Wikipǣdia:Ádihtoðes FAQ

Bysen:WikipediaFAQ This FAQ answers the most common questions about editing Wikipedia. For full help on editing articles, see the Help page, and these help articles:

• Hú tó ádihtenne tramet
• Hú tó onginnenne níwne tramet.
• How to use talk pages, which are used to discuss how to improve articles.
• How to rename (move) a page.
• How to use redirect pages.
• How to revert a page to an earlier version.
• How to create page(s) for topics with several different definitions.
• How to link together Wikipedia articles in different languages.
• How to delete pages
• How to import articles
• How to break up a page

Hú ádihte ic tramet?

It's quite simple. Simply click the "Edit this page" tab located at the top of the page or the other edit link across from headings on the right hand side of the page, and type away. See How to edit a page to learn about making links, using bold and italics, linking to images, and many other things...

But I have problems editing with my browser!

See Wikipedia:Browser notes.

Hú macie ic bendas?

A link is just the name of the page surrounded by double square brackets. It's also possible to make the link display text that is different from that of the link itself:

[[page name]]

[[page name]]s -- suffix text will display as part of the link

[[page name|display name]] -- the piped link: hide the page name and display something else (but use this sparingly, and never "click here"!)

[[page name (disambiguation)|]] -- the "pipe trick": the part in parentheses will not be displayed.

NB You don't need to put underscores ("_"), to act as space separators like you see in links. Spaces will work fine.

Hú ednemne ic tramet?

Registered users can move a page; this moves the page content and edit history to a new title, and creates a redirecting page at the old title. This method is better than just copying the content by hand, as it preserves the article's history. Use the "Move this page" link. If you want to move a page, please click the "What links here" and fix the links to the page in question. See How to rename (move) a page.

How do I delete a page?

First off, please don't blank articles. Such changes will most likely get reverted soon afterwards, so they are pointless, too.

The procedure for deletions is explained at Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Articles that should be deleted are most commonly nominated at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion.

How do I edit a redirect page?

The easiest way to edit the redirected page is to click on the link you see at the top of the page after being redirected: "redirected from ...". For example, if you try to go to the William Jefferson Clinton page, you are redirected to the Bill Clinton page. At the very top of that page, you will see a message: "(redirected from William Jefferson Clinton)", Click on the William Jefferson Clinton link, and you will edit the redirect page. See Redirect.

How long should the ideal article be?

Since one can link from page to page to page, then how long should the ideal Wikipedia article be? A good rule of thumb would be less than 5000 words, unless the subject really, really needs much exposition. However, for a subject that is that complex, one can link several shorter articles together, using a hub page to tie all articles together.

Tó bisene:

Foo

History of Foo

Physical Descript of Foo

Relationship with Bar

Modern Cultural Icons and Foo

If you write one long article, you will need new headlines anyway. If you write a long paragraph, then you need to add new linebreaks. The structure of Wikipedia is a web, instead of a text that you read linearly.

See m:Wiki is not paper for further discussion.

How do I figure out how big an article is?

Search results give the size, for example "Knot theory (3220 bytes)". If search is disabled, copy the content of the edit box into an editor, and save as a text file, and check the properties of the file. Some variation is possible depending on whether a new line takes one or two bytes.

When the article size reaches 32 KB a warning is displayed at the top of the edit screen, as that size gives some browsers problems. It will likely give readers and editors problems, also.

What do I do when an article is too long?

See Wikipedia:How to break up an article.

How do I determine what other users have changed in an article?

Wikipedia's software can produce a list of all the changes between two versions of an article (either between two consecutive versions, or between an old and the current version), laid out in two-columns side by side with changes highlighted (here's an example. From the Recent Changes page you can click the "diff" link; from an article page itself click "Page history", then "cur" or "last" to see changes.

To see the differences between two arbitrary versions of an article, see Wikipedia:URLs.

How do I convert Unicode characters to HTML special characters?

1. Edit the article just like you do UTF-8'd wiki sites.
2. Then hit preview. You should get broken characters or mojibake, but don't delete them because they enable conversion of Unicode characters to HTML.
3. While keeping broken characters, type articles. You probably want to copy the entire article before removing it then paste it after you get broken characters.

(see also Wikipedia:Special characters, in particular the section CJK characters)

How can I put pictures on my pages?

First, you need the right to publish the picture under the GNU Free Documentation License. This means that either you created the picture and therefore own the copyright, or it is in the public domain. If the picture is located on a server you control, you can refer to that image from your wiki page by simply including its URL, like this:

http://my.webserver.com/image.png

and it will be included. (Note it will only be linked, not displayed.) If instead you want to upload a picture to wikipedia.org, you can use special:upload as a logged-in user and once it is uploaded, you can refer to it in your wiki pages as above, by including its file name :[[image:NameOfImage.png|Alternate Text]].

See also Image use policy.

How can I delete uploaded items?

Only Wikipedia:Administrators can delete uploads, but anyone can upload a new item with the same name, thereby replacing the old one.

If you want to nominate an uploaded image for deletion, see Wikipedia:Images for deletion.

Hú áscrífe ic onlícnessa?

Click on the image to get the description page. Also, when you upload the file everything you put in the upload summary is placed into the image description page. See Image:Great Horned Owl.USFWS-thumb.jpg for an example of what goes onto one of these pages.

Are there any tools to make editing easier / faster / more fun?

See Wikipedia:Tools for a list of such tools. Among other things, you can find browser plugins for faster editing and searching, and tools for HTML importing, and editing enhancements for the blind.

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