Help:Special page

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Special pages are created by the software on demand. They are located in "Special:" namespace and have no corresponding wikitext. Automatic list of most special pages is available by the Special pages link on every wiki page.

For many special pages the option Preferences→Recent changes→"Number of edits to show in recent changes, page histories, and in logs, by default:" determines the number of titles per page.

Contents

Lists

All pages

Mediawiki searches all pages in a specified group of names in a special ASCII order. Capitals come before lowercase letters and unique characters such as "é" come after "z".

Mediawiki searches include redirects (Example: #REDIRECT[[Page name]]) These redirects are usually displayed in a different style than normal pages because of allpagesredirect class.

If a person uses "Display pages starting at:" to search, both Special:Prefixindex and Special:Allpages will show the list of pages starting with this word, then Allpages will display all of the other pages in ASCII order which don't have this word.

For example, if a person types in "Computer" in the "Display pages starting at:" box on the Special:Allpages page, mediawiki will first list all pages that start with the word computer:

  • Computer
  • Computer-Aided Design
  • Computer-Aided Test Tool
  • ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award

FORwiki will then list all of the other pages that don't start with "computer" in ASCII order.

Protected

Categories

List of all categories, alphabetically ordered, showing the number of top elements in each category.

Images

List of uploaded files with descriptions, can be sorted by date, name or size.
Gallery of uploaded files with thumbnails, sorted by upload date.

Cached lists

All these lists are updated periodically (not in real time). They say "The following data is cached" and show the day of the last update.

All these lists are limited to 5000 titles, on several large FORwiki projects to 1000 titles.

Record pages

These lists only show main namespace pages:

Problematic

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 (defined in MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage) is transcluded.
Redirects to non-existent pages, usually left after deletions. Periodically fixed or deleted by administrators.
Redirects to other redirects. May contain false positives. Double redirects are fixed by bots in many projects.
Main namespace pages with no links to them in the wiki.
Main namespace pages without any outgoing internal links.
Main namespace pages without interlanguage links
Non-existent categories used on wiki pages. These should either be created (by adding category description and upper categories) or those wiki pages should be fixed (e.g. if someone mistyped a category name).

Without categories

Usually these pages need to be either categorized or deleted.

Unused

If the pages are not used, they probably need to be deleted. Note however that images might be used externally, and templates may be used for substitution.

Tools

This link is available on every wiki page.
Available only to autoconfirmed users on most projects.
Returns the complete path for a file.
ISBN Book Sources
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.

Search

Filters files for its MIME-type.

Random

These links redirect to a random page/redirect from the main namespace. Other namespaces can be specified as a parameter.


Users actions

See #Logs below.

Project

Account

Creates new login cookie.
Destroys cookie, see also Privacy policy. This link is not included in the automatic list because it is present on every page.

Pages available only to registered users:

Users

Alphabetic list of all registered users, can be shown by group. There also is Special:Listadmins, which is a redirect to Special:Listusers/Sysop. For some project families, notably Wikia, this applies for the whole family.
Blocked IPs and usernames
Requires a target user: e. g. Special:Contributions/Example. This link is also present on every user/user talk page. Registered users also have the link to their own contributions on top.
A special mode newbie contribs shows recent changes made only by new users.



<restrictedpheading>

These pages are only available to users with special rights. Most of them are linked from the corresponding places in MediaWiki interface.

Sysops
Block or unblock users, IPs and ranges of IPs.
Restore all or some revisions of deleted page
Show user's contributions to deleted pages.
Imports the wikitext and metadata of one or more revisions of one or more pages by uploading an XML file in the format produced by Special:Export.
List of pages not watched by anyone.
Stewards
  • User rights management (Userrights): give and remove user access rights (e.g. sysop, bureaucrat, checkuser).
Developers

Other pages

These pages are not listed in the automatic list because they are already present in MediaWiki interface.

Also, by definition these pages can be considered special:

  • Page history
  • Diff
  • Delete, protect, and block pages available to sysops.

Links to special pages

Special pages can be linked to as usual, like Special:Recentchanges. Instead of "special" prefix, a localized namespace name can be used, e.g. "Speciaal" in Dutch, "Spezial" in German, "Speciális:" in Hungarian and "מיוחד:" in Hebrew. The localized name also appears in the URLs.

Redirects to Special pages have been disabled because of their complications.

Some special pages accept (and some require) a parameter after /. For other pages and parameters the full URL has to be given, for example http://forwiki.ro/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&days=3&limit=10 (last 10 changes).

  • Allpages and Prefixindex allow a namespace and a (partial) pagename, for example:
Besides, these special pages can be transcluded into wikitext, so the result appears as the part of the page, e.g. {{Special:Prefixindex/User:Example/}}.
  • Whatlinkshere, Recentchangeslinked, Movepage, Undelete, Contributions and Blockip, being interface links, accept (or even require) a page or a user name, e.g. Special:Whatlinkshere/Help:Special page.
  • Listusers can be used with a group name: sysop, bot, bureaucrat, checkuser, e.g. Special:Listusers/bot.
  • Log can be used with a log type: move, protect, block, delete, e.g. Special:Log/move.
  • Random and Randomredirect accept namespace (see above).

Two special pages Mypage and Mytalk exist specially for internal links, they redirect to the pages of a user who follows these links. Examples: Special:Mypage, Special:Mypage/monobook.js.

Transclusion

  • Recentchanges, Newpages, Newimages and OldReviewedPages can be transcluded:
    {{Special:Newpages/shownav}} — show with header
    {{Special:Newpages/10}} — show 10 elements
    {{Special:Newpages/limit=10,offset=10,shownav}} — start from 10th element, plus previous parameters

Logs

Special:Log - combined display of various logs. You can narrow down the view by:

  • selecting a log type, including:
  • entering the full name without prefix of the acting user (usual case-sensitivity)
  • entering the full name of the affected page (usual case-sensitivity) e.g. "Image:Map South Holland.png"), or the full name including prefix of the affected user (in the case of blocking, setting user rights, setting bot status, and user creation) or without prefix (in the case of renaming a user)

It does not seem possible to search by editor for edits of deleted pages. They can only be seen by a sysop with Special:Undelete if the exact page name is known.

There are no logs available on the site for:

  • adding or removing a page from a user's list of page to watch (the user can only view the current state)
  • change of preferences of a user (ditto)
  • viewing a page (except that, if $wgDisableCounters is false, the total number of views of a page is displayed on it)
  • editing and previewing a page without saving
  • applying Special:Expandtemplates
  • applying Special:Export
  • unfinished operations (e.g. an attempted page move)
Retrieved from "http://forwiki.ro/wiki/Help:Special_page"
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