Help:Special page

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Shortcut: WP:SPEC

Special pages are pages that have no wikitext, but are generated by the software on demand. They are found in the "Special:" namespace. It is not possible to make a redirect to a special page, or to create normal pages beginning with the "Special:" prefix.

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, as in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=3&limit=10. Also the content of some 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.

Some information is generated by toolserver rather than by special pages. See WP:Database reports.

Contents 1 Modifying special pages 2 Available special pages 2.1 General information 2.2 Page listings 2.3 Tools 2.4 Latest changes 2.5 Users 2.6 Personal 2.7 Maintenance 2.8 Miscellaneous 2.9 Restricted special pages 2.10 Inactive 3 Special pages in other languages 4 See also

[edit] Modifying special pages

Although special pages are not themselves editable, they generally contain standard text which is modifiable (although only by administrators). This text is contained in pages in the "MediaWiki:" namespace. To find the right portion of text, see Special:AllMessages. To propose a modification, leave an {{editprotected}} request on the talk page of the relevant MediaWiki page. An administrator will make the change if it seems appropriate.

[edit] Available special pages

[edit] General information

• Special:SpecialPages: a list of all special pages currently available to all users.
• Special:AllMessages: displays all pages in the MediaWiki namespace.
• 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 a listing of extensions installed.
• Special:SiteMatrix: lists all Wikimedia projects (such as different language Wikipedias) and their codes.

[edit] 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:Alphabetic order.
• Special:PrefixIndex: 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: list of images and other files uploaded; can be sorted by size or date.
• Special:ListRedirects: lists all redirects.
• Special:ProtectedPages: lists protected pages.
• Special:ProtectedTitles: lists titles which have been protected to prevent pages being created there.

[edit] Tools

• Special:Search: for searching Wikipedia. See Help:Search.
• 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:MovePage: for moving (renaming) a page (see Help:Moving a page). The page must be given as a parameter.
• Special:Upload: upload a file to the wiki.
• Special:Export: 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: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.
• Special:RandomRedirect: redirects to a random redirect page.
• Special:Gadgets: lists gadgets that users can enable in their preferences.
• Special:Book: gives access to functionality for creating personalized sets of Wikipedia pages (temporarily disabled). See Help:Books.

[edit] Latest changes

• Special:RecentChanges: lists the latest edits in the project. Changes to watched pages appear bold. See Help:Recent changes.
• Special:RecentChangesLinked: 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: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:NewFiles: gallery of new uploaded files.
• Special:Log: 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:AbuseFilter: a set of tools for detecting abusive edits. See Wikipedia:Abuse filter.
• Special:AbuseLog: the log generated by the Abuse Filter.
• Special:Tags: lists the tags with which edits may be marked. See Wikipedia:Tags.

[edit] Users

• Special:ListUsers: 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:BlockList: blocked IPs and usernames.
• Special: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/Jimbo Wales. See Help:User contributions.
• Special:ListGroupRights: shows the rights assigned to particular groups of users on Wikipedia.
• Special:GlobalUsers
• Special:GlobalBlockList
• Special:GlobalGroupPermissions

[edit] Personal

• Special:UserLogin: to log in (creates a new login cookie). See Help:Logging in.
• Special:UserLogout: to log out (destroys the login cookie).
• Special:ChangePassword: to change your password.
• Special:Preferences: allows you to view and modify your personal settings. See Help:Preferences.
• Special:MyContributions: links to your contributions page. See Help:User contributions.
• Special:MyPage: links to your user 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:ConfirmEmail: to confirm your e-mail address.
• Special:MergeAccount: to create a unified account to log on to any Wikimedia project. See Help:Unified login.

[edit] Maintenance

• Special:BrokenRedirects: broken redirects.
• Special:Disambiguations: shows pages that link to a disambiguation page, which should link to the appropriate topic instead. A disambiguation page is defined as a page on which a disambiguation template is transcluded; a disambiguation template is defined as a template linked from MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage.
• 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: lists images and other files linked from the largest number of pages.
• Special:WithoutInterwiki: 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:FileDuplicateSearch

[edit] Miscellaneous

• Special:BlankPage: a blank page.
• Special:Cite: generates bibliographic information for any article.
• Special:BookSources: enables searching for ISBN book sources.
• Special:Captcha: 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: returns the complete path for a file.
• Special:LinkSearch: for searching for external links. See Help:Linksearch.

[edit] 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 administators.
• Special:UnwatchedPages: available to administrators.
• Special:Oversight: available to users with the oversight privilege.
• Special:MakeSysop and Special:MakeBot: available to bureaucrats and stewards.
• Special:LockDB and Special:UnlockDB: available only to developers. Used to switch the database between read/write and read-only modes.
• Special:UserRights: available to stewards. Used to assign and remove user access rights (e.g. administrator status).
• Special:CheckUser: available to users with the checkuser privilege.

[edit] Inactive

The following special pages are stored, but are not currently updated.

• Special:FewestRevisions: lists articles with the fewest revisions.
• Special:MostCategories: lists articles whose number of categories is largest.
• Special:MostRevisions: lists articles with the most revisions.
• Special:CrossNamespaceLinks: pages linking from the main namespace to pages in other namespaces.
• Special:DeadendPages: pages without any outgoing links.
• Special:MIMESearch: filters files for MIME type.
• Special:MostLinkedCategories: lists categories with the most pages.
• Special:MostLinkedPages: lists pages linked from the largest number of other pages.
• Special:MostLinkedTemplates: lists templates for which the number of pages in which the template is transcluded is largest, not counting transclusions through redirects.
• Special:LonelyPages: orphaned articles i.e. articles with no links to them in the wiki.
• Special:WantedPages
• Special:WantedTemplates
• Special:AncientPages: pages in the main namespace, in order of last edit.

[edit] Special pages in other languages

The term in the site language equivalent to English "Special" is used in each project. E.g. "Speciaal" in Dutch, "Spezial" in German, "Speciális:" in Hungarian and "מיוחד:" in Hebrew. These also appear in the URLs. However, the English word "Special" works as alternative in most sites.

[edit] See also

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