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Wikipedia:Tips

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

icon Wikipedia's tips library

Tip of the day...
Why have lists when there are categories?

Lists on Wikipedia have three main purposes:

Information:

Lists are a valuable presentation format, especially the structured list. Examples include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, glossarized, or annotated.

Navigation:

If a user is browsing without a specific research goal in mind, they would likely use the See also lists embedded in articles. If the user has some general idea of what they are looking for but does not know the specific terminology, the general topics lists (outlines and indices) would be most useful.

Development:

Outlines and indices give an indication of the state of the 'pedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written (shown by red links).

Like categories, lists are great for keeping track of changes to subject areas, using the Related Changes feature. Unlike categories, lists are centralized, providing direct control over the contents. Lists also allow detection of deletion of pages from them (the list item will "red link"). Another advantage of a list is that changes can be tracked in the page's history, while changes to categories cannot.

To add this auto-updating template to your user page, use {{totd2}}

Tips about Wikipedia as a whole

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Tips on accessing Wikipedia pages

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Finding your way around Wikipedia and beyond

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Tips on searching

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Getting help

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Tips for contributors on getting started

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Tips on working with articles

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Tips on editing

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Style tips

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From Wikipedia:Styletips:

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Category tips

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Tips on working with specific types of pages

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List tips

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Disambiguation page tips

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Tips on working with images

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Boilerplate/template tips

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User page tips

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Other ways to contribute

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Communicating with other editors

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Watchdogging (monitoring) Wikipedia

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Configuring and customizing your account

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Tips on working faster

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Shortcuts

Navigation

MetaTips

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These need sorting into the above categories

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Be sure to check for duplication - do not include them if they are already there!
Note: this section is currently empty.

Tip of the moment...
Change text size quickly with Ctrl+Scroll Wheel

If you have a scroll wheel mouse, hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard while you roll the scroll wheel—it makes the text larger or smaller instantly!

Bonus tip: This tip works in many other applications too! For example, it is generally used for zooming in Microsoft Windows.

To add this auto-randomizing template to your user page, use {{totd-random}}

See also

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Tip of the day related
Wikipedia:Tip of the day – main page
Chronological list of tips
Alphabetical list of tips
Tip display template types
Tip display template gallery
Manual of Style related
Wikipedia:Simplified Manual of Style – an overview of commonly used style guidelines.
Wikipedia:Styletips – a list of advice for editors on writing style and formatting n a bullet-point format
Help:Introduction to the Manual of Style – a quick introduction to the style guide for articles
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Reading schedule – a reading schedule designed to assist editors in becoming familiar with Manual of Style
General formatting
Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a page that provides information on the basics needed to edit Wikipedia.
Wikipedia:Writing better articles – guidance on how to improve articles
Help:Cheatsheet – a page that provides the most commonly used wiki markup
Wikipedia:Dos and don'ts – summaries of Wikipedia's policies, guidelines, and formatting standards in a bullet-point format