Wikipedia:Tip of the day/2004 archive
Newest tips are on top.
Editing in style
Wikipedia articles are formatted according to the Manual of Style, which sets some standards for link formatting (list external links in their own section at the bottom of an article), capitalization (do not capitalize all words in section headings), punctuation (remember the serial comma), sections (an informative lead section is important), and other minute stylistic details. There are separate guidelines for biographies, citations, titles, dates and numbers, and proper names. The naming conventions set standards for titling articles — perhaps most important: do not capitalize all words and use singular wherever possible. You don't have to remember all these rules and recommendations, but please do not be alarmed if others edit your writing accordingly.
More info: Wikipedia:Manual of Style
User contributions
If you click on a user's name, you can view their user page. If the user exists, there should be a "User contributions" link in the sidebar. This link will show you all the edits that user has ever made, up to 500 per page. Edits with a "top" link are the most recent ones to that particular article. If you click the link you will see exactly which changes the user has made. This is useful for tracking vandalism in progress. The "hist" link will show the history of the page. You have your own contributions list, which is particularly useful for tracking your conversations on talk pages. If you are logged in, you can access the list from the "My contributions" link in the sidebar.
Current events in the world around us
The page current events is used to describe world-wide events of note, not just in politics, but also in science, culture, technology, sports, entertainment and many other areas. If you want to contribute an event of significance, please remember to always cite a reputable source that documents it, as Wikipedia is not a place to publish original research. The information in question should also be added to any relevant articles. Events are generally described in the present tense. If there is a sufficiently developed Wikipedia article about the event, you may also want to feature it on the Main Page.
More info: Current events
Meet the Wikimedia family
Wikipedia is one of several projects organized under the Wikimedia non-profit foundation. There is also Wikibooks, an attempt to collaboratively write and collect textbooks, how-tos and manuals. If you feel the urge to define words rather than explain them, you may want to take a look at Wiktionary, which defines words from many languages in English. While Wikipedia is not a place to post source materials, Wikisource is a repository for free text documents. Last but not least, Wikiquote is a collection of quotes organized in many categories. You can promote development of all these projects by donating money to the Wikimedia foundation.
More info: Wikipedia#Sister projects
MediaWiki, an open source wiki engine
Wikipedia runs on the basis of a custom-tailored software called MediaWiki. Like the Wikipedia content, the MediaWiki source code is copyleft, meaning that it can be freely copied and modified if changes are also made available under these terms. Download MediaWiki to run your own wiki and join the many others who already do, and help us in improving the software by becoming a MediaWiki hacker . You can also submit feature requests, but please check for duplicates first, and take a look the experimental wiki to make sure the developers aren't already ahead of you!
More info: Wikipedia:MediaWiki
Creating aliases with redirects
Many articles can appear under multiple titles. For example, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom also appears under the titles Elizabeth II, Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth II of England, and even Queen of Australia. This is done using so-called redirects. Any page that contains only the content #REDIRECT [[target page]] (and nothing else) is treated as a redirect, and if you click on such a page, you are automatically put on [[target page]]. Do not create redirects when you want to rename a page, because then the history of the page resides at the old title. Use the page move feature instead, which also moves the history.
More info: Wikipedia:Redirect
Being nice and neutral
While Wikipedia might look like pure anarchy, we actually have quite a few policies and guidelines. Central among them is Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, which most of all dictates that controversial views must be attributed. If you want to see what this means in practice, take a look at the NPOV tutorial. Another policy we value highly is Wikiquette - you don't have to be nice to everyone, all of the time, but we appreciate it if you try. Repeated personal attacks have even resulted in bans, but we try to resolve disputes before we resort to such measures.
More info: Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines
Wikipedia in other languages
There are Wikipedias in every world language. They reside at language_prefix.wikipedia.org, e.g. de.wikipedia.org for German and en.wikipedia.org for English. You can link an article to a translation in another language by adding the text [[language_prefix:Article title]]; this interlanguage link will be shown at the top and bottom of the page. Wikis for languages with few Internet-connected speakers like Nepali [1] or Yoruba [2] are still in their infant state. If you want to create a new language in Wikipedia, pick it from the complete list of language wikis available and start working!
More info: Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination
Copyrights? Copyleft!
Wikipedia articles can be copied and modified by anyone, but there's a catch: All modifications have to be made available under the same conditions, and credit has to be given to the original authors. These are the key terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, under which our article text is licensed. There are various mirrors and forks which use our content, and you can download our entire database to become one of them. But please only add content which you have created, or which you have been permitted to use under our terms. Everything is copyrighted by default, even if it does not have a notice to that effect!
More info: Wikipedia:Copyrights
Analyzing Wikipedia
You might think that a project which has created more than 500,000 articles in 50 languages in just a little over three years hasn't had much time for reflection, but you'd be wrong. In fact, there is an entire wiki devoted to that purpose, the Meta-Wikipedia, and if you prefer hard data, pay a visit to Erik Zachte's collection of Wikistats -- whether you want to find out the names of the most active Wikipedians of the past or present, the average article length on the Vietnamese Wikipedia (3,784 bytes), or the language with the most edits per article (it's not English), you'll be amazed what a single Perl script can do with our database dumps.
Becoming a gardener
Any user can become an administrator (AKA "sysop"). Admins have no special rights over the content of Wikipedia, they are like community gardeners. An admin can delete pages (in accordance with Wikipedia:Deletion policy), protect them (in accordance with Wikipedia:Protection policy), and block vandals (see Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress). All of these actions can be undone by any sysop. If you have been active on Wikipedia for some time (three months is a good guideline), apply for adminship today if you want to help with the housekeeping.
More info: Wikipedia:Administrators
What's the difference?
Select...
...and compare!
In the page history for any page, just click two checkboxes to select the revisions which you want to compare (this only works if JavaScript is enabled). You should be presented with a screen which shows you which words have been removed and which ones have been added (affected words are highlighted in red). You can always revert to an earlier revision by selecting it from the history, editing and saving it.
More info: Wikipedia:Page history
Shared visions
Wikipedia always needs free images! If you have a collection of photos which you have shot yourself, please look through it and see if there are articles which might benefit from one of them. If you own a camera, look for targets in your area. Maybe there is a picture request which you could fulfill? If you are an artist or a photographer, consider joining the WikiProject Illustration to collaborate with others. Please upload any public domain images of interest - see Wikipedia:Public domain resources and related - but let's try to keep fair use at a minimum.
More info: Wikipedia:Image use policy
Same titles, different meanings
To distinguish between pages that would otherwise have the exact same title, disambiguation is needed. Unless one meaning clearly dominates, the article should be replaced with a disambiguation page, e.g. Pan, which links to the different meanings with a qualifier in parentheses, e.g. Pan (mythology) vs. Pan (moon), or using a more specific natural name, e.g. cooking pan. If there is one dominant meaning, (cat), add a link to a disambiguation page - cat (disambiguation) - or to the secondary meaning if there is only one, on top of the article.
More info: Wikipedia:Disambiguation
Finding and summarizing knowledge
Wikipedia is not Google Answers, but if you have a general question -- why is the sky blue? -- and you cannot find a Wikipedia article which answers it, you can ask it on Wikipedia:Reference desk. If it turns out that no article on the subject exists, you can request one to be written at Wikipedia:Requested articles. And for good karma, you could write a summary of an important document: Wikipedia:Requests for summaries has links to online reports and studies of various kinds.
More info: Wikipedia:Utilities
Interwiki and interlanguage links
You know normal links -- they look [[like this]]. But did you know that you can easily link to pages on any other wiki? This is called InterWiki linking. You can link to a page on MeatballWiki by typing [[MeatBall:PageName]], for example. See a list of these wikis. An exception to this method are pages on Wikipedias in other languages. You can link to these by typing, for example, [[:de:Hauptseite]] (replace "de" with language prefix). The colon at the beginning prevents the link from becoming an interlanguage link, which is shown in the "Other languages" line of every page.
More info: InterWiki
Special pages
There are a few so-called "special pages". Most of them show the properties of and the relationships between articles. Special:Newpages gives you a list of all recently created articles, which is useful to spot newbie experiments. Special:Ancientpages is the exact opposite -- it lists the oldest pages in the wiki. Many of them need work. Some of the special pages are only generated intermittently for performance reasons. Two useful ones are Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs and Wikipedia:Most wanted articles.
Mailing lists
Can't get enough of Wikipedia? Then join our mailing lists! A mailing list is a shared address for a list of recipients. Anyone subscribed to the list can send e-mail to that address and thereby reach all other subscribers. This is a convenient way to discuss complex issues with multiple people. There is a WikiEN-l list which is used for discussing policies and current issues related to the English Wikipedia, and there's Wikipedia-l for language-independent discussions. If you want to help developing MediaWiki, join Wikitech-l and share your ideas.
More info: Wikipedia:Mailing lists
Tricks with pipes
A pipe (|) at the end of the link to a page in a non-article namespace will hide the namespace prefix ("Talk:", "Wikipedia:" etc.) from the visible link. Example: [[Wikipedia:About|]] is converted to [[Wikipedia:About|About]], which is shown as About. This is known as the "pipe trick". There is another pipe trick that is useful for disambiguation: [[Lord of the Rings (movie)|]] becomes [[Lord of the Rings (movie)|Lord of the Rings]], which is shown as Lord of the Rings (the part in parentheses is hidden).
More info: Wikipedia:How to edit a page
RC on steroids
Have you tried the option "Enhanced recent changes" in your user preferences already? It requires a modern browser to work and is disabled by default. Unlike the normal "recent changes" page, this one summarizes edits to the same page and lets you dynamically expand and collapse the list items. For multiple edits to the same page, it also provides a single "changes" link which will show you a view of the differences between these combined edits and the last non-recent revision.
Using your watchlist
If you are logged in, you can make use of the watchlist to keep track of changes to the articles you work on. You can add an article to your watchlist by clicking "Watch this page" when viewing it, or marking the "Watch this page" checkbox when editing it. There is an option to watch all your edits by default in the user preferences. Once you have set up your list, click the "My watchlist" link to show changes to the articles on it.
More info: Wikipedia:Watchlist help
Best of Wikipedia
Have you ever seen a Wikipedia article and thought to yourself: "This is really well written, and as far as I can tell, 100% correct"? Have you ever wondered whether there is a way to solicit feedback on an article you have worked on very hard, and which you think meets the highest standards we can hope for? Then you should take a look at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Articles which meet general community approval are listed on Wikipedia:Featured articles, and one of them is presented on the Main Page every day.
More info: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates
Playing with pictures
To embed an image into a page, type [[Image:Name.jpg|label]] where you want the picture. You can add various options separated with a "|" after the image name. For example, [[Image:Name.jpg|thumb|A caption]] will automatically generate a right-aligned thumbnail of the image with a width of 180 pixels and the caption "A caption", and [[Image:Name.jpg|left|label]] will produce a left-aligned full size version.
More info: Wikipedia:Extended image syntax
Changes in real-time
When you click the recent changes link, you get a protocol of recent modifications to wiki pages. One neat feature of that page is the "Show new changes starting from" link. If you keep a browser tab open on the Recent Changes page, you can use it to regularly fetch a list of changes that you haven't seen yet. If you are into IRC, join the channel #enrc.wikipedia on irc.freenode.net to get a list of recent changes in realtime.
More info: Wikipedia:Recent Changes, Wikipedia:IRC channels
Section editing
If you have created an account, you may notice little "[edit]" links on some pages. An [edit] link is shown for every heading on a page. You can create a level 2 heading by typing ==Headline==, a level 3 heading by typing ===Headline===, and so on. The [edit] link lets you edit only the text that is below this heading and above the next one. This is especially useful for long talk pages. If you don't like the [edit] links, you can turn them off in your preferences. If you use a modern browser, you can also enable the option "Enable section editing by right clicking on section titles" instead of, or in addition to, "Enable section editing via [edit] links".
More info: Wikipedia:Section
Table of contents
Any article with more than three headings automatically gets a table of contents. The TOC is placed above the first section heading. All text above the first section heading is commonly referred to as the introduction. The introduction should not exceed one or two paragraphs in length and should summarize the article's key points.
If you do not like the TOC placement in an article, just add another section heading right after the intro. A common title for the first section is "Overview". If you do not want a TOC on a particular page, add the text __NOTOC__ anywhere on the page; if you, personally, do not like the TOC feature, you can disable it in your user preferences.
More info: Wikipedia:Section
Talking to Wikipedians
Besides the Village pump and article-related talk pages, there are other ways to talk to Wikipedians. Have you tried sending an instant message to a Wikipedian? The English IRC channel is also quite busy, regularly reaching 60 to 70 people. If you care about our policies and general Wikimedia-related matters, you may want to consider subscribing to one of the mailing lists (high traffic!).
Watching for changes
Clicking the "Recent changes" link at the top of every page will give you a list of all edits in the last few minutes. If you just want to watch for changes to articles you have edited, use your watchlist. You can add articles to it by clicking "Watch this page" on any article (the talk page will be auto-watched, too). You can click "Related changes" on any page to see changes made to the pages linked from the one you are viewing. And finally, you can click the "My contributions" link to view a log of your edits; if yours is no longer the edit marked with "top", then someone else has edited the page.
User pages
Any registered user on Wikipedia can create a page about themselves. To create an account, all you have to do is click on the "Log in" link, enter a username, a password (twice), and click on "Create an account". While you are logged in, your name appears in the upper right corner of the screen; click on the name and then click "Edit this page" to edit your user page. Tell us about yourself and your motivation to participate in this project. Other users can leave comments on your talk page. For experiments and personal projects, you can also create subpages on your user page.
More info: Wikipedia:User page
Signing comments
When you are discussing something on a Talk page, you can sign your comment by adding three tildes (~~~) at the end. After you save the page, this will be converted to your username. If you write four tildes instead of three (~~~~), a timestamp (date and time) will also be added at the end. We recommend that you always sign your posts on talk pages, to avoid confusion with other people's comments. This method of signing can also be used to vote in polls. Note that you have to be logged in to sign with a username.
More info: Wikipedia:Talk page
Namespaces
Pages on Wikipedia can have the same names, but different namespaces. A namespace is a prefix in front of the name. A name with no prefix is in the (default) article namespace. Pages in that namespace have a white background. All other pages have a yellowish background and are "community pages". For instance, the "Talk:" prefix is for pages discussing articles; the "Wikipedia:" prefix is for pages about Wikipedia's policies, FAQs, etc.
More info: Wikipedia:Namespaces
Page history
In order to compare the differences between two revisions of an article, click "Page history" on the article page, then select two checkboxes to mark the revisions which you want to compare. Alternatively, click the "cur" link to see the differences between a revision and the current (most up-to-date) revision, or the "last" link to see the differences between a revision and the previous one.
More information: Wikipedia:Page history