Help:Special page

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

Below is an arranged list of special pages available on most Wikimedia projects. Page names are case-insensitive; their default names were converted from capitalized lowercase to CamelCase in March 2008.

For many special pages the option Preferences→→"" determines the number of titles per page.

All pages
Mediawiki searches all pages in a specified group of names in a special ASCII order. Capitals come before lowercase letters and unique characters such as "é" come after "z".
 * Special:Allpages (Allpages)
 * Special:Prefixindex (Prefixindex)

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

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

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


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

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

Protected

 * Special:Protectedpages (Protectedpages) — pages protected from editing
 * Special:Protectedtitles (Protectedtitles) — titles protected from creation. This feature replaced cascading protection hack. Titles can be also protected by mask with MediaWiki:Titleblacklist.

Categories

 * Special:Categories (Categories)
 * List of all categories, alphabetically ordered, showing the number of top elements in each category. Not very convenient, so many projects create index pages like w:Portal:Contents/Categorical index.


 * Category Tree (Categorytree)
 * The tree of pages and subcategories, using mw:Extension:CategoryTree. The same tree functionality is used on categories pages, and can be inserted into any page with   tag.

Images

 * Special:Imagelist (Imagelist)
 * List of uploaded files with descriptions, can be sorted by date, name or size.


 * Special:Newimages (Newimages)
 * Gallery of uploaded files with thumbnails, sorted by upload date.

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

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

Record pages

 * Special:Listredirects (Listredirects) : list of first 5000/1000 redirects, ordered by creation date.
 * Special:Mostlinkedtemplates (Mostlinkedtemplates)
 * Special:Mostimages (Mostimages)
 * Special:Mostlinkedcategories (Mostlinkedcategories)

These lists only show main namespace pages:
 * Special:Mostcategories (Mostcategories)
 * Special:Shortpages (Shortpages)
 * Special:Longpages (Longpages)

The following lists are no longer updated in Wikimedia projects due to big server load:
 *  Special:Mostlinked  (Mostlinked)
 *  Special:Ancientpages  (Ancientpages)
 *  Special:Fewestrevisions  (Fewestrevisions)
 *  Special:Mostrevisions  (Mostrevisions)

Problematic

 * Special:Disambiguations (Disambiguations)
 * Pages that link to a disambiguation page, which should link to the appropriate topic instead. A disambiguation page is defined as a page on which a disambiguation template (defined in MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage) is transcluded.


 * Special:BrokenRedirects (BrokenRedirects|BrokenRedirects]])
 * Redirects to non-existant pages, usually left after deletions. Periodically fixed or deleted by administrators.


 * Special:DoubleRedirects (DoubleRedirects)
 * Redirects to other redirects. May contain false positives. Double redirects are fixed by bots in many projects.


 * Special:Lonelypages (Lonelypages)
 * Main namespace pages with no links to them in the wiki.


 * Special:Deadendpages (Deadendpages)
 * Main namespace pages without any outgoing internal links.


 * Special:Withoutinterwiki (Withoutinterwiki)
 * Main namespace pages without Interlanguage links


 * Special:Wantedcategories (Wantedcategories)
 * Non-existant categories used on wiki pages. These should either be created (by adding category description and upper categories) or those wiki pages should be fixed (e.g. if someone mistyped a category name).

The following lists are no longer updated on Wikimedia projects:


 *  Special:Wantedpages  (Wantedpages)
 * Non-existant pages that have at least 2 incoming internal links.


 *  Cross-namespace links  (CrossNamespaceLinks)
 * A list of links from a page in the main namespace to a page in other namespaces (except for Special, Talk, Meta and Template namespaces), which are not advisable to use.

Without categories
Usually these pages need to be either categorized or deleted.
 * Special:Uncategorizedpages (Uncategorizedpages)
 * Special:Uncategorizedcategories (Uncategorizedcategories)
 * Special:Uncategorizedimages (Uncategorizedimages|Uncategorizedimages]])
 * Special:Uncategorizedtemplates (Uncategorizedtemplates)

Unused
If the pages are not used, they probably need to be deleted. Note however that images might be used externally, and templates may be used for substitution.
 * Special:Unusedimages (Unusedimages)
 * Special:Unusedcategories (Unusedcategories)
 * Special:Unusedtemplates (Unusedtemplates)

Tools

 * Special:Whatlinkshere (Whatlinkshere)
 * This link is available on every wiki page, see Help:What links here.


 * Special:Upload (Upload)
 * Available only to autoconfirmed users on most projects.


 * Special:Filepath (Filepath)
 * Returns the complete path for a file, previously was mw:Extension:Filepath.


 * Expand templates (ExpandTemplates)
 * By mw:Extension:ExpandTemplates. Provides an input box to enter wikitext, and another one to enter a page name, and produces expanded wikitext, i.e., templates, parser functions and variables are expanded recursively; variables depending on page name are expanded based on the supplied page name.


 * Special:Booksources (Booksources)
 * ISBN Book Sources


 * Cite (Cite)
 * mw:Extension:Cite/Special:Cite.php is not enabled on Meta, but enabled on Wikipedia, see w:Special:Cite and w:wp:Citing Wikipedia.


 * Special:Export (Export)
 * Produces an XML file containing the wikitext and metadata of either the current version only, or all revisions, of one or more pages, specified in the form of a list; the XML file is in the format required for Special:Import; exporting is typically done either in preparation of applying the latter at another MediaWiki project, or for searching within old page revisions. See Help:Export.

Search

 * Special:Search (Search)
 * See Help:Search


 * External links (Linksearch)
 * By mw:Extension:LinkSearch. See Help:Linksearch.


 * Special:MIMEsearch (MIMEsearch)
 * Filters files for its MIME-type.

Random
These links redirect to a random page/redirect from the main namespace. Other namespaces can be specified as a parameter.
 * Special:Random (Random)
 * Special:Randomredirect (Randomredirect)



Users actions

 * Special:Log (Log)
 * See below.


 * Special:Recentchanges (Recentchanges)
 * See Help:Recent changes. Limited to 30 days on Wikimedia projects, just like two following special pages and the watchlist.


 * Special:Recentchangeslinked (Recentchangeslinked or Relatedchanges (13112))
 * See Help:Related changes.


 * Special:Newpages (Newpages)
 * Newest pages with creation date and time, current size, user who created the page, and first edit summary, in reverse order of creation. Can be patrolled on Wikimedia projects.

Account

 * Special:Userlogin (Userlogin)
 * Creates new login cookie.


 * Special:CreateAccount and Special:Userlogin/signup are two aliases for account creation page. Registered user can use this page to create a new account (for example, for a bot), so that it's affiliation with the main account would be obvious from the User creation log.
 * Special:Userlogout (Userlogout)
 * Destroys cookie, see also Privacy policy. This link is not included in the automatic list because it is present on every page.

Pages available only to registered users:
 * Special:Preferences (Preferences) : see Help:Preferences.
 * Special:Watchlist (Watchlist) : see Help:Watchlist.
 * Special:MergeAccount (MergeAccount) : see Help:Unified login

Users

 * Special:Listusers (Listusers)
 * Alphabetic list of all registered users, can be shown by group. There also is Special:Listadmins, which is a redirect to Special:Listusers/Sysop. For some project families, notably Wikia, this applies for the whole family.


 * Special:Ipblocklist (Ipblocklist)
 * Blocked IPs and usernames


 * Special:Contributions (Contributions)
 * Requires a target user: e. g. Special:Contributions/Example. This link is also present on every user/user talk page. Registered users also have the link to their own contributions on top.
 * A special mode [ newbie contribs] shows recent changes made only by new users.

MediaWiki

 * Special:Version (Version)
 * Shows MediaWiki version the site is currently running, and a listing of extensions installed.


 * Special:Statistics (Statistics)
 * Project statistics, appearance is defined by MediaWiki:Sitestatstext.


 * Special:Specialpages (Specialpages)
 * Automatic list of most special pages. See also SpecialPages grouped into categories - modification that can sort the SpecialPages into categories.


 * Special:Allmessages (Allmessages)
 * All pages in the MediaWiki namespace, see Help:System message.


 * Gadgets (Gadgets)
 * By mw:Extension:Gadgets.

Wikimedia

 * Wiki matrix (SiteMatrix)
 * By mw:Extension:SiteMatrix. Displays all sites of the Wikimedia Foundation.


 * Wikimedia Board of Trustees election  (Boardvote)
 * Voting software for Wikimedia Board of Trustees elections.

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


 * Sysops:
 * Special:Blockip (Blockip)
 * Block or unblock users, IPs and ranges of IPs.


 * Special:Undelete (Undelete)
 * Restore all or some revisions of deleted page


 * Special:DeletedContributions (DeletedContributions)
 * Show user's contributions to deleted pages, see mw:Extension:DeletedContributions.


 * Special:Import (Import)
 * Imports the wikitext and metadata of one or more revisions of one or more pages by uploading an XML file in the format produced by Special:Export (typically after applying the latter at another MediaWiki project). See Help:Import.


 * Special:Unwatchedpages (Unwatchedpages)
 * List of pages not watched by anyone.


 * Special:Nuke (Nuke)
 * Mass deletions of pages recently added by a given user or IP. This is mw:Extension:Nuke, enabled only on some Wikimedia projects.


 * Bureaucrats:
 * Special:Makesysop: make a user into a sysop, see mw:Extension:Makesysop
 * Special:Makebot: make a user into a bot, see mw:Extension:MakeBot.
 * Special:Renameuser: rename user account, see mw:Extension:Renameuser.


 * CheckUsers:
 * Special:CheckUser: get user IP, see Help:CheckUser.


 * Oversight:
 * Special:Oversight: see Hiding revisions.


 * Stewards:
 * Special:Userrights (Userrights) : give and remove user access rights (e.g. sysop, bureaucrat, checkuser) on any Wikimedia project. On some projects also available to sysops for giving users patrol or rollback flags.


 * Developers:
 * Special:Lockdb: Lock database, puts the wiki in read only mode.
 * Special:Unlockdb: Unlock database: returns the wiki to read/write mode.

Other pages
These pages are not listed in the automatic list because they are already present in MediaWiki interface.
 * Special:Movepage (Movepage)
 * Captcha (Captcha)
 * Special:Confirmemail (Confirmemail)

Also, by definition these pages can be considered special:
 * Page history
 * Diff
 * Delete, protect, and block pages available to sysops.

Not enabled on Wikimedia wikis

 * Arbitration committee election : Special:ArbComVote : ditto for the finished Arbitration Committee elections.
 * Popular pages : Special:Popularpages : The most visited pages. Currently disabled.
 * SQL query : Special:Asksql : Sysop only. Database interface for running queries. Currently disabled.
 * Unicode Converter : Special:UnicodeConverter : Converts Unicode to HTML entities : Not currently available outside of the test wiki

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

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

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


 * Allpages and Prefixindex allow a namespace and a (partial) pagename, for example:
 * Special:Allpages/Template:Z — all templates starting with "Z" and all templates after that.
 * Special:Prefixindex/User:Example/ — all subpages of user Example; this is the most popular usage of Prefixindex.
 * Besides, these special pages can be transcluded into wikitext, so the result appears as the part of the page, e.g..


 * Recentchanges, Newpages and Newimages also can be transcluded:
 * — show with header
 * — show 10 elements
 * — start from 10th element, plus previous parameters


 * Whatlinkshere, Recentchangeslinked, Movepage</tt>, Undelete</tt>, Contributions</tt> and Blockip</tt>, being interface links, accept (or even require) a page or a user name, e.g. Special:Whatlinkshere/Help:Special page.


 * Search</tt>, Linksearch</tt> and MIMEsearch</tt> accept search value, e.g. Special:Search/word.


 * Listusers</tt> can be used with a group name: sysop, bot, bureaucrat, checkuser, e.g. Special:Listusers/bot.


 * Log</tt> can be used with a log type: move, protect, block, delete, e.g. Special:Log/move.


 * Random</tt> and Randomredirect</tt> accept namespace (see above).

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

Logs
Special:Log - combined display of various logs. You can narrow down the view by:
 * selecting a log type, including:
 * Block log - blocks and unblocks
 * Deletion log - deleted and undeleted pages
 * Protection log - protected and unprotected pages
 * Upload log - list of images uploaded
 * entering the full name without prefix of the acting user (usual case-sensitivity)
 * entering the full name of the affected page (usual case-sensitivity) e.g. "Image:Map South Holland.png"), or the full name including prefix of the affected user (in the case of blocking, setting user rights, setting bot status, and user creation) or without prefix (in the case of renaming a user)

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

There are no logs available on the site for:
 * adding or removing a page from a user's list of page to watch (the user can only view the current state)
 * change of preferences of a user (ditto)
 * viewing a page (except that, if $wgDisableCounters is false, the total number of views of a page is displayed on it)
 * editing and previewing a page without saving
 * applying Special:Expandtemplates
 * applying Special:Export
 * unfinished operations (e.g. an attempted page move)