Help:Introduction to navigating Wikipedia/All

This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts WP:NAVB WP:NAVBEGIN WP:NAVSTART

Wikipedia is a big place!

For a start, there are currently 6.8 million articles, the most extensive encyclopedia in human history. If we printed them all out, they would take up about 3,358 volumes, which would look something like this.

In addition to this, there are another 53.5 million supporting pages devoted to helping build the project.

This tutorial will help you to get your bearings, teach you how to find what you're looking for, and introduce you to a few of the most important pages.

Wikipedia's pages are divided into

. Each namespace (except the main article space) has a prefix that is followed by a colon at the start of page names. Here are some of the namespaces you might encounter, along with an explanation and examples:

Namespace	Purpose	Example(s)
Main/article no prefix	Articles	Starfish
	Disambiguation pages to help people find the article they're looking for	David (disambiguation)
Wikipedia: a.k.a. "Project"	Policies and guidelines	Wikipedia:Neutral point of view Wikipedia:Manual of Style
	Process pages	Wikipedia:Articles for Creation
	Discussion forums and noticeboards	Wikipedia:Village pump
	WikiProject communities focusing on a particular topic	Wikipedia:WikiProject History
User:	Personal profile pages about users	User:Jimbo Wales
	Sandboxes and personal draft articles	User:Example/sandbox
Draft :	Draft articles that are in progress	Draft:Exampledraft
Help:	Help pages	Help:Contents
Template:	Templates, which can be included or substituted on other pages	Template:Citation needed Template:Infobox album
Category :	Groups of pages organized by their similarities	Category:Painting Category:Wikipedia maintenance
File:	Images and other files, stored and described	File:Wiki.png
Portal:	Pages to highlight Wikipedia content in a particular topic area	Portal:Current events Portal:Solar System
Special:	Pages that are part of the software	Special:RecentChanges Special:Preferences

Each page in each of these namespaces, except for Special, also has a corresponding

. You can switch between the normal page and the talk page by clicking the tabs at the top left.

Searching pages

The search box is at the top of every page. Start typing, and it will begin to suggest pages you might be looking for — you can click on one to go directly to that page. Alternatively, if you type in a complete page title and hit ↵ Enter, you'll be taken straight to that page.

If you type a word or phrase that isn't an article title and hit ↵ Enter, you will see a full search page, which lists articles where your search term occurs. You can also reach this page by clicking the magnifying glass, or by typing something into the search box, then clicking the "containing..." link at the bottom of the list of suggestions. For example, you might do this if you wanted to search for occurrences of the word "Fish" across Wikipedia, rather than be taken straight to the article Fish.

The search page also allows you to select which namespaces to search in. You can choose a preset option (Default, Discussion, General Help, or All) or add/remove namespaces individually.

Categories

Another useful way to find pages is by browsing categories grouping related pages, which are listed at the bottom of a page. They form hierarchy trees from generalized topics to more specific ones, so pages should have only the most specific applicable categories. For instance, do not add [[Category:Musicians]] to an article already categorized under [[Category:Irish musicians]].

Try it! Go to a random page needing more categories

Every edit made to Wikipedia is recorded and (with rare exceptions) is publicly viewable in a page's history.

To access it, click the "View history" tab at the top of the article.

Page histories consist of rows, each representing a past revision of the page. Each line contains various elements with information or tools related to that revision:

To see the difference between two revisions, adjust the radio buttons and then click Compare selected revisions.

Redirects

Some pages on Wikipedia are

".)

To create a redirect to a page:

• Via wiki markup: Click the button and type the destination page or use the code #REDIRECT [[Destination]].
• Via VisualEditor: Use the   menu and then click  Page settings to choose a destination page.

Shortcuts

Wikipedians often refer to internal Wikipedia pages by

namespace prefix

can also be further abbreviated as WP:. These shortcut pages are just redirects to the target page.

For example,

WP:NPOV

to link to it, or typed into the search bar. Shortcuts to a page are usually listed in a box in the top right of that page.

Useful links

At the top

If you are logged in, you'll also see some useful links at the top right of your screen:

• Your username takes you to your userpage, where you can add information about yourself.
• Watchlist () shows recent changes to pages you're watching (click the star at the top right of a page to watch it).
• Talk is your user talk page, where people can leave messages for you.
• Sandbox is a page in your user space where you can experiment with editing without worrying that you will cause problems on an actual Wikipedia page.
• Preferences allows you to change your password and customize your email and wiki software settings.
• Contributions has a list of all the edits you have made.
• Log out logs you out of your account.

On the left

There's an additional set of useful links on the left side of each page:

• Help is the entry point for Wikipedia's help pages.
• Community portal is the hub for editors, with news, discussions, and ways to help out.
• What links here shows you what other pages are linking to an article.
• Related changes lists any edits that have been made to pages that an article links to.

Yet more useful links

There are a few other pages on Wikipedia that are really handy to know about:

• You can ask questions at either the Help desk (using or editing Wikipedia) or the Teahouse (help for newcomers).
• The Village pump is a set of central discussion forums.
• The Task Center lists various tasks you can help out with.
• The Signpost is Wikipedia's community-written newspaper, a good way to keep up with goings-on.

See also

• Wikipedia:Namespace
• Help:Using talk pages
• Help:Searching
• Help:Page history
• Help:Category
• Wikipedia:Redirect