of BJAODN
  • More bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
  • Even more bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
  • Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense/ASCII cows
  • Bad jokes and other deleted Nonsense N-Z
• Confessed Wikipediholics
  • Wikipediholics in denial
• Magnus Manske Day
• Top 10 Google hits
• Unusual articles
• Wikipedia Day
• Wikipedians

Historical pages

• Gradually being moved to meta:Historical Wikipedia pages
• GNE Project Files
  • GNE Architecture
  • GNU Encyclopedia Tech FAQ
  • GNE Project Design
  • Preliminary DTD
  • Project Name
  • Proposed GNU Moderation System
• Main Page2 old talk

International Wikipedia

• International Wikipedia
• Embassy
• Complete list of language wikis available
• Coordination of Non-English Wikipedias
• Create a new language in Wikipedia
• Homepages of Non-English Wikipedias
• Text to translate for Non-English Wikipedias

Lists and Collections to Be Maintained

• As of
• Links to disambiguating pages
• List of flags
• List of reference tables
• List of timelines
• WikiBiblion

Manual of Style

• Algorithms on Wikipedia
• Boilerplate text
• Current events article development
• Disambiguation
• Filmographies and Discographies
• Footnotes
• History standards
• Manual of Style

Naming conventions

• Naming conventions
• Naming conventions (acronyms)
• Naming conventions (aircraft)
• Naming conventions (use English)
• Naming conventions (capitalization)
• Naming conventions (city names)
• Naming conventions (common names)
• Naming conventions (legislation)
• Naming conventions (names and titles)
• Naming conventions (pluralization)
• Naming conventions (precision)
• Naming conventions (ships)

Organizational and other useful pages

• Building Wikipedia membership
• Category schemes
• List of articles in the Wikipedia namespace
• Navigation links

Policy & Protection

• Annoying users
• Deletion log
  • Old deletion log
• Edit wars in progress
• IP probation watchlist
• List of blocked IP addresses
• Patent nonsense
• Policies and guidelines
• Policy on permanent deletion of pages
• Protected page
• Undelete (sysops only)
• Vandalism in progress
  • Vandalism in progress - old alerts
• Wikipedia-L
• Volunteer Fire Department

Project Information

• Funding

Resources

• Copyright-free resources
• Public domain resources
  • Public domain image resources
• Free or semi-free non-Public-Domain information resources
  • GNU Free Documentation License resources

Software programs that may be helpful

• Magic Button
• Searching
• Syntax highlighting
• Translator from HTML to Wikipedia (http://www.dwheeler.com/html2wikipedia)
• User:hfastedge offering free off-server custom coding (1 request per person) as part of an research project.
• Unicode numeric conversion

Statistics

• Most edited article
• Most popular pages
• Referrers
• Size of Wikipedia
• Statistics
• Visit counter
• Traffic
• What Google likes

Technical

• Bots
• Browser notes
  • Browser page size limits
• Bug reports
  • Editing bug reports
  • History bug reports
  • Internationalization bug reports
  • Logging in bug reports
  • Old bug reports
  • Parser bug reports
  • Phase II bug reports
  • Searching bug reports
  • Special pages bug reports
  • Squashed bugs
• Canonization
• Common words, searching for which isn't possible
• Contingency Page For When The Main Wikipedia Server Is Down
• Database download
• Database queries
• Feature requests
  • Phase II feature requests - Maybe make these generic feature request pages, or move to Historical pages.
    • Top priorities - really important features we still don't have
    • Report features and automation
    • Interface and user preferences
    • Wiki shortcuts - new shortcuts, code tricks
    • Naming conventions (this is all done, but not yet implemented on Wikipedia)
    • Cookies, logins, and privacy
    • Other feature requests
    • Completed feature requests
    • Really ambitious and fanciful feature requests
    • Report features
    • Interface
• Go button
• How to edit an article so long that you can't edit
• How to log in
• How to set preferences
  • Set preferences
• Lag
• List of common misspellings
• Maintenance
• New server madness
• Passwords
• PHP script
  • PHP script automatic wikification
  • PHP script FAQ
  • PHP script new features
  • PHP script tech talk
• Recent Changes header
• Special characters
  • Turkish characters
  • Unicode
• Software Phase III
• Tables
• Technical FAQ
• TeX markup
• Troubleshooting
• Wikipedia:Unsuccessful searches
• User interface ideas
• Vim mappings
• Wikipedia3 documentation

To Do Lists

• Most wanted articles (temporary replacement for Special:Wantedpages)
• Most wanted stubs
• Orphan pages (temporary replacement for Special:Lonelypages)
• Defective redirects
• Disambiguation pages with links
• Duplicate articles
• Dutch Wikipedia language links
• Esperanto language links
• Find or fix a stub - Join the crusade to find all the stub articles...if you want to.
• French Wikipedia language links
• German Wikipedia language links (no longer in use)
• Non-local images
• Orphan talk pages
• Pages needing attention - to list pages you think need work but are out of your area of expertise.
• Personal subpages to be deleted
• Polish language links
• Projects
• Random page
• Self-linking pages
• Spellchecking project
• Subpages to be moved
• Votes for deletion

Wikipedians

• Instant Messaging Wikipedians
• List of Wikipedians in order of arrival
• List users
• Wikipedians by number of edits
• User contributions
• Wikipediholic
• Wikipedians
• Wikipedians by fields of interest
• Wikipedians categorized by sub-cultural affiliation

Writing and editing technique

• Alternate text for images
• Always fill summary field
• Always leave something undone
• Art of weeding
• Avoid blanket statements
• Avoid making your articles orphans
• Avoid statements that will date quickly
• Balance parts of a page
• Be bold in updating pages
• Biography standards
• Build the web
• Check your facts
• Cite your sources
• Contribute what you know or are willing to learn about
• Contributing FAQ
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• Current events article development
• Define and describe
• Don't include copies of primary sources
• Don't use external links where we'll want Wikipedia links
• Edit conflicts
• Editing policy -- Perfection not required; or, the joy of editing
• Establish context
• Explain jargon
• Files
• Follow highlighting conventions
• Foul language
• Guide to Layout
• Headlines
• How does one edit a page
• How-to
• How to add content to Wikipedia with minimal effort
• How to be neutral when taking sides
• How to reduce colors for saving a JPEG as PNG
• How to rename a page
• How to revert a page to an earlier version
• How to start a page
• How to use redirect pages
• How to use tables
• How to write a great article
• Ignore all rules
• Image use policy
• Integrate changes
• Interlanguage links
• Make articles useful for readers
• Make only links relevant to the context
• Make smart use of soft line breaks
• Measurements Debate
• Medicine standards
• Neutral point of view
• Page size
• Pay attention to spelling
• The perfect article
• The perfect stub article
• Principle of least astonishment
• Pronunciation guide
• Sign your posts on talk pages
• Staying cool when the editing gets hot
• Summarize discussion
• Timeline standards
• Use color sparingly
• Use other languages sparingly
• Use short sentences and lists
• Use subheads sparingly
• Warn readers about spoilers
• Weeding
• What Wikipedia isn't
• Why aren't these pages copyedited
• WikiLove
• Wikipedia isn't a dictionary
• WikiProject
• WikiProject Biography
• WikiProject Cities
• WikiProject Clans of Scotland
• WikiProject Concepts
• WikiProject Countries
• WikiProject Elements
• WikiProject historical provinces in Finland
• WikiProject French departements
• WikiProject London
• WikiProject Novels
• WikiProject Protected Areas
• WikiProject Sports
• WikiProject Sports Listing
• WikiProject Sports Olympics
• WikiProject Sports Team Listing
• WikiProject Ships
• WikiProject Swedish counties
• WikiProject Swedish provinces
• WikiProject Timelines
• WikiProject Tree of Life
• WikiProject UK
• WikiProject U.S. Counties
• WikiProject U.S. States

Links

• Banners and buttons
• Building Wikipedia membership
• Friends of Wikipedia
• Meta Wikipedia (http://meta.wikipedia.com/) - a site that works alongside the main Wikipedia project. Here you can post essays and discussions about topics related to Wikipedia.
• Publicity
• Press coverage
• Projects using Wikipedia software
• 2003 Press Release
• Referrers
• TourBusStop