Help:Special pages
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Special pages are pages that are created by the software on demand. They are located in their own namespace (Special) and are not editable directly as other pages.
Some special pages depend on the preferences that have been set by a user, e.g., the number of titles which is displayed on a user's watchlist.
Special pages also take parameters, e.g., Special:Log/block takes you to the log of block users.
To view a directory of all special pages, use Special:SpecialPages.
Editing Special namespace pages
The Special:
namespace stands for special pages generated by MediaWiki. There is no matching talk space. The special pages are not made up of wikitext and are therefore not editable like other pages might be.
They usually contain system messages from MediaWiki namespace, which are editable by interface administrators.
Linking, transcluding, or redirecting to a special page
You can link a special page as you would do for any other internal page; e.g. [[Special:Diff|see diff page]]
. Some special pages can take a parameter value after a slash character; e.g. [[Special:Diff/6372234]]
takes a user to the 6372234 revision ID of this page.
Some special pages are transcludable, and some other ones are not. For example, you may transclude the list of recent changes with {{Special:RecentChanges}}
.
But, transcluding {{Special:Random}}
gives Special:Random.
You cannot create a redirection towards a special page: it will display a link towards the page instead of a direct redirect to it. However, some special pages have built-in aliases which redirect to them.
Links containing URL query strings
Since the ampersand (&) is not allowed, you can't create a standard link with &action=edit
or &redirect=no
in the URL query string.
Page name alias and localization
Unlike other namespaces, the first heading of pages in the Special:
namespace is not consistent with the page name in the URL. The Special:
prefix is not displayed, and the heading text may vary a bit from the page name.
Each special page has a default English name, but it may also have aliases, i.e. other special page names which redirect to it. Besides, on non-English wikis (i.e. $wgLanguageCode different from “en”), special page names are localized, and English names are aliases which redirect to the localized page name.
The Special:
namespace prefix itself may be localized depending on the wiki content language.
For example, in each project's language, the word used for "Special" in special page names like Special:Statistics
is different. Here is the equivalent term in each language:
- Spanish:
Especial:Estadísticas
- Dutch:
Speciaal:Statistieken
- French:
Spécial:Statistiques
- German:
Spezial:Statistik
List of special pages
Special:SpecialPages shows a list of almost all special pages on a wiki. It is often linked in the toolbox on the side panel.
By role
General information
- Special:AllMessages: This lists and allows editing of all system messages used on MediaWiki. You can use system messages using Template:Int.
- Special:SiteMatrix: A table containing a column of several languages and their shortcut codes across multiple Wikimedia projects.
- Special:SpecialPages: A list of popular tools and functions for managing and navigating the wiki.
- Special:Statistics: This shows site statistics like the number of content pages, edits, users, etc.
- Special:Version: This shows the version of the software and details about installed extensions, skins, etc.
Lists of pages
- Special:AllPages: This lists all MediaWiki pages in a specified namespace from a given starting point. A user can specify a starting point as a parameter, like Special:AllPages/T (for pages in the main namespace starting with "T"), or Special:AllPages/Template: (for pages in the Template namespace starting from the beginning). The listing order follows alphabetical order.
- Special:Categories: This shows an alphabetical list of categories and the number of pages in each.
- Special:CategoryTree: This displays categories in a hierarchical tree structure.
Special:ListFiles: This lists uploaded images and files, sortable by size or date.
- Special:ListFiles/Example: List files that have been uploaded by User:Example.
- Special:ListRedirects: This lists all redirect pages.
- Special:PagesWithProp: This lists the pages that make use of a certain page property.
- Special:PrefixIndex: This lists all pages in a specified namespace that start with a given prefix. It's useful for finding subpages. For example, Special:PrefixIndex/User:Example.
- Special:ProtectedPages: This lists pages that are protected from editing.
- Special:ProtectedTitles: This lists titles that are protected from being created.
- Special:UnconnectedPages: This lists pages that are not linked to any Wikidata item.
Special Tools
- Special:ApiHelp: This provides help documentation for the MediaWiki API.
- Special:ApiSandbox: An interactive interface to test MediaWiki API requests.
- Special:Book: This manages and creates personalized sets of MediaWiki pages into books.
- Special:ComparePages: This compares the differences between two pages.
- Special:Diff: This displays the differences between two revisions of a page. For example, Special:Diff/6469269 shows the changes between version 6469269 and the previous version of the same page. Special:Diff/6469269/6473798 compares version 6469269 in Help:Table caption with version 6473798 in Help:Self link. This can also compare two versions of the same page.
- Special:MobileDiff: This displays differences between revisions in the mobile version. For example, Special:MobileDiff/6469269
- Special:Export: This export pages as an XML file containing wikitext and metadata.
- Special:Gadgets: This lists user gadgets that can be enabled via the "Preferences" button.
- Special:MIMESearch: This searches for files by media type.
- Special:MovePage: To rename/move a page to a new title.
- Special:Nearby: This list pages near your geographical location.
- Special:Random: This redirects you to a random page in the main namespace. A parameter can be passed to specify other namespaces, such as Special:Random/Talk.
- Special:RandomInCategory: This redirects you to a randomly selected page within a particular category in any namespace.
- Special:RandomRedirect: This redirects you to a random page.
- Special:RandomRootpage: This redirects you to a random root page, excluding sub-pages. Wikibooks utilize a sub-page hierarchy function as a substitute for Special:Random, allowing for the display of "random books" in Wikibooks, instead of random pages. [1]
- Special:Search: This enables you to search pages MediaWiki.
- Special:TemplateSandbox: To test and preview changes to templates.
- Special:Upload: To upload a file to the wiki.
- Special:WhatLinksHere: This lists all pages (including transclusions and redirects) that link to a given page. A parameter can be passed to it. For example, Special:WhatLinksHere/Main Page.
Latest changes made
- Special:AbuseFilter: Tools for detecting problematic edits.
- Special:AbuseLog: This contains logs generated by the Abuse Filter.
- Special:Log: A combined display of various public logs. The log type, user, and page can be specified. Supported parameters are "block", "delete", "protect", and "upload". For example, Special:Log/block displays the entire block log.
- Special:NewFiles: A gallery of recently added files.
- Special:NewPages: This displays new pages with creation date, time, size, creator, and first edit summary.
- Special:RecentChanges: This lists the recent edits in the project. Changes to pages watched appear bold.
- Special:RecentChangesLinked: This lists recent changes in pages linked from a selected page or category. Changes to pages watched appear bold. A parameter can be passed to it. For example, Special:RecentChangesLinked/Help:Links.
- Special:Tags: A list of tags that edits can be marked with.
Users
- Special:ActiveUsers: This lists users who have been active in the last 30 days.
- Special:BlockList: This lists all blocked IP addresses and usernames.
- Special:Contributions: This displays contributions from a specific user or all new users. A parameter can be passed to it. For example, Special:Contributions/Example.
- Special:EmailUser: This allows you to email another user.
- Special:ListGroupRights: This displays the rights assigned to different user groups.
- Special:ListUsers: This lists all registered users, filterable by group and other criteria.
Global users
- Special:CentralAuth: This provides global user statistics through the unified login or single user login (SUL). For example, Special:CentralAuth/Jimbo Wales.
- Special:GlobalBlockList: This lists all IP addresses that are globally blocked.
- Special:GlobalGroupPermissions: This displays the rights of a global user group and their members, and allows management of these rights.
- Special:GlobalUsers: This lists users across all Wikimedia wikis, showing global user group memberships and local account existence, with filtering options by global user groups.
Personal
- Special:CentralLogin: A centralized login for users.
- Special:ChangeEmail: To change or remove your email address.
- Special:ChangePassword: To change your password.
- Special:ConfirmEmail: To confirm your email address or see the date the email was confirmed.
- Special:Contributions: To view the contributions of all user's.
- Special:MyContributions: To view your contributions.
- Special:EditWatchlist and Special:EditWatchlist/raw: To edit a your watchlist.
- Special:MergeAccount: To check the status of your unified login to enable you to access all Wikimedia projects.
- Special:MyPage: This links to your user page.
- Special:MyTalk: This links to your talk page.
- Special:MyUploads: To view a list of files you have uploaded.
- Special:Notifications: To access your notifications page.
- Special:Preferences: To view and modify your settings.
- Special:ResetTokens: To reset your token.
- Special:TopicSubscriptions: To view topics on the talk pages you are following.
- Special:UserLogin: A login page to MediaWiki.
- Special:UserLogin/signup: To create a new account on MediaWiki.
- Special:UserLogout: A logout page of your account.
- Special:Watchlist: To see recent changes to the pages you are watching.
Maintenance
- Special:BrokenRedirects: This lists redirects that lead to non-existent pages.
- Special:DisambiguationPages: This lists all disambiguation pages.
- Special:DisambiguationPageLinks: This lists pages that link to disambiguation pages (replacing the old Special:Disambiguations page).
- Special:DoubleRedirects: This lists redirects that point to another redirect.
- Special:FileDuplicateSearch: Checks for duplicate files.
- Special:ListDuplicatedFiles: This lists all duplicated files on Wikipedia.
- Special:LongPages: This lists pages in the main namespace by size in decreasing order.
- Special:MostLinkedFiles: This lists files that are linked from the most pages.
- Special:ShortPages: This lists pages in the main namespace by size in increasing order.
- Special:UncategorizedFiles: This lists files without category tags.
- Special:UncategorizedPages: This lists pages without category tags (note: updates may not be immediate).
- Special:UncategorizedTemplates: This lists templates without category tags.
- Special:UnusedCategories: This lists unused categories.
- Special:UnusedFiles: This lists files that are not used.
- Special:UnusedTemplates: This lists templates that are not transcluded.
- Special:WantedCategories: This lists categories with members but no category page.
- Special:WantedFiles: This lists missing image files and other files.
- Special:WithoutInterwiki: This lists pages without links to other languages.
Miscellaneous
- Special:BlankPage: This displays a blank page.
- Special:BookSources: This enables you to search for book sources by ISBN.
- Special:Captcha: This provides help with CAPTCHA.
- Special:Cite: This generates bibliographic citations for a MediaWiki page.
- Special:ExpandTemplates: This expands wikitext by recursively expanding templates, parser functions, and variables.
- Special:FilePath: This returns the complete path for a file.
- Special:Hieroglyphs: This allows you to try out hieroglyph markup.
- Special:Interwiki: A list of interwiki and interlanguage prefixes.
- Special:LinkSearch: This allows you to search for external links.
- Special:MobileOptions: A page for configuring mobile view.
- Special:Permalink/Oldid: This links to a specific version of a wiki page.
- Special:Random: This redirects you to a random page.
- Special:Redirect: This redirects you by file, user, page, or revision ID.
- Special:SecurePoll: Manages polls and voting.
- Special:WikiSets: This shows a list of wiki sets.
Restricted
The below pages are accessible only to users with a particular privilege level.
- Special:Block: It's used by administrators to block or unblock users, IP addresses, and IP addresses ranges.
- Special:CheckUser: It's available to users with the checkuser privilege.
- Special:DeletedContributions: It's viewable by administrators to see deleted contributions.
- Special:Import: It's used by administrators and importers to import pages.
- Special:LockDB and Special:UnlockDB: It's used by developers to toggle the database between read/write and read-only modes.
- Special:MassMessage: This allows administrators and mass message senders to send a message to a list of users.
- Special:Nuke: It's available to administrators to mass delete pages.
- Special:Undelete: It's used by administrators to undelete pages.
- Special:UnwatchedPages: This shows unwatched pages, available to administrators.
- Special:UserRights: This displays user rights and allows administrators to assign and remove user access rights.
Rarely updated
The below pages are rarely updated. The following special pages are updated on a less regular schedule. Some may be analogous on cloud services.
- Special:AncientPages: This displays a list of old pages, sorted based on the oldest first. It's updated monthly on the 8th and 22th of every month.[2]
- Special:DeadendPages: This lists pages that do not have any outgoing links to other pages within the wiki. It's updated monthly, on the 9th and 23rd of every month.[3]
- Special:FewestRevisions: This lists pages with few revisions. It's updated monthly, on the 16th of every month. [4]
- Special:LonelyPages: This lists pages with no links in them. It's updated monthly, on the 15th of every month. [5]
- Special:MostCategories: This lists pages with a large number of categories. It's updated monthly, on the 16th of every month. [6]
- Special:MostLinkedCategories: This lists the categories with the highest number of pages. It's updated monthly on the 17th of every month.[7]
- Special:MostLinkedPages: This lists pages with the most incoming links from other pages. It's updated monthly on the 10th and 24th of every month. [8]
- Special:MostRevisions: This lists pages with the highest number of edits. It's updated monthly, on the 11th and 25th of every month. [9]
- Special:MostTranscludedPages or Special:MostLinkedTemplates: This lists the templates that are transcluded the most pages, excluding transclusions via a redirect. It's updated monthly, on the 18th of every month. [10]
- Special:UncategorizedCategories: This lists all category pages that do not have a parent category or are not part of a larger category hierarchy. It's updated monthly, on the 19th of every month. [11]
- Special:WantedPages: This lists non-existent pages that have been linked from other pages, indicating needed content. It's updated monthly, on the 12th and 26th of every month.[12]
- Special:WantedTemplates: This lists non-existent templates that have been used on other pages, indicating missing templates that need to be created. It's updated monthly, on the 20th of every month. [13]
Citations
- ↑ w:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions/Archive 18#Volunteer-initiated extension to be deployed to Wikimedia sites
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/ancientpages.pp
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/deadendpages.pp
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/fewestrevisions.pp
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/enwiki/cronjob.pp#4
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/enwiki/cronjob.pp#9
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/enwiki/cronjob.pp#14
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/mostlinked.pp
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/mostrevisions.pp
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/enwiki/cronjob.pp#19
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/enwiki/cronjob.pp#24
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/wantedpages.pp
- ↑ https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/0c69e0e8cdcdf4cf25a29aebe9ae87eb2eabf700/modules/profile/manifests/mediawiki/maintenance/updatequerypages/enwiki/cronjob.pp#29