User:Bumni/Sample page

italics, bold, and both copy edit copy editors Android Frog#Locomotion locomotion in frogs Frog § Locomotion Red link example https://www.wikipedia.org [1] Wikipedia Hello World!

Hello again!

References:

This statement is true. User:Example Example This topic isn't notable. This topic is notable

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A single newline here has no effect on the layout.

But an empty line starts a new paragraph, or ends a list or an indented part. Normal text

The blockquote tag will indent both margins when needed instead of the left margin only as the colon does.

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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
  A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
  Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
  With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
  Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John,
Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

To italicize text, put two consecutive apostrophes on each side of it.

Three apostrophes each side will bold the text.

Five consecutive apostrophes on each side (two for italics plus three for bold) produces bold italics.

Italic and bold formatting works correctly only within a single line.

For text as small caps, use the template {{smallcaps}}. function int m2() is nice.

#include <iostream>
int m2 (int ax, char *p_ax) {
  std::cout <<"Hello World!";
  return 0;
}

Use small text only when necessary. To match, for example, the font-size used in an image caption, the "small" tag can also be used to reduce a text's font-size to 87%. Better not use big text, unless it's within small text. Mr. Smith or 400 km/h Mary   had a little lamb. À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ

Ç È É Ê Ë

Ì Í Î Ï Ñ

Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö Ø Œ

Ù Ú Û Ü Ÿ ß

à á â ã ä å æ ç

è é ê ë

ì í î ï ñ

ò ó ô õ ö ø œ

ù ú û ü ÿ ¿ ¡ § ¶ † ‡ • – — ‹ › « » It follows that x² ≥ 0 for real x. $$\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }{\frac {x^{n}}{n!}}$$ Texas Lone Star State London has public transport. Link to this page: "Help:Wikitext" will appear only as bold text. New York also has public transportation. kingdom Seattle Village pump Manual of Style [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Links|]] San Francisco also has public transportation. Examples include buses, taxicabs, and trams. A micro-second A micro-second. Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics is a link to a section within another page. #Links and URLs is a link to another section on the current page. Links and URLs is a link to the same section without showing the # symbol. Italics is a piped link to a section within another page. The article about cardboard sandwiches doesn't exist yet. See the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Wiktionary:hello hello Wiktionary definition of "hello" Wiktionary:fr:bonjour fr:bonjour bonjour Category:Character sets Character sets Wikipedia [2] https://www.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia Sound edit Hindenburg disaster

The image name, the word thumb then the caption :

Wikipedia logo

A picture: With alternative text: With link: Forced to the centre of the page using the frame tag (attribute), a centre tag and a caption:

Wikipedia logo

Forced to the left side of the page using the thumb attribute, the left attribute and a caption:

Wikipedia logo

Forced to the right side of the page without a caption:

Wikipedia encyclopedia

Forced to the right side of the page without a caption:

Wikipedia encyclopedia

A picture resized to 50 pixels... Linking directly to the description page of an image: File:wiki.png Linking directly to an image without displaying it: Image of jigsaw globe Example:

Example:

This text comes from the page named Template:Transclusion demo. It has been transcluded into this page.

This transclusion demo is a little bit of text from the page Help:Transclusion demo to be included into any file. This template takes two parameters, and creates underlined text with a hover box for many modern browsers supporting CSS:

Hover your mouse over this text

Go to this page to see the Tooltip template itself: {{Tooltip}} Diff between revisions 330349143 and 330350877 Diff between revisions 330349143 and 330350877 Diff between revisions 330349143 and 330350877 Revision 330350877 Special:WhatLinksHere/Beetroot Special:RecentChangesLinked/Beetroot Special:Contributions/UserName Special:Contributions/192.0.2.0 Special:Contributions/2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329 I will change the color in the middle part of this sentence. This is how to highlight part of a sentence. This is a correct example for comparison Y This is an incorrect example for contrast N This is in monospace for comparison This is in monospace for contrast This is in bold for comparison This is in bold for contrast You can indicate deleted and inserted material. This is an obsolete stretch of text for comparison

This is

• an obsolete bulleted list
• with two items

for comparison

like <nowiki> tag:

The <nowiki> tag ignores [[wiki]] ''markup''. It reformats text by removing newlines and multiple spaces. It still interprets characters specified by &name;: → <pre> tag:

The <pre> tag ignores [[wiki]]
''markup'' as does the <nowiki>
tag. Additionally, <pre> displays
in a mono-spaced font, and does
not  reformat    text    spaces.
It still interprets special
characters: →

[Text without a URL]:

Single square brackets holding [text without a HTTP URL] are preserved, but single square brackets containing a URL are treated as being an external Web link. Leading space:

Leading spaces are another way to preserve formatting.

Putting a space at the
beginning of each line
stops the text   from
being reformatted.
It still interprets wiki
markup and special characters: &

1. Ordered list

# Ordered list A micro-second. A micro-second. a b ''Italics' markup'' [[Example]] <!-- revealed --> page name [[ wp:pagename | page name ]] [[ wp:pagename | page name ]] [[ wp:pagename | page name ]] [[wp:pagename | page name ]] wp: pagename [[ wp: {{ 1x | pagename }} ]] [[ wp: {{ 1x | pagename }} ]] [[ wp: {{ 1x | pagename }} ]] label [[ wp: pagename | {{ 1x | label }} ]] <nowiki> label </nowiki> {{ val | u=> ms | 49082 }} {{ val | u=> ms | 49082 }} {{ val | u=> ms | 49082 }} {{ val | u= > ms | 49082 }} {{ val | u= > [[ ms ]] | 49082 }} outYes {{ #ifeq: inYes | inYes | outYes | outNo }} {{ #ifeq: inYes | inYes | outYes | outNo }} {{ #ifeq: inYes | inYes | outYes | outNo }} {{ #ifeq: inYes | inYes | outYes | outNo }}

1. 
2. __HIDDENCAT__

Blue <span style=color:blue> Blue </span> bel /> <section end=label /> <nowiki>...</ nowiki > &lt; nowiki>...&lt;/ nowiki > <nowiki>...</ nowiki > <nowiki /> &lt; nowiki /> <<nowiki /> nowiki /> <nowiki>< nowiki /></nowiki> 1<nowiki>2<nowiki>3</nowiki>4</nowiki> <nowiki>|<nowiki></nowiki>|</nowiki>

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[[wiki]] markup &

wiki markup &

File:FILENAME

DESCRIPTION

Pagename Bumni/Sample page

"WP:AFG" redirects here; not to be confused with Wikipedia:WikiProject Afghanistan.

"WP:FAITH" redirects here; not to be confused with Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion.

Assuming good faith (AGF) means assuming that people are not deliberately trying to hurt Wikipedia, even when their actions are harmful. This is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia. Most people try to help the project, not hurt it. Otherwise, a project like Wikipedia would have been doomed from the beginning.

When disagreement occurs, try as best you can to explain and resolve the problem, not cause more conflict, and so give others the opportunity to reply in kind. Consider whether a dispute stems from different perspectives, and look for ways to reach consensus.

When doubt is cast on good faith, continue to assume good faith yourself when possible. Be civil and follow dispute resolution procedures, rather than attacking editors or edit-warring with them. If you wish to express doubts about the conduct of fellow Wikipedians, please substantiate those doubts with specific diffs and other relevant evidence, so that people can understand the basis for your concerns. Although bad conduct may seem to be due to bad faith, it is usually best to address the conduct without mentioning motives, which might intensify resentments all around.

This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of obvious evidence to the contrary (e.g. vandalism), nor does assuming good faith prohibit discussion and criticism, as even editors who try to improve Wikipedia may not have the information or skills necessary to succeed in their good-faith goals. Rather, editors should not attribute the actions being criticized to malice unless there is specific evidence of such.

About good faith

Everyone makes mistakes, both behavioral (such as personal attacks) and content-based (such as adding original research). Most of the time, we can correct such mistakes with simple reminders. However, there will be disagreements on Wikipedia for which no policy or guideline has an easy answer. When disagreements happen, ill intent may not be involved. Keep a cool head, and consider dispute resolution if disagreements seem intractable; many of them are not.

Violation of policies—such as engaging in sockpuppetry, violating consensus, and so on—may be perpetrated in either good or bad faith. There are processes for dealing with all of these, and sanctions for repeated violation of policy will apply regardless of whether bad faith was involved or not.

Good faith and newcomers

Main page: Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers

It's a big mess now, but remember: The editor who spilled this probably wasn't trying to make a mess for you to clean up.

It is important to be patient with newcomers, who will be unfamiliar with Wikipedia's culture and rules, but may nonetheless turn out to be valuable contributors.

A newcomer's behavior probably seems appropriate to them, and a problem in that regard usually indicates unawareness or misunderstanding of Wikipedian culture. It is not uncommon for a newcomer to believe that an unfamiliar policy should be changed to match their notion of how things should function, especially if they notice that there is already some level of disagreement over the policy in question. Similarly, many newcomers want to have their contributions to articles accepted without question, especially those which pertain to subjects on which they have extensive knowledge. Behaviors arising from these perspectives, while possibly misguided, are usually not malicious and should not be treated as such. Many new users who lack an intuitive grasp of Wikipedia customs are gradually brought around, once the logic behind these customs becomes clearer to them.

Good faith and copyright

Main page: Wikipedia:Copyright violations

The editor who broke this was probably just trying to get information out. It's still a problem, but their goal was to help.

When dealing with possible copyright violations, good faith means assuming that editors intend to comply with site policy and the law. That is different from assuming they have actually complied with either. Editors have a proactive obligation to document image uploads, etc. and material may be deleted if the documentation is incorrect or inadequate. Good-faith corrective action includes informing editors of problems and helping them improve their practices.

Good faith and administrative action

When dealing with potential breaches of policy, administrators should not assume editors have breached policy in bad faith without evidence to that effect.

What good faith is not

Socrates was known to steadfastly assume others around him were acting in good faith.

Many people misunderstand Wikipedia's "assume good faith" policy as meaning "assume another editor performed due diligence" or "assume blind faith" regarding a reference, editor, or content. However, the actual intention is closer to "presume good intent", which does not mean "I do not have access to a source, so I 'assume good faith' about the source's content," nor does it mean "an editor has removed unreferenced material, so I 'assume good faith' that they've performed due diligence to ensure there are no reliable sources available."

This policy also does not mean you should ignore clear evidence of disruptive behavior or violations of site guidelines or accept all edits without question. Some bad actors may insist that trust in them should be immutable, per "assume good faith", even when there is evidence against this. However, editors should remember to not disregard patterns of harmful editing, nor should they overlook obvious attempts to deceive, vandalize, or push a biased agenda. Instead, "assume good faith" encourages editors to start with the belief that others are trying to improve Wikipedia. When you encounter a problematic edit, it's important to investigate and address it, but do so with the mindset that mistakes can happen and not every error is made with malicious intent. The purpose of assuming good faith is to maintain a collaborative and respectful editing environment.

Demonstrate good faith

In addition to assuming good faith, encourage others to assume good faith by demonstrating your own good faith. You can do this by articulating your honest motives and by making edits that show your willingness to compromise, interest in improving Wikipedia, adherence to policies and guidelines, belief in the veracity of your edits, avoidance of gaming the system, and other good-faith behavior. Showing good faith is not required, but it aids smooth and successful interactions with editors.

Dealing with bad faith

Someone else's bad faith is not a "get out of civility free" card for you.

Even if bad faith is evident, do not act uncivilly yourself in return, attack others, or lose your cool over it. It is ultimately much easier for others to resolve a dispute and see who is breaching policies if one side is clearly acting appropriately throughout.

Wikipedia administrators and other experienced editors involved in dispute resolution will usually be glad to help, and are very capable of identifying policy-breaching conduct if their attention is drawn to clear and specific evidence.

Be careful about citing this principle too aggressively. Just as one can incorrectly judge that another is acting in bad faith, so too can one mistakenly conclude that bad faith is being assumed; exhortations to "assume good faith" can themselves reflect negative assumptions about others.

Accusing others of bad faith

See also: Wikipedia:Assume the assumption of good faith

Avoid accusing other editors of bad faith without clear evidence in the form of diffs. Making such claims often serves no purpose and could be seen as inflammatory and hence aggravate a dispute. Without clear evidence that the action of another editor is actually in bad faith or harassment, repeatedly alleging bad faith motives could be construed as a personal attack. The result could be accusations of bad faith on your part, which tends to create a nasty cycle of unhelpful accusations and counter-accusations.

See also

Guidelines

Main page: Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines

• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
• Wikipedia:Disruptive editing
• Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers

Essays

Main page: Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines § Essays

• MeatBall:AssumeGoodFaith (from MeatballWiki)
• Wikipedia:Assume bad faith (humorous)
• Wikipedia:Assume faith (humorous)
• Wikipedia:Assume no clue
• Wikipedia:Assume ignorance
• Wikipedia:Assume the assumption of good faith
• Wikipedia:Assume the presence of a belly-button
• Wikipedia:Be the glue
• Wikipedia:Competence is required
• Wikipedia:Don't assume
• Wikipedia:Don't call a spade a spade
• Wikipedia:Gatekeeping
• Wikipedia:Search engine test § Good-faith searching
• Wikipedia:IP editors are human too
• Wikipedia:On assuming good faith
• Wikipedia:Our social policies are not a suicide pact
• Wikipedia policy should follow the spirit of ahimsa (from meta)
• Wikipedia:WikiSpeak § Assume good faith
• Wikipedia:Newbies aren't always clueless
• Wikipedia:Optimist's guide to Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Don't link to WP:AGF

Articles

• Principle of charity
• Hanlon's razor
• Presumption of innocence
• Suspension of judgment

Bumni/Sample page Template:SOURCEPAGE B

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"WP:N" and "WP:NOTE" redirect here. For other uses, see WP:N (disambiguation) and WP:NOTE (disambiguation).

On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article.

Information on Wikipedia must be verifiable; if no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article. Wikipedia's concept of notability applies this basic standard to avoid indiscriminate inclusion of topics. Article and list topics must be notable, or "worthy of notice". Determining notability does not necessarily depend on things such as fame, importance, or popularity—although those may enhance the acceptability of a topic that meets the guidelines explained below.

A topic is presumed to merit an article if:

1. It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG); and
2. It is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy.

This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article.

These guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not limit the content of an article or list, though notability is commonly used as an inclusion criterion for lists (for example for listing out a school's alumni). For Wikipedia's policies regarding content, see Neutral point of view, Verifiability, No original research, What Wikipedia is not, and Biographies of living persons.

General notability guideline

A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.

• "Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article—perhaps because it violates what Wikipedia is not, particularly the rule that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.
• "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.
  • The book-length history of IBM by Robert Sobel is plainly non-trivial coverage of IBM.
  • Martin Walker's statement, in a newspaper article about Bill Clinton, that "In high school, he was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice" is plainly a trivial mention of that band.
• "Reliable" means that sources need editorial integrity to allow verifiable evaluation of notability, per the reliable source guideline. Sources may encompass published works in all forms and media, and in any language. Availability of secondary sources covering the subject is a good test for notability.
• "Sources" should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability. There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected. Sources do not have to be available online or written in English. Multiple publications from the same author or organization are usually regarded as a single source for the purposes of establishing notability.
• "Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by the article's subject or someone affiliated with it. For example, advertising, press releases, autobiographies, and the subject's website are not considered independent.

If a topic does not meet these criteria but still has some verifiable facts, it might nonetheless be useful to discuss it within another article.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

For a full list of subject-specific notability guidelines, see Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines.

In some topic areas, subject-specific notability guidelines (SNGs) have been written to help clarify when a standalone article can or should be written. The currently accepted subject guidelines are listed in the box at the top of this page and at Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines. Wikipedia articles are generally written based on in-depth, independent, reliable sourcing with some subject-specific exceptions. The subject-specific notability guidelines generally include verifiable criteria about a topic which show that appropriate sourcing likely exists for that topic. Therefore, topics which pass an SNG are presumed to merit an article, though articles which pass an SNG or the GNG may still be deleted or merged into another article, especially if adequate sourcing or significant coverage cannot be found, or if the topic is not suitable for an encyclopedia.

SNGs also serve additional and varying purposes depending on the topic. Some SNGs, for example the ones in the topic areas of films, biographies, and politicians, provide topic-related guidance when articles should not be created. SNGs can also provide examples of sources and types of coverage considered significant for the purposes of determining notability, such as the treatment of book reviews for our literature guidelines and the strict significant coverage requirements spelled out in the SNG for organizations and companies. Some SNGs have specialized functions: for example, the SNG for academics and professors and the SNG for geographic features operate according to principles that differ from the GNG.

Some WikiProjects have provided additional guidance on notability of topics within their field – see Category:WikiProject notability advice and Category:Wikipedia essays about notability. Editors are cautioned that these WikiProject notability guidance pages should be treated as essays and do not establish new notability standards, lacking the weight of broad consensus of the general and subject-specific notability guidelines in various discussions (such as at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion).

Notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles or lists

The criteria applied to the creation or retention of an article are not the same as those applied to the content inside it. The notability guideline does not apply to the contents of articles. It also does not apply to the contents of stand-alone lists, unless editors agree to use notability as part of the list selection criteria. Content coverage within a given article or list (i.e. whether something is noteworthy enough to be mentioned within the article or list) is governed by the principle of due weight, balance, and other content policies. For additional information about list articles, see Notability of lists and List selection criteria.

Article content does not determine notability

Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article. If the topic has not been covered outside of Wikipedia, no amount of improvement to the Wikipedia content will suddenly make the topic notable. Conversely, if the source material exists, even very poor writing and referencing within a Wikipedia article will not decrease the topic's notability.

Notability requires verifiable evidence

The common theme in the notability guidelines is that there must be verifiable, objective evidence that the subject has received significant attention from independent sources to support a claim of notability.

No subject is automatically or inherently notable merely because it exists: the evidence must show the topic has gained significant independent coverage or recognition, and that this was not a mere short-term interest, nor a result of promotional activity or indiscriminate publicity, nor is the topic unsuitable for any other reason. Sources of evidence include recognized peer-reviewed publications, credible and authoritative books, reputable media sources, and other reliable sources generally.

Notability is based on the existence of suitable sources, not on the state of sourcing in an article

The absence of sources or citations in a Wikipedia article (as distinct from the non-existence of independent, published reliable sources online or offline) does not indicate that a subject is not notable. Notability requires only that suitable independent, reliable sources exist in the real world; it does not require their immediate presence or citation in an article. Editors evaluating notability should consider not only any sources currently named in an article, but also the possibility or existence of notability-indicating sources that are not currently named in the article. Thus, before proposing or nominating an article for deletion, or offering an opinion based on notability in a deletion discussion, editors are strongly encouraged to attempt to find sources for the subject in question and consider the possibility that sources may still exist even if their search failed to uncover any.

Wikipedia articles are not a final draft, and an article's subject can be notable if such sources exist, even if they have not been named yet. If it is likely that significant coverage in independent sources can be found for a topic, deletion due to lack of notability is inappropriate. However, once an article's notability has been challenged, merely asserting that unspecified sources exist is seldom persuasive, especially if time passes and actual proof does not surface.

The current state of the article does not determine notability

Current state of the article	Sources available in the real world	Result
N No or few suitable sources cited	N No or few suitable sources that could be cited	N Likely not notable
N No or few suitable sources cited	Y Multiple suitable sources that could be cited	Y Likely notable
Y Multiple suitable sources cited	Y Multiple suitable sources that could be cited	Y Likely notable

Notability is not temporary

Notability is not temporary; once a topic has been the subject of "significant coverage" in accordance with the general notability guideline, it does not need to have ongoing coverage.

While notability itself is not temporary, from time to time a reassessment of the evidence of notability or suitability of existing articles may be requested by any user via a deletion discussion, or new evidence may arise for articles previously deemed unsuitable. Thus, an article may be proposed for deletion months or even years after its creation, or recreated whenever new evidence supports its existence as a standalone article.

Notable topics have attracted attention over a sufficiently significant period of time

See also: Wikipedia:Notability § Events, and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons § Subjects notable only for one event

Wikipedia is a lagging indicator of notability. Just as a lagging economic indicator indicates what the economy was doing in the past, a topic is "notable" in Wikipedia terms only if the outside world has already "taken notice of it". Once established, notability is not temporary. Brief bursts of news coverage may not sufficiently demonstrate notability. However, sustained coverage is an indicator of notability, as described by notability of events. New organizations and future events might pass WP:GNG, but lack sufficient coverage to satisfy WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, and these must still also satisfy WP:NOTPROMOTION.

If reliable sources cover a person only in the context of a single event, and if that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual, we should generally avoid having a biographical article on that individual.

Similarly, reproductions or close paraphrasing of press releases (aka churnalism) does not count as sustained coverage.

Whether to create standalone pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Summary style, Wikipedia:Content forking, Wikipedia:Article size, and Wikipedia:Merging

For the guideline on red-linked articles in hatnotes, see WP:NOARTICLE.

When creating new content about a notable topic, editors should consider how best to help readers understand it. Often, understanding is best achieved by presenting the topic on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so; at times it is better to cover a notable topic as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context (and doing so in no way disparages the importance of the topic). Editorial judgment goes into each decision about whether or not to create a separate page, but the decision should always be based upon specific considerations about how to make the topic understandable, and not merely upon personal likes or dislikes. Wikipedia is a digital encyclopedia, and so the amount of content and details should not be limited by concerns about space availability.

• Does other information provide needed context? Sometimes, a notable topic can be covered better as part of a larger article, where there can be more complete context that would be lost on a separate page (Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign § Other initiatives and Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign § International trip, for example). Other times, standalone pages are well justified (as with President of the United States as well as standalone biographies of every individual President). One should particularly consider due and undue weight. Fringe theories, for example, may merit standalone pages but have undue weight on a page about the mainstream concept.
• Do related topics provide needed context? Sometimes, several related topics, each of them similarly notable, can be collected into a single page, where the relationships between them can be better appreciated than if they were each a separate page (as at Music of the Final Fantasy VII series). Other times, when many similar notable topics exist, it is impractical to collect them into a single page, because the resulting article would be too unwieldy. In that case, a viable option is creating a new list or category for the broader topic and linking to the individual articles from it (as with Category:Restaurants in New York City).
• What sourcing is available now? Sometimes, when a subject is notable, but it is unlikely that there ever will be a lot to write about it, editors should weigh the advantages and disadvantages of creating a permanent stub. On the other hand, an article may be a stub even though many sources exist, but simply have not been included yet. Such a short page is better expanded than merged into a larger page (see also the essays Wikipedia:Every snowflake is unique and Wikipedia:Run-of-the-mill). Sometimes, when information about a future event is scarce, coverage may instead be better suited to a larger encompassing article (see also Wikipedia:CRYSTAL). Other times, a future event may clearly be suitable for a standalone page before it happens (such as the next upcoming Summer Olympics). However, before creating such an article, make sure that the likelihood of the future event occurring is reasonably assured. For example, the WikiProject Film strongly recommends that a standalone article for a new film be created only if reliable sources confirm that principal photography for the film has commenced, as completion of the film is generally seen out to the end from this point on.

Subject-specific notability guidelines and WikiProject advice pages may provide information on how to make these editorial decisions in particular subject areas. When a standalone page is created, it can be spun off from a broader page. Conversely, when notable topics are not given standalone pages, redirection pages and disambiguation can be used to direct readers searching for such topics to the appropriate articles and sections within them (see also Wikipedia:Redirects are cheap).

Why we have these requirements

Editors apply notability standards to all subjects to determine whether the English language Wikipedia should have a separate, stand-alone article on that subject. The primary purpose of these standards is to ensure that editors create articles that comply with major content policies.

• We require "significant coverage" in reliable sources so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list. (See the advice below.)
• We require the existence of "reliable sources" so that we can be confident that we're not passing along random gossip, perpetuating hoaxes, or posting indiscriminate collections of information.
• We require that all articles rely primarily on "third-party" or "independent sources" so that we can write a fair and balanced article that complies with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy and to ensure that articles are not advertising a product, service, or organization. See Wikipedia:Autobiography for discussion of neutrality concerns of self-published sources.
• We require the existence of at least one secondary source so that the article can comply with Wikipedia:No original research's requirement that all articles be based on secondary sources.
• We require multiple sources so that we can write a reasonably balanced article that complies with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, rather than representing only one author's point of view. This is also why multiple publications by the same person or organization are considered to be a single source for the purpose of complying with the "multiple" requirement.
• We require editors to use their judgment about how to organize subjects so that we have neither long, bloated articles nor articles so narrow that they cannot be properly developed. Editors may decide that it is better for readers to present a narrow subject as part of a broader one. For example, editors normally prefer to merge information about translations of books into the larger subject of the original book, because in their editorial judgment, the merged article is more informative and more balanced for readers and reduces redundant information in the encyclopedia. (For ideas on how to deal with material that may be best handled by placing it in another article, see WP:FAILN.)

Because these requirements are based on major content policies, they apply to all articles, not solely articles justified under the general notability criteria. They do not, however, apply to pages whose primary purpose is navigation (e.g. all disambiguation pages and some lists).

Common circumstances

Self-promotion and publicity

Publication in a reliable source is not always good evidence of notability. Wikipedia is not a promotional medium. Self-promotion, autobiography, product placement, press releases, branding campaigns, advertisements, and paid material are not valid routes to an encyclopedia article. The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the topic itself (or of its manufacturer, creator, author, inventor, company, or vendor) have actually considered the topic worth writing and publishing non-trivial works of their own that focus upon it—without incentive, promotion, or other influence by people connected to the topic matter.

Independent sources are also needed to guarantee a neutral article can be written. Even non-promotional self-published sources, like technical manuals that accompany a product, are still not evidence of notability as they are not a measure of the attention a subject has received.

Events

Main page: Wikipedia:Notability (events)

Wikipedia is not a news source: it takes more than just routine news reports about a single event or topic to constitute significant coverage. For example, routine news coverage such as press releases, public announcements, sports coverage, and tabloid journalism is not significant coverage. Even a large number of news reports that provide no critical analysis of the event is not considered significant coverage. The Wikimedia project Wikinews may cover topics of present news coverage. In some cases, notability of a controversial entity (such as a book) could arise either because the entity itself was notable, or because the controversy was notable as an event—both need considering.

Stand-alone lists

Further information: Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists § Selection criteria; and Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates § Overlapping categories, lists and navigation templates are not considered duplicative

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists § Adding individual items to a list

Notability guidelines also apply to the creation of stand-alone lists and tables. Notability of lists (whether titled as "List of Xs" or "Xs") is based on the group. One accepted reason why a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines; and other guidelines on appropriate stand-alone lists. The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been. Because the group or set is notable, the individual entries in the list do not need to be independently notable, although editors may, at their discretion, choose to limit large lists by only including entries for independently notable items or those with Wikipedia articles.

There is no present consensus for how to assess the notability of more complex and cross-categorization lists (such as "Lists of X of Y") or what other criteria may justify the notability of stand-alone lists, although non-encyclopedic cross-categorizations are touched upon in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not § Wikipedia is not a directory. Lists that fulfill recognized informational, navigation, or development purposes often are kept regardless of any demonstrated notability. Editors are still urged to demonstrate list notability via the grouping itself before creating stand-alone lists.

Fringe topics

This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia:Fringe theories.[edit]

In Wikipedia parlance, the term fringe theory is used in a broad sense to describe an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field. Because Wikipedia aims to summarize significant opinions with representation in proportion to their prominence, a Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is. Statements about the truth of a theory must be based upon independent reliable sources. If discussed in an article about a mainstream idea, a theory that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight, and reliable sources must be cited that affirm the relationship of the marginal idea to the mainstream idea in a serious and substantial manner.

There are numerous reasons for these requirements. Wikipedia is not and must not become the validating source for non-significant subjects, and it is not a forum for original research. For writers and editors of Wikipedia articles to write about controversial ideas in a neutral manner, it is of vital importance that they simply restate what is said by independent secondary sources of reasonable reliability and quality.

The governing policies regarding fringe theories are the three core content policies: Neutral point of view, No original research, and Verifiability. Jointly these say that articles should not contain any novel analysis or synthesis, that material likely to be challenged needs a reliable source, and that all majority and significant-minority views published in reliable sources should be represented fairly and proportionately. Should any inconsistency arise between this guideline and the content policies, the policies take precedence.

Fringe theories and related articles have been the subject of several arbitration cases. See Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Arbitration cases.

Articles not satisfying the notability guidelines

Topics that do not meet this criterion are not retained as separate articles. Non-notable topics with closely related notable articles or lists are often merged into those pages, while non-notable topics without such merge targets are generally deleted.

If an article fails to cite sufficient sources to demonstrate the notability of its subject, look for sources yourself, or:

• Ask the article's creator or an expert on the subject for advice on where to look for sources.
• Place a {{notability}} tag on the article to alert other editors.
• If the article is about a specialized field, use the {{expert-subject}} tag with a specific WikiProject to attract editors knowledgeable about that field, who may have access to reliable sources not available online.

If appropriate sources cannot be found after a good-faith search for them, consider merging the article's verifiable content into a broader article providing context. Otherwise, if deleting:

• If the article meets our criteria for speedy deletion, one can use a criterion-specific deletion tag listed on that page.
• Use the {{prod}} tag for articles which do not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, but are uncontroversial deletion candidates. This allows the article to be deleted after seven days if nobody objects. For more information, see Wikipedia:Proposed deletion.
• For cases where you are unsure about deletion, believe others might object, or another editor has already objected to a previous proposed deletion, nominate the article for the articles for deletion process, where the merits will be debated and deliberated for seven days.

For articles on subjects that are clearly not notable, then deletion is usually the most appropriate response, although other options may help the community to preserve any useful material. Since deletion of an article is often heavily contested, editors are advised to thoroughly follow several recommended steps prior to nomination.

See also

• An extensive set of subject-specific guideline pages for different aspects of notability can be found at Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines, with subject specific essays and proposed guidelines at Category:Wikipedia notability.
• Wikipedia's article on Notability in the English Wikipedia.
• For commentary and discussion of this guideline, see Wikipedia:Essays in a nutshell/Notability and Category:Wikipedia essays about notability.
• Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent, an essay on the difference between first-person, first-party, and primary sources.
• Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources
• Wikipedia:Viability of lists
• Wikipedia:Search engine test [cf. Google (verb) ?]
• Wikipedia:Recentism
• Wikipedia:Relevance of content
• Wikipedia:Categorization § Defining
• No amount of editing can overcome a lack of notability
• {{assess table}} and {{source assess}}, two templates used to present an assessment of the sources present in an article
• MOS:NOTE: Manual of Style on "Instructional and presumptuous language"

Notes

Pagename Template:Namespace:Pagename/Subpagename User:Bumni/Sample page/Subpagename

Usage

{{like}} → Like

Parameters

Custom text

{{like|I learned something today}} → I learned something today

When no parameter name is specified, custom text is assumed

Icon

{{like|icon=wiki}} → Like

Default icon

{{like|icon=old}} →  Like

Legacy icon

{{like|icon=fb}} →  Like

Facebook icon

Username

{{like|username=ExampleUser}} → ExampleUser likes this.

Num (User Likes)

{{like|num=1}} → 1 user likes this.

{{like|num=2}} → 2 users like this.

{{like|num=3}} → 3 users like this.

Etc...

Supported parameter combinations

Custom text

{{like|I learned something yesterday|icon=old}} →  I learned something yesterday

Custom text + icon

{{like|loves|num=1}} → 1 user loves this.

When combined with Num (User likes), custom text replace the verb "like"

{{like|love|num=3}} → 3 users love this.

For plural users, remember to change your verb accordingly

Icon

{{like|icon=old|username=ExampleUser}} →  ExampleUser likes this.

icon + username

{{like|icon=old|num=1}} →  1 user likes this.

icon + num (user likes)

Username

Username can be combined with Icon, as above. You can't use this parameter together with custom text or num (user likes).

Num (User Likes)

Num can be combined with Custom Text and Icon, as above. You can't use this parameter together with Username.

3 parameter combination

{{like|loves|icon=old|num=1}} →  1 user loves this.

You can combine Custom Text, Icon, and Num (User likes)

See also

• Template:Dislike
• Template:Agree
• Template:Thumbs up
• Template:-n
• Template:++
• Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#I like it
• Wikipedia is not a social network

This list:

Inline icon templates by shape and color

Any of the following inline, comment-level templates can be converted into {{Resolved}}-style hatnotes by using {{Resbox}} to put a box around the icon and text.

Green check marks
Implemented	{{Implemented}}
Partially implemented	{{PImplemented}}
Resolved	{{Resolved mark}}
Accepted	{{Accepted}}
Agree	{{Agree}}
Approved	{{Approved}}
Checked	{{Checked2}}
Verified	{{Verified}}
CY	{{Conditional yes}}
Confirmed	{{Confirmed}}
Confirmed with respect to the named user(s).  No comment with respect to IP address(es).	{{Confirmed-nc}}
Technically indistinguishable	{{Tallyho}}
Y	{{Tick}}
Helped	{{Helped}}
Done	{{Done}}
Completed	{{Edited2}}
Task complete.	{{Donetask}}
Done – as a contested proposed deletion, the article has been restored on request.	{{Unprod}}
Answered on user's talk page.	{{Autp}}
Responded at the appropriate venue.	{{Responded}}
Sure!	{{Sure}}
Revoked	{{Revoked}}
Y Merger complete.	{{Merge done}}
✓	{{Marked}}
✓ Pass	{{Pass}}
Y	{{Aye}}
Yes	{{Yes check}}
✓	{{Y&}}
Y	{{Yeac}}
Yg	{{Yeag}}

Cross marks
N	{{Xmark}}
N This offer has expired	{{Expired}}
N Deleted	{{Deleted}}
Not done	{{Not done}}
Not done – empty request	{{Not done empty request}}
Not done – please clarify	{{Not done unclear}}
N Not done and not likely to be done	{{Not done not likely}}
N Stale	{{Stale-small}}
Rejected	{{Smallrejected}}
N	{{X mark}}
N	{{Nay}}
No	{{No mark}}
✗ Not done	{{Not done-t}}
✗ Fail	{{Fail}}
✗	{{N&}}
N	{{X mark-n}}
	{{Xed box}}
Cancelled	{{Cancelled}}
Prohibited	{{Prohib}}
Deleted	{{Deleted-image}}
Already declined	{{Already declined}}
Blocked	{{Opblocked}}
User blocked	{{User-blocked}}
Not a bug	{{Notabug}}
Not fixed	{{Notfixed}}
Won't fix	{{Won't fix}}
I withdraw my nomination	{{Withdraw}}
No technical evidence	{{Nojoy}}
Unrelated	{{Unrelated}}
Off-topic	{{Off-topic talk}}
N	{{Nayc}}
Ng	{{Nayg}}

Black check marks
Already done	{{Already done}}
Resolved	{{Resolved1}}
Y	{{Check mark-n}}
	{{Checked}}
	{{Checked box}}

Yellow check marks
Half done	{{Half done}}
Partly done	{{Partly done}}

Blue check marks
Semi-done	{{Semi-done}}
Go ahead	{{Go ahead}}
Fixed	{{Fixed}}
Fixed by reporter	{{Fixed by reporter}}
Pending	{{Bug pending}}
Resolved	{{Bug resolved}}
Blocked and tagged	{{Blockedandtagged}}
Blocked without tags	{{Blockedwithouttags}}
Tagged	{{Socks tagged}}
No tags	{{No tags}}
IP block exemption granted	{{Ipbedone}}
IP blocked	{{IPblock}}
Proxy blocked	{{Pblock}}
Proxies blocked	{{Psblock}}
Range blocked	{{Rblock}}
Requested actions completed, closing	{{Action and close}}
Blocked and tagged. Closing.	{{Blockedtaggedclosing}}

Minus sign
Closed	{{Close}}
Denied	{{Denied}}
Disagree	{{Disagree}}
Not approved	{{Unapproved}}
Not bug	{{NotBug}}
Duplicate bug	{{Duplicate bug}}
Invalid	{{Invalid}}
Declined	{{Declined}}
No action	{{No action}}
No comment	{{Nocomment}}
Unnecessary	{{Unnecessary}}
No comment with respect to IP address(es)	{{Nc}}
Removed	{{Removed}}
Pulled	{{Pulled}}
Closing without action	{{Closing without action}}
Failed	{{Failed-ga}}

Plus sign
Added	{{Added}}
Posted	{{Posted}}
Works for me	{{Works for me}}
Passed	{{Passed}}
Likely	{{Likely}}
Highly likely	{{Highly likely}}
Endorsed	{{Endorsed+}}
Clerk endorsed	{{Endorse}}
Clerk declined	{{Decline}}
Check declined – Checkusers will not link accounts to IPs, per the privacy policy.	{{Decline-IP}}
Endorsed by a checkuser	{{Cu-endorsed}}
Check declined by a checkuser	{{Cudecline}}
Delisted	{{Delisted}}
Inconclusive	{{Inconclusive}}
Not Applicable	{{N/A icon}}

Neutral sign
Closed	{{Bug closed}}
New:	{{Bug new}}
Second opinion requested	{{GA2ndopinion}}
=	{{equc}}

Purple turn-right
Deferred	{{Deferred}}
Defer to edit filter	{{Deferabusefilter}}
Defer to Local blacklist	{{Deferblack}}
Defer to Global blacklist	{{Defermetablack}}
Defer to WPSPAM	{{Deferspam}}
Defer to XLinkBot	{{Deferspambot}}
Defer to Whitelist	{{Deferwhite}}

Simple clock
Pending approval	{{PendingRequest}}
GA on hold	{{GAOnHold}}
On hold	{{On hold}}
On hold until	{{OnHoldUntil}}
clock	{{cloc}}

Clock
Proposal on hold	{{ProposalOnHold}}
Reviewing request.	{{Reviewing request}}
Awaiting administrative action	{{Awaitingadmin}}
C	{{Await}}
Later	{{Later}}
Pending	{{Tobedone}}
Discussion ongoing...	{{Discussing}}
Doing...	{{Doing}}
[[User:|]] is doing...	{{Isdoing}}
Started	{{Started}}
In progress	{{In progress}}
Checking...	{{Checking}}
Reviewing...	{{Reviewing}}

Information mark
Needs discussion	{{NeedsDiscussion}}
Note:	{{A note}}
Administrator note	{{Administrator note}}
Assigned	{{Bug assigned}}
RM created	{{RM created}}

Exclamation
High Priority	{{High priority}}
*	{{N.b.}}
Urgent:	{{Urgent}}
Investigating...	{{Investigating}}
	{{Bang}}
Requesting immediate archiving...	{{Archive now}}
Bureaucrat note:	{{Bureaucrat note}}
Checkuser note:	{{CUnote}}
Acknowledged	{{Bug acknowledged}} ({{Ack}})
Confirmed	{{Bug confirmed}}
Comment:	{{Comment}}
Remind	{{Remind}}
Remark:	{{Remark}}
Clerk note:	{{Clerk note}}
Robot clerk note:	{{Clerk note bot}}
Renamer note:	{{Renamer note}}
Coordinator note:	{{Coordinator-note}}
This review has not received any comments in two weeks.	{{Stale GAN}}
Warning	{{Warning sign}}
Caution	{{Caution sign}}

Question mark
Suggestion	{{Suggestion}}
? Maybe	{{Maybe-t}}
Maybe	{{Maybe-i}}
?	{{Qmark}}
?	{{Question mark}}
	{{InfoNeeded}}
Not done for now	{{Not done for now}}
Not sure	{{Not sure}}
Not sure.	{{Not sure2}}
Question:	{{Question}}
foo:	{{Question|label=foo}}
Additional information needed	{{MoreInfo}}
Feedback required	{{Bug feedback}}
?	{{Idkc}}

Bulb
B	{{Bulb}}
B	{{Bulb2}}
Idea:	{{Idea}}
New proposal	{{NewProposal}}

Smile
Thank you	{{Thank you}}
Thank you very much!	{{Thank you very much}}
You're welcome!	{{You're welcome}}
Sorry!	{{Sorry}}
Thanks	{{Thank}}
Thank you	{{WikiThanks}}
No problem!	{{No problem}}

Thumb sign
	{{Thumbs down}}
	{{Thumbs up}}
	{{(y)}}
	{{(n)}}
Great!	{{Great}}
Like	{{Like}}
Dislike	{{Dislike}}

Others

ω Awaiting	{{Awaiting}}
( Buttinsky)	{{Buttinsky}}
Comment.	{{Commentvote}}
Dupe	{{Bug dupe}}
Merged	{{Clerk-Note-merged}}
New bug	{{NewBug}}
Bug fixed	{{BugFixed}}
Duplicate proposal	{{DuplicateProposal}}
Just curious...	{{Justcurious}}
Proposal out of scope	{{ProposalOutOfScope}}
Moved to Commons	{{Moved to commons}}
Orz...	{{Orz}}
( Peanut gallery comment)	{{Peanut}}
Possibly	{{Possibly}}
I have read the above message. I will reply when I have a moment.	{{Read}}
Received	{{Received}}
Redflag	{{Redflag}}
Redundant	{{Redundant symbol}}
Reopened	{{Reopened}}
@Example:	{{Reply to}}
Reverted	{{Reverted}}
rimshotⓘ	{{Rimshot}}
Review	{{Twomanrule}}
Review – This section is under review or has been partially reviewed by	{{UnderReview}}
Facepalm	{{Facepalm}}
Running with scissors is too dangerous for Wikipedia!	{{Scissors}}
Self-trout	{{Self-trout}}
Self-whale... for when a trout just isn't enough	{{Self-whale}}
Sent	{{Sent}}
per snowball clause	{{Snow}}
SUL Check	{{SULcheck}}

ToDo	{{ToDo}}
Undone	{{Undone}}
Uploaded	{{Uploaded}}
Request withdrawn	{{Withdrawn}}
Working	{{Working}}
Wikipedia is not a crystal ball.	{{WPcrystalball}}
Completed	{{Completed}}
Blocked but awaiting tags	{{Sblock}}
Possible	{{Possible}}
Not possible	{{Not possible}}
Possilikely (a mix between possible and likely)	{{Possilikely}}
Unlikely	{{Unlikely}}
Replaced	{{Replaced}}
Looks like a duck to me	{{Duck}}
	{{Duck2}}
Sounds like a duck quacking into a megaphone to me	{{Megaphoneduck}}
1.75x amplified ultimate quack of ultimate destiny	{{Megaphoneduck|ultimate}}
Clerk assistance requested:	{{Clerk Request}}
Relisted	{{Relisted}}
No sleepers immediately visible	{{Nosleepers}}
Behavioural evidence needs evaluation	{{Behaviour}}
Global lock(s) requested	{{GlobalLocksRequested}}
Stale	{{StaleIP}}
The CheckUser Magic 8-Ball says:	{{8ball}}
CheckUser is not a crystal ball	{{Crystalball}}
CheckUser is not for fishing	{{Fishing}}
CheckUser is not magic pixie dust	{{Pixiedust}}
¯\_(ツ)_/¯	{{Shrug}}
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)	{{Lenny}}
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻	{{Table flip}}

Multi-sign templates

The following templates implement several icons:

• {{AIV}} – used by Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism
• {{AN3}} - used by Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard and its subpages
• {{BOTREQ}} - used by Wikipedia:Bot requests
• {{CPC}} - used by Wikipedia:Copyright problems
• {{CUI}} - used by CheckUsers
• {{EFFP}} – used by Wikipedia:Edit filter/False positives
• {{EFR}} – used by Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested
• {{EP}} – used for servicing requests in edit-protected areas
• {{RFPP}} – used by Wikipedia:Requests for page protection
• {{RFPC}}, {{RFPNPR}}, {{RFPPM}}, {{RFPR}} – used by subpages of Wikipedia:Requests for permissions
• {{UAA}} – used by Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention
• {{UND}} – used by Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion
• {{Smiley}} – used for informal communication purposes
• {{Sym}} – Various commonly used symbols and icons
• {{Article history}}

Others

• Template:Check mark templates, for templates like these but without text
• Template:Icon, a template that creates an inline icon/image that is used in metapages
• Wikipedia:List of discussion templates, a more linear table of essentially the same set of templates
• Template:Resolved/See also, the smaller family of thread-level hatnote templates, similar to the above but with a box around them; any template above can be converted to one of those with {{Resbox}}
• Template:Table cell templates/doc, the family of table-specific templates that work only in tables
• Category:Image with comment templates
• Category:Resolution templates

"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."

"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter. "It's very easy to take more than nothing."

A dialogue

"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more."

"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing." The Terminator User:The Terminator Page title/Subpage title

Not to be confused with Wikimedia.

MediaWiki
Screenshot The Main Page of the English Wikipedia running an alpha version of MediaWiki 1.40
Original author(s)	Magnus Manske Lee Daniel Crocker
Developer(s)	Wikimedia Foundation
Initial release	January 25, 2002 (2002-01-25)
Stable release	1.44.0  / 2 July 2025 (2 July 2025)
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris
Size	79.05 MiB (compressed)
Available in	459 languages
Type	Wiki software
License	GPLv2+

MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker, after which development has been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It powers several wiki hosting websites across the Internet, as well as most websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote, Meta-Wiki and Wikidata, which define a large part of the set requirements for the software. Besides its usage on Wikimedia sites, MediaWiki has been used as a knowledge management and content management system on websites such as Fandom, wikiHow and major internal installations like Intellipedia and Diplopedia.

MediaWiki is written in the PHP programming language and stores all text content into a database. The software is optimized to efficiently handle large projects, which can have terabytes of content and hundreds of thousands of views per second. Because Wikipedia is one of the world's largest and most visited websites, achieving scalability through multiple layers of caching and database replication has been a major concern for developers. Another major aspect of MediaWiki is its internationalization; its interface is available in more than 400 languages. The software has hundreds of configuration settings and more than 1,000 extensions available for enabling various features to be added or changed.

Key features

MediaWiki provides a rich core feature set and a mechanism to attach extensions to provide additional functionality.

Internationalization and localization

Niklas Laxström explains the features that allowed translatewiki.net to provide MediaWiki with more than 400 locales.

Due to the strong emphasis on multilingualism in the Wikimedia projects, internationalization and localization has received significant attention by developers. The user interface has been fully or partially translated into more than 400 languages on translatewiki.net, and can be further customized by site administrators (the entire interface is editable through the wiki).

Several extensions, most notably those collected in the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle, are designed to further enhance the multilingualism and internationalization of MediaWiki.

Installation and configuration

Installation of MediaWiki requires that the user have administrative privileges on a server running both PHP and a compatible type of SQL database. Some users find that setting up a virtual host is helpful if the majority of one's site runs under a framework (such as Zope or Ruby on Rails) that is largely incompatible with MediaWiki. Cloud hosting can eliminate the need to deploy a new server.

An installation PHP script is accessed via a web browser to initialize the wiki's settings. It prompts the user for a minimal set of required parameters, leaving further changes, such as enabling uploads, adding a site logo, and installing extensions, to be made by modifying configuration settings contained in a file called LocalSettings.php. Some aspects of MediaWiki can be configured through special pages or by editing certain pages; for instance, abuse filters can be configured through a special page, and certain gadgets can be added by creating JavaScript pages in the MediaWiki namespace. The MediaWiki community publishes a comprehensive installation guide.

Markup

One of the earliest differences between MediaWiki (and its predecessor, UseModWiki) and other wiki engines was the use of "free links" instead of CamelCase. When MediaWiki was created, it was typical for wikis to require text like "WorldWideWeb" to create a link to a page about the World Wide Web; links in MediaWiki, on the other hand, are created by surrounding words with double square brackets, and any spaces between them are left intact, e.g. [[World Wide Web]]. This change was logical for the purpose of creating an encyclopedia, where accuracy in titles is important.

MediaWiki uses an extensible lightweight wiki markup designed to be easier to use and learn than HTML. Tools exist for converting content such as tables between MediaWiki markup and HTML. Efforts have been made to create a MediaWiki markup spec, but a consensus seems to have been reached that Wikicode requires context-sensitive grammar rules. The following side-by-side comparison illustrates the differences between wiki markup and HTML:

MediaWiki syntax (the "behind the scenes" code used to add formatting to text)	HTML equivalent (another type of "behind the scenes" code used to add formatting to text)	Rendered output (seen onscreen by a site viewer)
====A dialogue==== "Take some more [[tea]]," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take ''less''," said the Hatter: "it's '''very''' easy to take ''more'' than nothing."	<h4>A dialogue</h4> <p>"Take some more <a href="/wiki/Tea" title="Tea">tea</a>," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.</p> <br> <p>"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more."</p> <br> <p>"You mean you can't take <i>less</i>," said the Hatter: "it's <b>very</b> easy to take <i>more</i> than nothing."</p>	A dialogue "Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."

(Quotation above from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)

Editing interface

See also: VisualEditor

Editing interface of MediaWiki 1.44.0-wmf.4 with syntax highlighting, showing the edit toolbar of 2017 wikitext editor and some examples of wiki syntax

MediaWiki's default page-editing tools have been described as somewhat challenging to learn. A survey of students assigned to use a MediaWiki-based wiki found that when they were asked an open question about main problems with the wiki, 24% cited technical problems with formatting, e.g. "Couldn't figure out how to get an image in. Can't figure out how to show a link with words; it inserts a number."

To make editing long pages easier, MediaWiki allows the editing of a subsection of a page (as identified by its header). A registered user can also indicate whether or not an edit is minor. Correcting spelling, grammar or punctuation are examples of minor edits, whereas adding paragraphs of new text is an example of a non-minor edit.

Sometimes while one user is editing, a second user saves an edit to the same part of the page. Then, when the first user attempts to save the page, an edit conflict occurs. The second user is then given an opportunity to merge their content into the page as it now exists following the first user's page save.

MediaWiki's user interface has been localized in many different languages. A language for the wiki content itself can also be set, to be sent in the "Content-Language" HTTP header and "lang" HTML attribute.

VisualEditor has its own integrated wikitext editing interface known as 2017 wikitext editor, the older editing interface is known as 2010 wikitext editor.

Application programming interface

MediaWiki has an extensible web API (application programming interface) that provides direct, high-level access to the data contained in the MediaWiki databases. Client programs can use the API to log in, get data, and post changes. The API supports thin web-based JavaScript clients and end-user applications (such as vandal-fighting tools). The API can be accessed by the backend of another web site. An extensive Python bot library, Pywikibot, and a popular semi-automated tool called AutoWikiBrowser, also interface with the API. The API is accessed via URLs such as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=recentchanges. In this case, the query would be asking Wikipedia for information relating to the last 10 edits to the site. One of the perceived advantages of the API is its language independence; it listens for HTTP connections from clients and can send a response in a variety of formats, such as XML, serialized PHP, or JSON. Client code has been developed to provide layers of abstraction to the API.

Tracking edits

Among the features of MediaWiki to assist in tracking edits is a Recent Changes feature that provides a list of recent edits to the wiki. This list contains basic information about those edits such as the editing user, the edit summary, the page edited, as well as any tags (e.g. "possible vandalism") added by customizable abuse filters and other extensions to aid in combating unhelpful edits. On more active wikis, so many edits occur that it is hard to track Recent Changes manually. Anti-vandal software, including user-assisted tools, is sometimes employed on such wikis to process Recent Changes items. Server load can be reduced by sending a continuous feed of Recent Changes to an IRC channel that these tools can monitor, eliminating their need to send requests for a refreshed Recent Changes feed to the API.

Another important tool is watchlisting. Each logged-in user has a watchlist to which the user can add whatever pages he or she wishes. When an edit is made to one of those pages, a summary of that edit appears on the watchlist the next time it is refreshed. As with the recent changes page, recent edits that appear on the watchlist contain clickable links for easy review of the article history and specific changes made.

There is also the capability to review all edits made by any particular user. In this way, if an edit is identified as problematic, it is possible to check the user's other edits for issues.

MediaWiki allows one to link to specific versions of articles. This has been useful to the scientific community, in that expert peer reviewers could analyse articles, improve them and provide links to the trusted version of that article.

Navigation

Wikilinks

Navigation through the wiki is largely through internal wikilinks. MediaWiki's wikilinks implement page existence detection, in which a link is colored blue if the target page exists on the local wiki and red if it does not. If a user clicks on a red link, they are prompted to create an article with that title. Page existence detection makes it practical for users to create "wikified" articles—that is, articles containing links to other pertinent subjects—without those other articles being yet in existence.

Interwiki links

"Inter-wiki link" redirects here. For help with interwiki linking on Wikipedia, see Help:Interwiki linking.

Interwiki links function much the same way as namespaces. A set of interwiki prefixes can be configured to cause, for instance, a page title of wikiquote:Jimbo Wales to direct the user to the Jimbo Wales article on Wikiquote. Unlike internal wikilinks, interwiki links lack page existence detection functionality, and accordingly there is no way to tell whether a blue interwiki link is broken or not.

Interlanguage links

An example of interlanguage links

Interlanguage links are the small navigation links that show up in the sidebar in most MediaWiki skins that connect an article with related articles in other languages within the same Wiki family. This can provide language-specific communities connected by a larger context, with all wikis on the same server or each on its own server.

Previously, Wikipedia used interlanguage links to link an article to other articles on the same topic in other editions of Wikipedia. This was superseded by the launch of Wikidata.

Content organization

Page tabs and associated pages

MediaWiki page tabs, using the "Vector 2010" skin. The red coloration of the "discussion" tab indicates that the article does not yet have a talk page. As with any other red wikilink, clicking on it prompts the user to create the page.

Page tabs are displayed at the top of pages. These tabs allow users to perform actions or view pages that are related to the current page. The available default actions include viewing, editing, and discussing the current page. The specific tabs displayed depend on whether the user is logged into the wiki and whether the user has sysop privileges on the wiki. For instance, the ability to move a page or add it to one's watchlist is usually restricted to logged-in users. The site administrator can add or remove tabs by using JavaScript or installing extensions.

Each page has an associated history page from which the user can access every version of the page that has ever existed and generate diffs between two versions of his choice. Users' contributions are displayed not only here, but also via a "user contributions" option on a sidebar. In a 2004 article, Carl Challborn and Teresa Reimann noted that "While this feature may be a slight deviation from the collaborative, 'ego-less' spirit of wiki purists, it can be very useful for educators who need to assess the contribution and participation of individual student users."

Namespaces

"Talk page" redirects here. For talk pages on Wikipedia, see Help:Talk pages.

MediaWiki provides many features beyond hyperlinks for structuring content. One of the earliest such features is namespaces. One of Wikipedia's earliest problems had been the separation of encyclopedic content from pages pertaining to maintenance and communal discussion, as well as personal pages about encyclopedia editors. Namespaces are prefixes before a page title (such as "User:" or "Talk:") that serve as descriptors for the page's purpose and allow multiple pages with different functions to exist under the same title. For instance, a page titled "[[The Terminator]]", in the default namespace, could describe the 1984 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, while a page titled "[[User:The Terminator]]" could be a profile describing a user who chooses this name as a pseudonym. More commonly, each namespace has an associated "Talk:" namespace, which can be used to discuss its contents, such as "User talk:" or "Template talk:". The purpose of having discussion pages is to allow content to be separated from discussion surrounding the content.

Namespaces can be viewed as folders that separate different basic types of information or functionality. Custom namespaces can be added by the site administrators. There are 16 namespaces by default for content, with 2 "pseudo-namespaces" used for dynamically generated "Special:" pages and links to media files. Each namespace on MediaWiki is numbered: content page namespaces have even numbers and their associated talk page namespaces have odd numbers.

Category tags

Users can create new categories and add pages and files to those categories by appending one or more category tags to the content text. Adding these tags creates links at the bottom of the page that take the reader to the list of all pages in that category, making it easy to browse related articles. The use of categorization to organize content has been described as a combination of:

• Collaborative tagging systems like del.icio.us and
• Hierarchical classifications like the Dewey Decimal Classification.

Subpages

In addition to namespaces, content can be ordered using subpages. This simple feature provides automatic breadcrumbs of the pattern [[Page title/Subpage title]] from the page after the slash (in this case, "Subpage title") to the page before the slash (in this case, "Page title").

Customization

Users can configure custom JavaScript that is executed on every pageview. This has led to JavaScript tools that users can "install", the "navigation popups" tool shown here displays a small preview of an article when hovering over a link title.

If the feature is enabled, users can customize their stylesheets and configure client-side JavaScript to be executed with every pageview. On Wikipedia, this has led to a large number of additional tools and helpers developed through the wiki and shared among users. For instance, navigation popups is a custom JavaScript tool that shows previews of articles when the user hovers over links and also provides shortcuts for common maintenance tasks.

A screenshot of a wiki using MediaWiki with a customized skin

The entire MediaWiki user interface can be edited through the wiki itself by users with the necessary permissions (typically called "administrators"). This is done through a special namespace with the prefix "MediaWiki:", where each page title identifies a particular user interface message. Using an extension, it is also possible for a user to create personal scripts, and to choose whether certain sitewide scripts should apply to them by toggling the appropriate options in the user preferences page.

Templates

The "MediaWiki:" namespace was originally also used for creating custom text blocks that could then be dynamically loaded into other pages using a special syntax. This content was later moved into its own namespace, "Template:".

Templates are text blocks that can be dynamically loaded inside another page whenever that page is requested. The template is a special link in double curly brackets (for example "{{Disputed|date=October 2018}}"), which calls the template (in this case located at Template:Disputed) to load in place of the template call.

Templates are structured documents containing attribute–value pairs. They are defined with parameters, to which are assigned values when transcluded on an article page. The name of the parameter is delimited from the value by an equals sign. A class of templates known as infoboxes is used on Wikipedia to collect and present a subset of information about its subject, usually on the top (mobile view) or top right-hand corner (desktop view) of the document.

Pages in other namespaces can also be transcluded as templates. In particular, a page in the main namespace can be transcluded by prefixing its title with a colon; for example, {{:MediaWiki}} transcludes the article "MediaWiki" from the main namespace. Also, it is possible to mark the portions of a page that should be transcluded in several ways, the most basic of which are:

• <noinclude>...</noinclude>, which marks content that is not to be transcluded;
• <includeonly>...</includeonly>, which marks content that is not rendered unless it is transcluded;
• <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>, which marks content that is to be the only content transcluded.

A related method, called template substitution (called by adding subst: at the beginning of a template link) inserts the contents of the template into the target page (like a copy and paste operation), instead of loading the template contents dynamically whenever the page is loaded. This can lead to inconsistency when using templates, but may be useful in certain cases, and in most cases requires fewer server resources (the actual amount of savings can vary depending on wiki configuration and the complexity of the template).

Templates have found many different uses. Templates enable users to create complex table layouts that are used consistently across multiple pages, and where only the content of the tables gets inserted using template parameters. Templates are frequently used to identify problems with a Wikipedia article by putting a template in the article. This template then outputs a graphical box stating that the article content is disputed or in need of some other attention, and also categorize it so that articles of this nature can be located. Templates are also used on user pages to send users standard messages welcoming them to the site, giving them awards for outstanding contributions, warning them when their behavior is considered inappropriate, notifying them when they are blocked from editing, and so on.

Groups and restriction of access

MediaWiki offers flexibility in creating and defining user groups. For instance, it would be possible to create an arbitrary "ninja" group that can block users and delete pages, and whose edits are hidden by default in the recent changes log. It is also possible to set up a group of "autoconfirmed" users that one becomes a member of after making a certain number of edits and waiting a certain number of days. Some groups that are enabled by default are bureaucrats and sysops. Bureaucrats have the power to change other users' rights. Sysops have power over page protection and deletion and the blocking of users from editing. MediaWiki's available controls on editing rights have been deemed sufficient for publishing and maintaining important documents such as a manual of standard operating procedures in a hospital.

MediaWiki comes with a basic set of features related to restricting access, but its original and ongoing design is driven by functions that largely relate to content, not content segregation. As a result, with minimal exceptions (related to specific tools and their related "Special" pages), page access control has never been a high priority in core development and developers have stated that users requiring secure user access and authorization controls should not rely on MediaWiki, since it was never designed for these kinds of situations. For instance, it is extremely difficult to create a wiki where only certain users can read and access some pages. Here, wiki engines like Foswiki, MoinMoin and Confluence provide more flexibility by supporting advanced security mechanisms like access control lists.

Extensibility

The MediaWiki codebase contains various hooks using callback functions to add additional PHP code in an extensible way. This allows developers to write extensions without necessarily needing to modify the core or having to submit their code for review. Installing an extension typically consists of adding a line to the configuration file, though in some cases additional changes such as database updates or core patches are required.

Five main extension points were created to allow developers to add features and functionalities to MediaWiki. Hooks are run every time a certain event happens; for instance, the ArticleSaveComplete hook occurs after a save article request has been processed. This can be used, for example, by an extension that notifies selected users whenever a page edit occurs on the wiki from new or anonymous users. New tags can be created to process data with opening and closing tags (<newtag>...</newtag>). Parser functions can be used to create a new command ({{#if:...|...|...}}). New special pages can be created to perform a specific function. These pages are dynamically generated. For example, a special page might show all pages that have one or more links to an external site or it might create a form providing user submitted feedback. Skins allow users to customize the look and feel of MediaWiki. A minor extension point allows the use of Amazon S3 to host image files.

Extensions

Text manipulation

Tim Starling in 2008

Among the most popular extensions is a parser function extension, ParserFunctions, which allows different content to be rendered based on the result of conditional statements. These conditional statements can perform functions such as evaluating whether a parameter is empty, comparing strings, evaluating mathematical expressions, and returning one of two values depending on whether a page exists. It was designed as a replacement for a notoriously inefficient template called {{Qif}}. Schindler recounts the history of the ParserFunctions extension as follows:

“ In 2006 some Wikipedians discovered that through an intricate and complicated interplay of templating features and CSS they could create conditional wiki text, i.e. text that was displayed if a template parameter had a specific value. This included repeated calls of templates within templates, which bogged down the performance of the whole system. The developers faced the choice of either disallowing the spreading of an obviously desired feature by detecting such usage and explicitly disallowing it within the software or offering an efficient alternative. The latter was done by Tim Starling, who announced the introduction of parser functions, wiki text that calls functions implemented in the underlying software.

At first, only conditional text and the computation of simple mathematical expressions were implemented, but this already increased the possibilities for wiki editors enormously. With time further parser functions were introduced, finally leading to a framework that allowed the simple writing of extension functions to add arbitrary functionalities, like e.g. geo-coding services or widgets. This time the developers were clearly reacting to the demand of the community, being forced either to fight the solution of the issue that the community had (i.e. conditional text), or offer an improved technical implementation to replace the previous practice and achieve an overall better performance.

”

Another parser functions extension, StringFunctions, was developed to allow evaluation of string length, string position, and so on. Wikimedia communities, having created awkward workarounds to accomplish the same functionality, clamored for it to be enabled on their projects. Much of its functionality was eventually integrated into the ParserFunctions extension, albeit disabled by default and accompanied by a warning from Tim Starling that enabling string functions would allow users "to implement their own parsers in the ugliest, most inefficient programming language known to man: MediaWiki wikitext with ParserFunctions."

Lua extension

Since 2012 an extension, Scribunto, has existed that allows for the creation of "modules"—wiki pages written in the scripting language Lua—which can then be run within templates and standard wiki pages. Scribunto has been installed on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites since 2013 and is used heavily on those sites. Scribunto code runs significantly faster than corresponding wikitext code using ParserFunctions.

For footnotes and academic-related display

Another very popular extension is a citation extension that enables footnotes to be added to pages using inline references. This extension has, however, been criticized for being difficult to use and requiring the user to memorize complex syntax. A gadget called RefToolbar attempts to make it easier to create citations using common templates. MediaWiki has some extensions that are well-suited for academia, such as mathematics extensions and an extension that allows molecules to be rendered in 3D.

Integration

A generic Widgets extension exists that allows MediaWiki to integrate with virtually anything. Other examples of extensions that could improve a wiki are category suggestion extensions and extensions for inclusion of Flash Videos, YouTube videos, and RSS feeds. Metavid, a site that archives video footage of the U.S. Senate and House floor proceedings, was created using code extending MediaWiki into the domain of collaborative video authoring.

Combating linkspam

There are many spambots that search the web for MediaWiki installations and add linkspam to them, despite the fact that MediaWiki uses the nofollow attribute to discourage such attempts at search engine optimization. Part of the problem is that third party republishers, such as mirrors, may not independently implement the nofollow tag on their websites, so marketers can still get PageRank benefit by inserting links into pages when those entries appear on third party websites. Anti-spam extensions have been developed to combat the problem by introducing CAPTCHAs, blacklisting certain URLs, and allowing bulk deletion of pages recently added by a particular user.

Searches and queries

A search box showing a drop-down list

MediaWiki comes pre-installed with a standard text-based search. Extensions exist to let MediaWiki use more sophisticated third-party search engines, including Elasticsearch (which since 2014 has been in use on Wikipedia), Lucene and Sphinx.

Various MediaWiki extensions have also been created to allow for more complex, faceted search, on both data entered within the wiki and on metadata such as pages' revision history. Semantic MediaWiki is one such extension.

Rich content

Images can be arranged in galleries, a feature that is used extensively for Wikimedia's media archive, Wikimedia Commons.

Various extensions to MediaWiki support rich content generated through specialized syntax. These include mathematical formulas using LaTeX, graphical timelines over mathematical plotting, musical scores and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The software supports a wide variety of uploaded media files, and allows image galleries and thumbnails to be generated with relative ease. There is also support for Exif metadata. MediaWiki operates the Wikimedia Commons, one of the largest free content media archives.

For WYSIWYG editing, VisualEditor is available to use in MediaWiki which simplifying editing process for editors and has been bundled since MediaWiki 1.35. Other extensions exist for handling WYSIWYG editing to different degrees.

Database

A schematic of the MediaWiki database structure

MediaWiki can use either the MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite relational database management system. Support for Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server has been dropped since MediaWiki 1.34. A MediaWiki database contains several dozen tables, including a page table that contains page titles, page ids, and other metadata; and a revision table to which is added a new row every time an edit is made, containing the page id, a brief textual summary of the change performed, the user name of the article editor (or its IP address the case of an unregistered user) and a timestamp.

In a 4½ year period prior to 2008, the MediaWiki database had 170 schema versions. Possibly the largest schema change was done in 2005 with MediaWiki 1.5, when the storage of metadata was separated from that of content, to improve performance flexibility. When this upgrade was applied to Wikipedia, the site was locked for editing, and the schema was converted to the new version in about 22 hours. Some software enhancement proposals, such as a proposal to allow sections of articles to be watched via watchlist, have been rejected because the necessary schema changes would have required excessive Wikipedia downtime.

Performance and storage

Because it is used to run one of the highest-traffic sites on the Web, Wikipedia, MediaWiki's performance and scalability have been highly optimized. MediaWiki supports Squid, load-balanced database replication, client-side caching, memcached or table-based caching for frequently accessed processing of query results, a simple static file cache, feature-reduced operation, revision compression, and a job queue for database operations. MediaWiki developers have attempted to optimize the software by avoiding expensive algorithms, database queries, etc., caching every result that is expensive and has temporal locality of reference, and focusing on the hot spots in the code through profiling.

MediaWiki code is designed to allow for data to be written to a read-write database and read from read-only databases, although the read-write database can be used for some read operations if the read-only databases are not yet up to date. Metadata, such as article revision history, article relations (links, categories etc.), user accounts and settings can be stored in core databases and cached; the actual revision text, being more rarely used, can be stored as append-only blobs in external storage. The software is suitable for the operation of large-scale wiki farms such as Wikimedia, which had about 800 wikis as of August 2011. However, MediaWiki comes with no built-in GUI to manage such installations.

Empirical evidence shows most revisions in MediaWiki databases tend to differ only slightly from previous revisions. Therefore, subsequent revisions of an article can be concatenated and then compressed, achieving very high data compression ratios of up to 100×.

For more information on the architecture, such as how it stores wikitext and assembles a page, see External links.

Limitations

The parser serves as the de facto standard for the MediaWiki syntax, as no formal syntax has been defined. Due to this lack of a formal definition, it has been difficult to create WYSIWYG editors for MediaWiki, although several WYSIWYG extensions do exist, including the popular VisualEditor.

MediaWiki is not designed to be a suitable replacement for dedicated online forum or blogging software, although extensions do exist to allow for both of these.

It is common for new MediaWiki users to make certain mistakes, such as forgetting to sign posts with four tildes (~~~~), or manually entering a plaintext signature, due to unfamiliarity with the idiosyncratic particulars involved in communication on MediaWiki discussion pages. On the other hand, the format of these discussion pages has been cited as a strength by one educator, who stated that it provides more fine-grain capabilities for discussion than traditional threaded discussion forums. For example, instead of 'replying' to an entire message, the participant in a discussion can create a hyperlink to a new wiki page on any word from the original page. Discussions are easier to follow since the content is available via hyperlinked wiki page, rather than a series of reply messages on a traditional threaded discussion forum. However, except in few cases, students were not using this capability, possibly because of their familiarity with the traditional linear discussion style and a lack of guidance on how to make the content more 'link-rich'.

MediaWiki by default has little support for the creation of dynamically assembled documents, or pages that aggregate data from other pages. Some research has been done on enabling such features directly within MediaWiki. The Semantic MediaWiki extension provides these features. It is not in use on Wikipedia, but in more than 1,600 other MediaWiki installations. The Wikibase Repository and Wikibase Repository client are however implemented in Wikidata and Wikipedia respectively, and to some extent provides semantic web features, and linking of centrally stored data to infoboxes in various Wikipedia articles.

Upgrading MediaWiki is usually fully automated, requiring no changes to the site content or template programming. Historically troubles have been encountered when upgrading from significantly older versions.

Security

MediaWiki developers have enacted security standards, both for core code and extensions. SQL queries and HTML output are usually done through wrapper functions that handle validation, escaping, filtering for prevention of cross-site scripting and SQL injection. Many security issues have had to be patched after a MediaWiki version release, and accordingly MediaWiki.org states, "The most important security step you can take is to keep your software up to date" by subscribing to the announcement mailing list and installing security updates that are announced.

Support

Support for MediaWiki users consists of:

• MediaWiki.org, including the Support Desk.
• An official mailing list, Mediawiki-l.
• Several books have been written about MediaWiki administration, including some free online books.

License

MediaWiki is free and open-source and is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version. Its documentation, located at its official website at www.mediawiki.org, is released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license, with a set of help pages intended to be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software in the public domain instead to eliminate legal issues for wikis with other licenses. MediaWiki's development has generally favored the use of open-source media formats.

Development

MediaWiki has an active volunteer community for development and maintenance. MediaWiki developers are spread around the world, though with a majority in the United States and Europe. Face-to-face meetings and programming sessions for MediaWiki developers have been held once or several times a year since 2004.

Anyone can submit patches to the project's Git/Gerrit repository. There are also paid programmers who primarily develop projects for the Wikimedia Foundation. MediaWiki developers participate in the Google Summer of Code by facilitating the assignment of mentors to students wishing to work on MediaWiki core and extension projects. During the year prior to November 2012, there were about two hundred developers who had committed changes to the MediaWiki core or extensions. Major MediaWiki releases are generated approximately every six months by taking snapshots of the development branch, which is kept continuously in a runnable state; minor releases, or point releases, are issued as needed to correct bugs (especially security problems). MediaWiki is developed on a continuous integration development model, in which software changes are pushed live to Wikimedia sites on regular basis. MediaWiki also has a public bug tracker, phabricator.wikimedia.org, which runs Phabricator. The site is also used for feature and enhancement requests.

History

Magnus Manske in 2012

When Wikipedia was launched in January 2001, it ran on an existing wiki software system, UseModWiki. UseModWiki is written in the Perl programming language, and stores all wiki pages in text (.txt) files. This software soon proved to be limiting, in both functionality and performance. In mid-2001, Magnus Manske—a developer and student at the University of Cologne, as well as a Wikipedia editor—began working on new software that would replace UseModWiki, specifically designed for use by Wikipedia. This software was written in the PHP scripting language, and stored all of its information in a MySQL database. The new software was largely developed by August 24, 2001, and a test wiki for it was established shortly thereafter.

The first full implementation of this software was the new Meta Wikipedia on November 9, 2001. There was a desire to have it implemented immediately on the English-language Wikipedia. However, Manske was apprehensive about any potential bugs harming the nascent website during the period of the final exams he had to complete immediately prior to Christmas; this led to the launch on the English-language Wikipedia being delayed until January 25, 2002. The software was then, gradually, deployed on all the Wikipedia language sites of that time. This software was referred to as "the PHP script" and as "phase II", with the name "phase I", retroactively given to the use of UseModWiki.

Increasing usage soon caused load problems to arise again, and soon after, another rewrite of the software began; this time being done by Lee Daniel Crocker, which became known as "phase III". This new software was also written in PHP, with a MySQL backend, and kept the basic interface of the phase II software, but with the added functionality of a wider scalability. The "phase III" software went live on Wikipedia in July 2002.

The Wikimedia Foundation was announced on June 20, 2003. In July, Wikipedia contributor Daniel Mayer suggested the name "MediaWiki" for the software, as a play on "Wikimedia". The MediaWiki name was gradually phased in, beginning in August 2003. The name has frequently caused confusion due to its (intentional) similarity to the "Wikimedia" name (which itself is similar to "Wikipedia"). The first version of MediaWiki, 1.1, was released in December 2003.

MediaWiki logo until April 1, 2021

The old product logo was created by Erik Möller, using a flower photograph taken by Florence Nibart-Devouard, and was originally submitted to the logo contest for a new Wikipedia logo, held from July 20 to August 27, 2003. The logo came in third place, and was chosen to represent MediaWiki rather than Wikipedia, with the second place logo being used for the Wikimedia Foundation. The double square brackets ([[ ]]) symbolize the syntax MediaWiki uses for creating hyperlinks to other wiki pages; while the sunflower represents the diversity of content on Wikipedia, its constant growth, and the wilderness.

Later, Brooke Vibber, the chief technical officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, took up the role of release manager.

Major milestones in MediaWiki's development have included: the categorization system (2004); parser functions, (2006); Flagged Revisions, (2008); the "ResourceLoader", a delivery system for CSS and JavaScript (2011); and the VisualEditor, a "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) editing platform (2013).

The contest of designing a new logo was initiated on June 22, 2020, as the old logo was a bitmap image and had "high details", leading to problems when rendering at high and low resolutions, respectively. After two rounds of voting, the new and current MediaWiki logo designed by Serhio Magpie was selected on October 24, 2020, and officially adopted on April 1, 2021.

Sites using MediaWiki

See also: Category:MediaWiki websites

Fandom also makes use of MediaWiki.

MediaWiki's most famous use has been in Wikipedia and, to a lesser degree, the Wikimedia Foundation's other projects. Fandom, a wiki hosting service formerly known as Wikia, runs on MediaWiki. Other public wikis that run on MediaWiki include wikiHow and SNPedia. WikiLeaks began as a MediaWiki-based site, but is no longer a wiki.

A number of alternative wiki encyclopedias to Wikipedia run on MediaWiki, including Citizendium, Metapedia, Scholarpedia and Conservapedia. MediaWiki is also used internally by a large number of companies, including Novell and Intel.

Notable usages of MediaWiki within governments include Intellipedia, used by the United States Intelligence Community, Diplopedia, used by the United States Department of State, and milWiki, a part of milSuite used by the United States Department of Defense. United Nations agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme and INSTRAW chose to implement their wikis using MediaWiki, because "this software runs Wikipedia and is therefore guaranteed to be thoroughly tested, will continue to be developed well into the future, and future technicians on these wikis will be more likely to have exposure to MediaWiki than any other wiki software."

The Free Software Foundation uses MediaWiki to implement the LibrePlanet site.

Comparison to other online collaboration software

Main article: Comparison of wiki software

Users of online collaboration software are familiar with MediaWiki's functions and layout due to its noted use on Wikipedia. A 2006 overview of social software in academia observed that "Compared to other wikis, MediaWiki is also fairly aesthetically pleasing, though simple, and has an easily customized side menu and stylesheet." However, in one assessment in 2006, Confluence was deemed to be a superior product due to its very usable API and ability to better support multiple wikis.

A 2009 study at the University of Hong Kong compared TWiki to MediaWiki. The authors noted that TWiki has been considered as a collaborative tool for the development of educational papers and technical projects, whereas MediaWiki's most noted use is on Wikipedia. Although both platforms allow discussion and tracking of progress, TWiki has a "Report" part that MediaWiki lacks. Students perceived MediaWiki as being easier to use and more enjoyable than TWiki. When asked whether they recommended using MediaWiki for knowledge management course group project, 15 out of 16 respondents expressed their preference for MediaWiki giving answers of great certainty, such as "of course", "for sure". TWiki and MediaWiki both have flexible plug-in architecture.

A 2009 study that compared students' experience with MediaWiki to that with Google Docs found that students gave the latter a much higher rating on user-friendly layout.

A 2021 study conducted by the Brazilian Nuclear Engineering Institute compared a MediaWiki-based knowledge management system against two others that were based on DSpace and Open Journal Systems, respectively. It highlighted ease of use as an advantage of the MediaWiki-based system, noting that because the Wikimedia Foundation had been developing MediaWiki for a site aimed at the general public (Wikipedia), "its user interface was designed to be more user-friendly from start, and has received large user feedback over a long time", in contrast to DSpace's and OJS's focus on niche audiences.

See also

• List of content management systems
• List of wiki software
• BlueSpice
• Semantic MediaWiki
• XOWA – for viewing Wikipedia and other wikis offline
• PHP – a programming language that powers MediaWiki

External links

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