Introduction
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See also: System requirements | MediaWiki | English Wikipedia

Welcome screen

Offline MediaWiki Code Editor is an offline application to write code in MediaWiki markup language to edit or create articles in English Wikipedia .
The application makes easier and faster the edition of articles, even if you do not have previous knowledge of the markup rules. It helps you to prevent mistakes during the process of edition, so you can pay much more attention to the content itself than to sintax.

As it does not need to have permanent internet access, you can make use of this application anywhere and anytime. This is an advantage for those editors who have limited access to internet. But, even if this is not your case, you can take advantage of many of the assistants included in the application.

Offline MediaWiki Code Editor consists of a unique collection of tools and assistants merged in a single "execute only" file in .accde Microsoft ® Access compiled format.

Graphical User Interface

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the application is simple and user-friendly. It consists of a series of assistants and tools available from inside the Microsoft ® Access application window.

Quick Access Toolbar and Ribbon
The Quick Access Toolbar is an small toolbar which can be seen at the top left corner of the application window:

Quick Access Toolbar

It has small buttons to perform some actions: (1) Save changes, (2) change color them or (3) close the application not closing the MS Access window

Color thems

By default, all main windows are colored in different shades of blue, while assistant windows are colored in shades of brown, to be easily distinguished when the latter are superimposed over the former. But you can change colors to choose those of your preference. The application interface is based on Microsoft ®Access color thems. So, if you want to change color patters, just click on the color bottom of the Quick Access Toolbar:

< Click on this button to see color themes to choose, including shades of gray. Feel free to select to the color pattern you prefer.

The retractable ribbon is a panel of buttons which allow to perform several tasks.

Ribbon at the top of the application window

By default, the ribbon is displayed below the Quick Access Toolbar. but you can switch positions if you prefer.

Administrative jobs

· Compact & Repair - As you work with the application, the database file tends to become larger. To Compact & Repair Database means that your database file becomes smaller, not by compression, but by the elimination of unused space.
· Back Up Database - A good practice to prevent data loss in case of system failure is to make backups regularly.

· Encrypt with password - The application file is not encrypted by default. To encrypt (or decrypt) the application you need to open the file in Exclusive mode (see Access Help). Evaluate the actual necessity of encrypting the application to protect it from non- authorized modifications. Be aware that if you loose the password, you will be unable to work with the data again.

· Size to Fit Form - This is an utility to fit forms in case they do not display correctly.
· Close application - This button makes able to close the application without closing Microsoft Access.

Main windows

· Collection of guidelines - The collection of Wikipedia Guidelines consists of downloaded original pages from Wikipedia converted into PDF files. The advanced users can download some more articles from Wikipedia and add them to the database or update the already existing articles. The installation of the collection is optional. Users who have internet access do not need install the guidelines, but still have the possibility to open the online articles directly from the application.
· Administrator of citations - To administrate references stored in the application database. This resource was developed to give the users the possibility to reutilize the same references in different related articles, or keep them stored for future editions.
· Administrator of templates - To administrate a collection of more than 250 templates stored in the application database, including those most frequently used in English Wikipedia . The advanced users can include additional templates into the database to keep them by hand to be used in subsequent articles.
· Browser of pages - This window enables to manage multiple pages of wikitext under edition which you can keep stored in the database application. In this window you can:
· Open new articles
· Browse and open existing articles
· Delete articles

To open a new article you only have to give it a reference name You can open an article with the button <Open selected article> or making double click on the reference name of the article. When you do this, the Edit window opens containing the text in edition.

· Edit window - This window contains the text of the selected article. It offers you access to multiple tools and assistants to build wiki code, although you are not familiarize with the markup rules and templates of MediaWiki code.

Assistants

Besides the usual format tools, the assistants are the most useful resources of the application. These assistants help the user to generate much of the wiki code with the less possible effort. As you do not need to memorize the markup rules, the probability to make mistakes during edition is greatly reduced. the application offers assistants for most elements composing Wikipedia pages. The assistants can be grouped in the following types:
· Citations linked to the article
· Templates (>250 different templates)
· Columns (two assistants)
· Internal links
· External links (two assistants)
· Images (five assistants)
· Galleries (four assistants)
· Tables (three assistants, including an infobox emulator)
· Charts (line / area / bar / pie and brick charts)
· Magic words (>100 magic words of eleven types)
· Special characters (>100)
· Export to an external file (Notepad / Wordpad / Winword)
The final result of the process of edition is a wiki code (plain text) you can paste into a text file, or directly into a Wikipedia Edit subpage.

License

Except where otherwise noted, the software programming of this product belongs to Antonio J. García Fumero.
This software is provided "as-is" without any express of implied warranty derived from its use. In no event will the author be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.
Permission is granted to anyone to use this software to edit contents to be published in English Wikipedia , but not with commercial purposes. As an user you have the right to make use of the application but not the right to modify it, nor to sublicense it.
When using this application, the origin of the software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. Any acknowledgment to the author of the product would be appreciated, but is not required at all.

Take note, this is freeware, but not public domain software.
Antonio J. García Fumero

.


System Requirements
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All you need to work with Offline MediaWiki Code Editor is a computer with the English version of Microsoft Access 2010/2103/2016 or Microsoft Access Runtime 2016.

Installation (see Installation & Reinstallation )

You do not need to restart your computer after installation. This application does not create nor modify any key or value in the Windows Registry. It does not copy any file in the system folder. All needed files are located in the application folder which is also provided with an uninstaller file. But you can also uninstall the application simply erasing the containing folder.

Be sure that the default language of your Microsoft Access installation is English. Otherwise the assistants based on templates will not work. In Wikipedia most templates are developed for every specific language.

· The execution of macros should be allowed.

· The application folder should be regarded as "trusted location" to grant full execution.

· Your computer should be protected with an updated anti-malware program.

After installation

This application has been entirely designed using MACROS to automate processes. Macros acquired odd fame since the appearance of the first macro viruses, so many users tend to disable all macros in Microsoft® Office documents . But in Access applications, trusted macros have proved to be very useful to develop applications.

When you open Offline MediaWiki Code Editor for the first time, a yellow Message Bar may appear with a shield icon, warning that some of the active content has been disabled:

If you click on <Enable Content>, the application will open as a trusted document.

Another method to enable macros is in the Microsoft® Office Backstage view.

Click the File tab, and in the Security Warning area, on the Enable Content button and click the down-arrow. Under Enable All Content, select Always enable this document's active content.

TRUSTED CENTER

To avoid notifications every time you open the application it is advisable to modify permanently the following settings:

Trusted locations

You can declare the application folder as a "trusted location" or move the entire application to a trusted location. Any file that you put in a trusted location can be opened without being checked by the Trust Center, and does not open in Protected View. This applies particularly to files with active content, such as macros, data connections, ActiveX controls, and so on. To add the application folder as a trusted location, you can do the following:

· Click the File tab. The Microsoft Office Backstage view appears.
· Under Help, click Options; the Options dialog box appears.
· Click Trust Center.
· Click Trust Center Settings.
· In the Trust Center, click Trusted Locations.
· Click the Add new location button; the Trusted Locations dialog box appears.
· Click Browse to find the folder; select a folder and then click OK.

Add-Ins

Add-Ins are not necessary for the execution of the application, so select:
· Disable all Application Add-Ins

ActiveX settings

· Enable all controls without restrictions and without prompting

Macro settings

· Enable all macros


Installation & Reinstallation

The application installer built with Inno Setup Compiler, version 5.6.1 (a) © 1997- 2018 ( www.innosetup.com ) creates a customized application folder to contain all necessary files. It also creates a program folder in the common programs menu, containing shortcuts to the application files.

You do not need to restart your computer after installation. This application does not create nor modify any key or value in the Windows Registry. It does not copy any file in the system folder. All needed files are located in the application folder which is also provided with an uninstaller file. You will be able to uninstall the application using either this uninstaller file or simply erasing the containing folder. The uninstaller file removes both folders containing application files and shortcuts.

Which installer (32-bit or 64-bit) should be used?

Be sure to use the right (32-bit or 64-bit) installer version of the application, because the application for a 64-bit Microsoft Access will not work on a 32-bit Microsoft Access, and vice versa.

Files in application folder

These are the files that the installer copies into the application folder:

· Application in Compiled Access format (.accde) file
· Ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar (.exportedUI) file
· Editor Help (.chm) file
· Icon (.ico) file
· License and Readme (.txt) files
· Folder containing a Collection of Guidelines in PDF format (optional)

If you want to reinstall

If you need to reinstall the application, but keeping your articles in edition, you must save a copy of the application (.accde) file in different folder. Otherwise the installer would overwrite the file and you might lose your work.

About Compiled Access Format

To protect the application against modifications in design, it is distributed in Compiled Access Format (.accde file extension). This is the file name extension for Access desktop databases that are compiled into a "locked-down" or "execute only" version of the original .accdb file. Users working with .accde files cannot make design changes to forms or reports. Advanced users might still modify manually some data, but It is completely unadvisable to do this, because these actions might impair the application and make it useless.


MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a free software for wikis written in PHP. It is the software used by Wikipedia and other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation (Wiktionary, Wikibooks, etc). It had a great expansion from the year 2005, existing a great number of wikis based in this software that do not have relationship with this foundation, although do share the idea of a colaborative generation of contents. MediaWiki is under a GNU General Public License.

MediaWiki may be installed on web servers: Apache, Internet Information Services, Cherokee, Hiawatha, LiteSpeed Standard (needs the extension Math),nginx and lighttpd. And can use database motors MySQL / MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

The name MediaWiki has also been given to the namespace where there are the messages of its interface ready to be translated to the local language of every wiki, in the case those are not yet translated.

History

MediaWiki was formerly originally for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske, with the aim of replacing UseModWiki as wiki motor (called Phase I by the collaborators of Wikipedia). The first MediaWiki version was then called "Wikipedia software phase II".
Around the middle of 2002 the program was re-written and improved, giving the so called "phase III" and it has been developed since then from that code. On August 29, 2003 the program was named MediaWiki, a play on words with the name of the Wikimedia Foundation which sponsors its development. The first version with this name was then called "MediaWiki- stable 20030829". They began thinking on possible users that are not party of Wikipedia, improving especially aspects like the software installation.

The name "MediaWiki" is occasionally criticized for being easily confused with the name of the foundation by people who are not party of Wikipedia.

Features

In itself the manage of MediaWiki is very similar to that of Wikipedia. As a difference with classic wikis, page names should not be in CamelCase, thus allowing more natural names.

· Namespaces: Allow to separate pages of different kinds. There is a namespace for article, another for templates, another for debates, etc. which the software handle differently.

· Talk pages: Every page has a talk page, to discuss about the main page.

· TeX support: To visualize mathematical formulaes. The formulaes may be shown in several ways according to the possibilities of the browser.

· Tracking lists: To let the users to follow the changes in the articles of interest.

· A system of plugins that allow to extend easily the software. The installed plugins are automatically listed in "Special pages".

· Ability to block temporarily users or pages.

· Support for templates customized with parameters.

· Creation of timelines with wikicode

· Hierarchical system of categories, which allow to create lists of articles or image thumbnails.

· Admits several user levels, likewise the posibility that only logged users may edit, or prevent the registration of more users. Thus, it may be used as a content management system or groupware.

· Support for the store of virtual memory or cache, also known as memcached and the Squid cache system.

· Skins customized for every user.


English Wikipedia

English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001, it is the first edition of Wikipedia and, as of June 2017, has the most articles of any of the editions. As of August 2017, 12% of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English-language edition. There were 5,457,281 articles on the site at that time.

In October 2015, the combined text of the English Wikipedia's articles totalled 11.5 gigabytes when compressed. On 1 November 2015, the English Wikipedia announced it had reached 5,000,000 articles and ran a special logo to reflect the milestone.

The Simple English Wikipedia is a variation in which most of the articles use only basic English vocabulary. There is also the Old English (Ænglisc/Anglo-Saxon) Wikipedia (angwiki).

Pioneering edition

The English Wikipedia was the first Wikipedia edition and has remained the largest. It has pioneered many ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by Wikipedia editions in some of the other languages. These ideas include "featured articles", the neutral-point-of-view policy, navigation templates, the sorting of short "stub" articles into sub- categories, dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration, and weekly collaborations.

The English Wikipedia has adopted features from Wikipedias in other languages. These features include verified revisions from the German Wikipedia (dewiki) and town population- lookup templates from the Dutch Wikipedia (nlwiki).

Although the English Wikipedia stores images and audio files, as well as text files, many of the images have been moved to Wikimedia Commons with the same name, as passed-through files. However, the English Wikipedia also has fair-use images and audio/video files (with copyright restrictions), most of which are not allowed on Commons.

Many of the most active participants in the Wikimedia Foundation, and the developers of the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia, are English users.

Users and editors

The English Wikipedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007, just a little over a year since it had crossed a threshold of 1,000,000 registered user accounts in late February 2006.
Over 800,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times. 300,000 editors edit Wikipedia every month; of these, over 30,000 perform more than 5 edits per month, and a little over 3,000 perform more than 100 edits per month. By 24 November 2011, a total of 500 million edits had been performed on the English Wikipedia.
As the largest Wikipedia edition, and because English is such a widely used language, the English Wikipedia draws many users and editors whose native language is not English. Such users may seek information from the English Wikipedia rather than the Wikipedia of their native language because the English Wikipedia tends to contain more information about general subjects. Successful collaborations have been developed between non-native English speakers who successfully add content to the English Wikipedia and native English speakers who act as copyeditors for them.

Arbitration committee

The English Wikipedia has an arbitration committee (also known as ArbCom) that consists of a panel of editors that imposes binding rulings with regard to disputes between other editors of the online encyclopedia. The committee was created by Jimmy Wales on 4 December 2003 as an extension of the decision-making power he had formerly held as owner of the site.

When initially founded, the committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each. Since then, the committee has gradually expanded its membership to 18 arbitrators.

A 2013 study from Oxford University concluded that the most disputed articles on the English Wikipedia tended to be broader issues, while on other language Wikipedias the most disputed articles tended to be regional issues; this is due to the English language's status as a global lingua franca, which means that many who edit the English Wikipedia do not speak English as a native language. The study stated that the most disputed entries on the English Wikipedia were: George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity.

Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and quality

A "WikiProject" is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. These groups often focus on a specific topic area (for example, women's history), a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). The English Wikipedia currently has over 2,000 WikiProjects and activity varies.

In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Wikipedia introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles. Articles are rated by WikiProjects. The range of quality classes begins with "Stub" (very short pages), followed by "Start", "C" and "B" (in increasing order of quality). Community peer review is needed for the article to enter one of the highest quality classes: either "good article", "A" or the highest, "featured article". Of the about 4.4 million articles and lists assessed as of March 2015, a little more than 5,000 (0.12%) are featured articles, and fewer than 2,000 (0.04%) are featured lists. One featured article per day, as selected by editors, appears on the main page of Wikipedia.

The articles can also be rated as per "importance" as judged by a WikiProject. Currently, there are 5 importance categories: "low", "mid", "high", "top", and "???" for unclassified/uncertain level. For a particular article, different WikiProjects may assign different importance levels.

The Wikipedia Version 1.0 Editorial Team has developed a table (shown below) that displays data of all rated articles by quality and importance, on the English Wikipedia. If an article or list receives different ratings by two or more WikiProjects, then the highest rating is used in the table, pie-charts, and bar-chart. The software regularly auto-updates the data.

Researcher Giacomo Poderi found that articles tend to reach featured status via the intensive work of a few editors. A 2010 study found unevenness in quality among featured articles and concluded that the community process is ineffective in assessing the quality of articles.


Collection of guidelines

Collection of Guidelines (optional)
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A collection of original Wikipedia guideline pages stored in the application folder, which
you can update or increase according to your personal interest, to be consulted anytime.

Guidelines are merely a collection of original Wikipedia articles (converted to PDF) containing the main guidelines and recommendations applied in English Wikipedia, which you can consult offline anytime.

Many users with full online access and advanced skills might prefer not to install this optional collection. If this is your case, do not install the collection or delete manually the \GUIDELINES sub-folder. In case you declined to install the collection but later decide to include it, you must uninstall first (it is not necessary to restart the PC) and perform a full clean installation. The files of the collection are stored in a sub-folder named GUIDELINES. You are able to add more articles of your interest to this folder, in HTML or PDF format, and to add the corresponding hyperlinks entries to the list shown in the collection window.

1. Click on new entry

2. Select: Hyperlink -> Modify hyperlink

3. Select the file you want to add.

4. Save

Do not forget to add the last update of the article.

Direct Wikipedia access

In case you are having internet access, you can directly open the last version of the articles clicking on the hyperlinks of the Online column.

Other uses

Advanced users can make use of this folder to store copies of articles not related to guidelines nor recommendations, taking advantage of the facility of a quick access to the articles stored in the folder. Make use of this facility to your own purpose.


Compact & Repair
See also: Back Up Database

Compact & Repair is an Access integrated function. It helps prevent and correct problems. Database files can grow quickly as you use them, sometimes impeding performance. They can also occasionally become corrupted or damaged. You can use the Compact and Repair Database command in Microsoft Office Access to prevent or fix these problems.

In particular circumstances, a database file can become corrupted. The risk of corruption is somewhat greater if users frequently edit data in Memo fields, and the risk grows over time. You can mitigate this risk by using the Compact and Repair Database command.

Database files grow with use

As you add and update data, a database file becomes larger. Some of this growth comes from new data, but some comes from other sources:

As your database file fills up, its performance can degrade. Objects may open more slowly, queries may take longer than normal to run, and typical operations generally seem to take longer.

Note: Compacting does not compress your data — it makes your database file smaller by eliminating unused space.

The usual way to compact and repair the database is in going to the Microsoft® Office Backstage view. But can also use the Compact & Repair button located in the ribbon at the left top of the window.


Administrator of citations

Administrator of Citations or References
For the assistant to build code for citations see: Citations linked to the article

Assistant to administrate citations already stored in the database application.
One of the key policies of Wikipedia is that all article content has to be verifiable. This means that a reliable source must be able to support the material. All quotations and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged must include an inline citation of a source that directly supports the material. This also means that Wikipedia is not the place for original work, archival findings that have not been published, or evidence from any source that has not been published.

If you are adding new content, it is your responsibility to add source information along with it. Material provided without a source is more likely to be removed from an article. Sometimes such material will be tagged first with a [citation needed] template to give editors time to find and add sources before it is removed, but sometimes editors will simply remove it because they question its veracity.

The Administrator of citations is not an space to build nor modify citations wikicode. You can build citations invoking the assistant of citations directly from the Edit Window. Nevertheless the Administrator of citations offers the opportunity to:

1. Filter data to show selectively those citations linked to an article.
2. Move citations from an article to another.
3. Eliminate citations

How to use the same citations in different articles?

Explore all the citations stored in the application.If the editor needs to use a same citation in different articles, here are two ways to perform this operation:

1. Moving the citation towards the destination article; or
2. Making a copy of the citation, assigning a different identifier to the copy .

How to move a citation from an article to another?

To move a citation from an article to another, just select the row containing the name of the citation in the form and click on the right cell containing the name of the article. Doing this you will see a small button at the rightmost part of the cell. This button allows to unfold a list with the names of all articles stored. Select destination article and click on its name. The name switch indicates that the citation was successfully moved.

You can also move citations from one article to another in the assistant of citations, a form where you can administrate those citations linked to the article being edited.

How to link a copy of a citation towards another article?

This action can also be performed in the assistant of citations, invoked from the Edit Window.

! Citations not linked to any article

Before eliminating from the application all obsolete articles, an advisable practice is to preserve those citations which might be reusable in subsequent articles. To have a repository for those reusable citations, it was created an special record known as '! Citations not linked to any article.' This special record is protected by the application to avoid accidental elimination from the list of articles, provided it is not an article. Move to this repository all the citations which you are interested in reuse. And after doing this you can surely eliminate the articles from which the citations were created.


Administrator of Templates
For the assistant to insert templates see: Templates

Assistant to store and manage templates taken from the Wikipedia Template namespace..

The Administrator of templates is a window where you can add, document, delete or update templates you may use in the pages you are editing. A template is a Wikipedia page created to be included in other pages. Templates usually contain repetitive material that might need to show up on any number of articles or pages. They are commonly used for boilerplate messages, standard warnings or notices, infoboxes, navigational boxes and similar purposes.

There are hundreds of templates, perhaps too much, some of them are very much alike, and the editors are always developing new templates and improving the existing ones. The assistant contains a repository of many of the most commonly used templates, so you can make use of them. But, through this window you can add to the database any other template of your particular interest you may have found in Wikipedia. Do not forget to include the corresponding documentation in the "Description" textbox. You can also delete templates (one at a time), but be aware that the deleted templates are not recoverable.

This application starts with more than 200 of the most commonly used templates registered in English Wikipedia.

Types of templates

The assistant distributes the templates in groups according to their function. This distribution does not correspond with any Wikipedia guideline. It is only a resource of this assistant to help users to find quickly the most suitable template for their purposes. The groups are the following:

· Calculation: Templates to make date or numeric calculations

· Citations or references: Templates to insert citations in pages of articles

· Columns: Templates to create columns of text

· Conversion of units: Templates to convert measurements from one unit to another.

· Disambiguation: Templates used in disambiguation pages

· Flags of nations: Templates to display a small flag icon next to a wikilinked country name

· Format: Templates to format text.

· Geographical coordinates: Templates to handle geographical coordinates.

· Graphic charts: Templates to produce graphic charts

· Images: Templates to show images in Wikipedia pages.

· Infoboxes: Templates to summarize information in Wikipedia articles.

· Links: Templates to make links to internal or external pages

· Lists: Templates to create lists.

· Navigation: Templates to show links to make navigation among pages easier.

· Redirection: Templates to redirect the search to other pages

· Strings layout: Templates to manipulate strings.

· Table of contents: Templates which modify the appearance of the table of contents

· Tables: Templates to insert tables in Wikipedia pages

· User pages: Templates to be used exclusively in user pages.

· Warnings to the readers: Templates to show information and warnings to readers..

· Clues to do some things These are NOT templates but interesting clues about templates and edition.

How to add a template to the database

To add a new template to the database you should do the following:

1. Select the group of templates (or create a new one if necessary)

2. Click on the "New record" button at the bottom of the window.

3. Enter the template title

4. Paste the template into the "Template" textbox.

5. Enter the documentation of the template into the "Description" textbox. You can use formatted text in this textbox to emphasize the requiring aspects.

6. Click on "Save" button at the bottom of the window.

How to move a template to other group

You can move an existing template from one group to another. To do this, select the template and click on the dropdown list of template groups. Select the destination group and click on "Save" button ad the bottom of the window.


Back Up Database
See also: Compact & Repair

To Back Up the application file is a good practice to prevent data loss in case of system failure.

When you backup a database, Access saves a copy of the database file by using a name and location that you specify.

You can backup the application file clicking on the Back Up button located in the ribbon at the left top of the application window.

You can also go to the Backstage view clicking on the File tab and using the "Save Database As" option. The default name captures both the name of the original database file and the date that you make the backup, but you can change the name of the backed up file if you want, .

When you restore data or objects from a backup, you want to know which database the backup came from and when the backup was created. Therefore, it is usually a good idea to use the default file name.


Protected Articles

A Protected article is an article the user has marked as one to prevent ACCIDENTAL ELIMINATION OR MODIFICATION OF ITS CONTENT. This protection does not cover changes in the provisional title. The title of a protected article can be modified anytime.

You can protect or unprotect an article any time you need without limitations. In the Browser of pages window, protected articles are easily recognized by a pink shade in the title background.

How to protect an article?

To protect an article against accidental elimination or content modification is easy:

1. Open the article (in the Edit window ).

2. Check mark on the Protected article checking box located at the upper right corner of the window.

3. Close the article returning to the Browser of pages window. The protection will be effective only after closing the article.

4. To unprotect the article you only have to uncheck the checking box. You do not need to close the article to unprotect the content.

Does protection cover citations linking?

No, you can link and unlink citations (or references) of a protected article. You can build, eliminate, copy or move citations from one article to another independently of the protective condition of the articles.


Browser of Pages

Browser of pages in edition, with a tool to insert frameworks into new pages.

Browser of pages is the window to browse and administrate all the articles saved in the database. In this window you can create new articles, open previously created articles or eliminate obsolete articles.

The application can store an undetermined number of articles being edited. Every article should have a different title to be unequivocally identified. You can work on the edition of several articles at the same time. To start a new article, add a provisional title at the end of the list of articles, save the name and click on the command button Edit window to begin edition. You can later change the name of the article whenever you want.

The left section of this form shows a short preview of the article.

! Citations not linked to any article

! Citations not linked to any article is not an article like any other. It is a record protected by the system, which was especially created to store a repository of those citations no longer linked to any article, but may be reused to edit other related articles. You can not eliminate this record from the database, but you can eliminate all the citations linked to it.

Edit window

To edit an article choose the name from the list of articles and make a double click on the name, or click on the command button <Edit window> to open the edit window and start editing.

Framework for new content

As a guide to the beginners, the browser of articles also offers frameworks for the different types of pages:

· Article pages
· Disambiguation pages
· Redirect pages
· User pages

To make use of one of these frameworks do the following:
1. Declare a new article typing a provisional title in the column of titles
2. Select the framework you want to insert using the pull-down menu
3. Click on the command button <New content>.

Doing this, the new page will be filled with a guide to edit the page from the beginning. Click on the button Edit window to begin edition. Erase all comments after finishing.


Edit Window

Window to edit, save and export pages of wikitext.

Panel of tools
The Edit window is the window designed to edit articles in wiki code. The wiki code used by his assistant is MediaWiki (1) which is the markup language used in the articles of Wikipedia and all the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The assistant allows you to edit articles in wikitext, so you do not have to know the markup rules of this language, nor have to type any code. So you can concentrate more in the content that in the markup rules.

The collection of MediaWiki markup rules is long. Like some other wiki languages MediaWiki also accept some elements of the HTML markup language.

This assistant makes use of a selection of the most important rules so you can edit articles with the standard styles used in Wikipedia including citations, columns, tables, images, galleries, graphs, magic words and the most common templates.

The Edit window is resizable to take advantage of the available space in the screen. It has a panel of buttons to help you during the process of edition.

Fonts | Monospace | Proportional
Serif | Courier New | Cambria Constantia Times New Roman
Sans-serif | Consolas | Arial Calibri Corbel

You can select the font type you prefer to display, among a menu of eight different fonts, covering all font families:

Zoom buttons allows to increase or decrease font size. Some other useful buttons are also available. The date of the last update is also displayed for information.

Toolbar

A toolbar is available at the left side of the Edit window and visible all the time. It contains several panels of buttons which make easier the process of edition.

Actions you can do once selected a string of text

Once you had selected a string of text there are a few frequent actions you can do with the help of these buttons:

· Internal links (see below ê)
· Copy (to clipboard)
· Cut (to clipboard)
· Bold
· Italics
· Superscript
· Subscript
· Counter of spaces (in the selected string)
· Erase
· Highlight
· Center (a template to center text in table cell)
· Text size ( Small:85% / Larger: 110% / Big:120%)

Internal links are links to other pages of Wikipedia, or to sections of the same, or other pages. Links to pages of Wikipedia in other languages (interlanguage links) are also considered internal links. The assistant lets you create and customize links. Those valid links will be showed in blue in the final page, but links to nonexisting pages will be shown in red to make clear that they do not link to anywhere. Those links should be eliminated or change by valid links.

Although links may be customized to show a different text, in some cases Wikipedia rename the links automatically:

1. The part of a title which is in parenthesis wil be automatically hidden. For example, a link to the article Seattle (Washington) will show the link text: Seattle .

2. The part of a title after a comma, will be automatically hidden. For example, a link to Seattle, Washington will show the link text: Seattle.

3. When the links include a namespace corresponding to some other project of the Wikimedia Foundation (like Wikiquote, Wikibooks or Wikctionary) those names are automatically hidden. For example, a link to Wikipedia:Village pump will be shown as Village pump.

4. Links to sections of the same page will not been displayed in blue in the browser, but only in bold type. In this kind of link the namespace is not hidden, nor the symbol '#' in the link text. To hide them you should enter an alternative text, Use always an alternative text for links pointing towards sections of the same page.

Actions you can do once selected a paragraph

Once you had selected a paragraph (or several paragraphs) there are a few frequent actions you can do with the help of these buttons:

· Heading level - Levels 2-4 (level1 is reserved to page titles only)
· Left identation
· Blockquote
· Bulleted list item
· Numbered list item
· Columns. Tools. to split the selected text in customizable columns.

Lists are created inserting the list elements one by one, not leaving any empty line among elements. Lists can be numbered or bulleted. In numbered lists is not necessary to enter numbers, because the Wikipedia motor assigns numbers automatically. In bulleted lists the elements are preceded by a bullet instead of a number.

The assistants for columns helps you to select: number of columns, width of each column, total-width of the block of columns and background color.

Actions you can do once you selected a point of insertion

Once you had selected a point of insertion in the Edit window there are other actions you can do with the help of these buttons:

· Paste from clipboard

· Force a line break. When you insert a line break using <Enter> key, this
is not interpreted as a line break to start a new paragraph. To produce
effective line breaks you must leave an empty line, So you can produce
effective line breaks typing the <Enter> key twice. But sometimes, in table
captions or in the middle of a paragraph you may need to force a line break.
This can be produced using the command button <BR>, which is equivalent
to the <br> HTML tag.

· Unbreakable space (to prevent separation of two words in different lines)

· External link . A external link is a link to an internet page which does not belong to any of the Wikimedia projects. Such links point to the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the destination page with the HTML scheme, that is, beginning the addresses with http:// or https:// which is the scheme accepted by all browsers.

· URL link. It formats the appearance of displayed URLs

· Gallery builder . This button opens a menu of techniques to display an image gallery.

· Single image. This button opens a menu of techniques to display a single image.

· Citations linked to the article . An assistant to build code for citations

· Tables builder . This button opens a menu of techniques to build tables

· Special characters . A list of >100 non ASCII characters you might display

· Repository of templates . Repository of the most frequently used templates in Wikipedia (more than 250 templates)

· Magic words . Features of wiki markup that give instructions to Wikipedia's underlying software

· Charts Charts of different kinds you can use to build those of your interest.

· Sign (only for talk pages, never in the article pages)

Single image. You can only insert images which had been previously uploaded to Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons. To insert images you do not need to include the URL or the image, but only its name (including the extension), once every image has a different name. You can not insert images located in other web sites. Although the sintax may be complex the assistant helps you to insert images even if you ignore the code. It is a common practice to include links in the image footnotes, force line breaks, insert non-breakable spaces or make modifications to the text format.

Citations linked to the article. Citations should be inserted into the text where these are needed to back up the given information. These are generally inserted at the end of a statement after the period, but these can be inserted in any part of the text. The abundant inclusion of citations makes the wikitext hard to read. But the interpreter of wikitext does not display citations in the point of insertion. It stores the citation and assigns it a consecutive ordinal number showing the link number in the point of insertion. To display the full content of the citation is mandatory to insert a section of References at the end of the article. The last can be done using the command button <Reflist>. It is common to display the references distributed in two columns.

Tables. The assistants for tables allows you to build wikicode for tables and insert it into the pages in ongoing edition. Although the code may be rather complex the assistants allows to create tables with a professional aspect even when you ignore the rules..

Templates. A template is a Wikipedia page created to be included in other pages and usually contain repetitive material that might need to show up on any number of articles or pages. Among other things, templates are used to add recurring messages to pages in a consistent way, to add boilerplate messages, and to create navigational boxes.When a template is automatically expanded and appears on a page, it is said to be "transcluded". The Repository of templates contains a collection of the most common templates used in Wikipedia and comprehensive documentation and examples of how to use those templates, so you can take advantage of them to edit your articles.

Magic words. Magic words (including parser functions, variables and behavior switches) are features of wiki markup that give instructions to Wikipedia's underlying MediaWiki software. For example, magic words can suppress or position the table of contents, disable indexing by external search engines, and produce output dynamically based on the current page or on user-defined conditional logic. Some of these features are especially useful for templates. This assistant offers the opportunity to use the most frequent magic words used in Wikipedia.

Graphs. The Assistant for graphs offers examples of how you can build and insert different types of charts into articles. You can build either line charts, area charts, bar charts or even pie charts using not any image, but only the {{Graph}} template.

Actions you can do at the end of the article

List of references. This section, if needed, is usually titled "Notes" or "References", and is placed at or near the bottom of the article. With some exceptions discussed below, citations appear in a single section containing only the {{Reflist}} template. For example:

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

The footnotes will then automatically be listed under that section heading. Each numbered footnote marker in the text is a clickable link to the corresponding footnote, and each footnote contains a caret that links back to the corresponding point in the text.

Categories. Categories are intended to group together pages on similar subjects. They are implemented by a MediaWiki feature that adds any page with a text like [[Category:XYZ]] in its wikimarkup to the automated listing that is the category with name XYZ. Categories help readers to find, and navigate around, a subject area, to see pages sorted by title, and to thus find article relationships.

An article will often be in several categories. Be sure that the name of the category exists. Otherwise, the link to the category page will be displayed in red indicating that the category does not exist.
Insert categories one after another, in consecutive lines, not leaving empty lines.

Categories are normally found at the bottom of an article page. Clicking a category name brings up a category page listing the articles (or other pages) that have been added to that particular category. There may also be a section listing the subcategories of that category. The subcategorization feature makes it possible to organize categories into tree-like structures to aid navigation. In Wikipedia, it is customary to place category declarations at the end of the wikimarkup.

To insert categories offers some advantages:

1. The insertion of a category in an article creates automatically a link to the article in the Category page.

2. Categories make easier the navigation among Wikipedia pages, so the articles can be more easily localized in the encyclopedia.

Every article should have at least one category. Some articles classify in several categories at the same time. Before inserting a category at the end of an article be sure that the category exists. If the category does not exist it will produce an error.

The categories are inserted one by one in consecutive lines without leaving empty lines or in the same line separated by pipes (|). Those should be inserted at the end of the article after the list of references.

When you assign a category to an article, the alternative names of the article are not automatically assigned to the category. To include this alternative names it is required to insert the category also in the redirection pages.

(1) http://meta.wikimedia.o rg/wiki/Wikitext%20standard


Disambiguation Pages

Disambiguation pages are not articles, but navigation aids!

Disambiguation pages ("dab pages") are designed to help a reader find Wikipedia articles on different topics that could be referenced by the same search term, as described in the Disambiguation guideline. Disambiguation pages are not articles; they are aids in searching.

The pages should contain only disambiguation content, whether or not the page title contains the parenthetical (disambiguation). This guideline does not apply to articles that are primary topics, even if the articles are prefaced by a "See also" hatnote or the like at the top of the page.

In general, the title of a disambiguation page is the ambiguous term itself, provided there is no primary topic for that term. If there is already a primary topic, then "(disambiguation)" is added to the title of the disambiguation page, as in Jupiter (disambiguation).

At the top of the page

The first line of a disambiguation page should be the introductory line (see below) unless there is a link to Wiktionary using the templates shown below, in which case that should be the first line. If there is a link to the primary topic (see below), that line should appear before the introductory line, but after the Wiktionary link. Each of these three should begin its own line (the Wiktionary template creates a box on the right side of the page).

Linking to Wiktionary

When a dictionary definition should be included, rather than writing a text entry, create a cross-link to Wiktionary, one of the Wikimedia sister projects. To do this, use one of these Wiktionary link templates on the first line:

{{Wiktionary}} – {{wiktionary|WORD|WORD2|...|WORD5}} – up to five optional parameters; useful for linking dictionary entries with multiple capitalizations (star, Star, and STAR) – without parameters, defaults to using the current page's name without capitalization.

{{Wiktionary pipe}} – {{wiktionary pipe|WORD|optional display name}}

Be sure to check the links created by these templates, as Wiktionary's case sensitivity sometimes differs from Wikipedia's. (On the first letter, Wiktionary uses proper capitalization for its entries, unlike Wikipedia's use of an uppercase first letter for each page name.)

Linking to a primary topic

When a page has "(disambiguation)" in its title – i.e., it is the disambiguation page for a term for which a primary topic has been identified – users are most likely to arrive there by clicking on a top link from the primary topic article, generated by a template in the {{otheruses}} series. For example, the article School contains the hatnote:

For other uses, see School (disambiguation).

The primary topic is the one reached by using the disambiguation page title without the (disambiguation) qualifier. Capitalization differences matter, so there will only be one primary topic for a title.

Since it is unlikely that this primary topic is what readers are looking for if they have reached the disambiguation page, it should not be mixed in with the other links. It is recommended that the link back to the primary topic appear at the top, in a brief explanatory sentence.

When the ambiguous term has a primary topic but that article has a different title (so that the term is the title of a redirect), the primary topic line normally uses the redirect to link to that article.

Introductory line

The term being disambiguated should be in bold (not italics). It should begin a sentence fragment ending with a colon, introducing a bulleted list. Example:

Interval may refer to:

Individual entries

After the introductory line comes a list of individual entries – lines which direct the readers to Wikipedia articles on the various topics which might be referenced by the term being disambiguated. Keep in mind that the primary purpose of the disambiguation page is to help people find the specific article they want quickly and easily. Example:

Interval may refer to:

· Interval (mathematics), a certain subset of an ordered set

· Interval (music), the relationship between two notes

Apply the following rules when constructing entries:

· Preface each entry with a bullet (an asterisk in wiki markup).

· Start each entry with a capital letter (unless it begins with a link to an article marked with {{lowercase}}, like eBay).

· Insert a comma after an entry when a description is included.

· Use sentence fragments, with no closing punctuation unless it is part of the description (e.g., a description that ends in "etc." would end with the period)

· Include exactly one navigable (blue) link to efficiently guide readers to the most relevant article for that use of the ambiguous term. Do not wikilink any other words in the line.

· Do not emphasize the link with bolding or italics, although titles (such as for books and movies) may need to be italicized to conform with the style guidance on titles. If the article's title contains both a title and a clarifier, quote or italicize only the part requiring such treatment, as opposed to the entire link, e.g.: Dark Star (film) . This can be accomplished by piping the link. The templates {{fti}} or {{ftq}} can also be used to put only the title, and not the qualifier, in italics or quotes, respectively.

· Keep the description associated with a link to a minimum, just sufficient to allow the reader to find the correct link. In many cases, the title of the article alone will be sufficient and no additional description is necessary.

· In most cases the title of the target article will be an expansion or variation of the term being disambiguated (as in the example above). If this is the case:

· The link should come at the start of the entry.

· The article title should appear exactly as it is on the target page; the link should not be piped except to apply formatting.

Note also the following points when constructing lists of entries:

· An entry with no links at all is useless for further navigation.

· A disambiguation page should not be made up completely of red links or have only one blue link on the entire page, because the basic purpose of disambiguation is to refer users to other Wikipedia pages.

· Never include external links, either as entries or in descriptions. Disambiguation pages disambiguate Wikipedia articles, not the World-Wide Web. To note URLs that might be helpful in the future, include them on the talk page.

· References should not appear on disambiguation pages. Dab pages are not articles; instead, incorporate the references into the target articles.

Misspellings

Common misspellings should be listed only if there is a genuine risk of confusion or misspelling. These cross-links should be placed in a separate section entitled "Common misspellings" or "See also". For example, in a page called Kington (disambiguation), a link to Kingston (disambiguation) would appropriately be included in the "See also" section.

Specific entry types

External links
External links do not belong on disambiguation pages; they should not be used.

Foreign languages

For foreign-language terms, be sure an article exists or could be written for the word or phrase in question. Usually this means that the term has been at least partially adopted into English or is used by specialists.

People
For people, include their birth and death years (when known), and only enough descriptive information that the reader can distinguish between different people with the same name. Keep in mind the conventions for birth and death dates—see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Dates of birth and death. Do not include a, an or the before the description of the person's occupation or role. Example:

· John Adams (physicist) (1920–1984), Director General of CERN and particle accelerator designer

· John Worthington Adams (1764–1837), British general in India

Places
For places, it may only be necessary to write the name of the article.
It may be appropriate to add the country after the link. Leave the country unlinked.

Page ordering

The following guidelines describe the appropriate ordering of disambiguation pages:

The primary topic, if there is one, should be placed at the top. In cases where a small number of main topics are significantly more likely to be the reader's target, several of the most common meanings may be placed at the top, with other meanings below. See Mojave or Mercury for examples of this.

Long disambiguation pages should be grouped into subject sections, and even subsections as necessary, as described below. These sections (and any subsections) should typically be in alphabetical order, e.g.: Arts and entertainment; Business; Government and politics; Places; Science and technology.

Within each group or section, entries should be ordered to best assist the reader in finding their intended article. Entries are typically ordered first by similarity to the ambiguous title, then alphabetically or chronologically as appropriate. A recommended order is:

· Articles with a clarifier in parentheses: e.g., Moss (band)

· Articles with a clarifier following a comma: e.g., Moss, Monterey County, California

· Articles with the item as part of the name: e.g., Moss Bros (Only include articles whose subject might reasonably be called by the ambiguous title.)

· Synonyms: e.g., Tincture on Spirit (disambiguation)

Some entries may belong in a "See also" section at the bottom of the page:

· Terms which can be confused with Title, for example New Market and Newmarket

· Likely misspellings of Title, for example Belmont, Belmonte and Bellmont

· Different forms of Title, for example Splitting, Split, and Splitter

· Links to indexes of article titles beginning with Title (using {{look from|Title}}) or article titles containing Title (using {{in title|Title}})

· Broader-subject articles that treat the topic in a section: e.g., Brewing as part of a Hops dab page

· Articles with the item as part of the name, but that are unlikely to be called by the ambiguous title: e.g., Spanish moss as part of a Moss dab page.

The "See also" should always be separated from the other entries with a section header. Links to other disambiguation pages should use the "(disambiguation)" link

In the "See also" section of a disambiguation page, an intentional link to another disambiguation page that does not contain "(disambiguation)" in the title should be written as [[Foo (disambiguation)]]. When appropriate, place easily confused terms in a hatnote.

Grouping by subject area

Sometimes the sheer number of topics can make it difficult for a reader to find a particular topic on a disambiguation page. In these cases, it can be helpful to separate entries by subject sections. Section headings should be as simple as possible; Sports is preferred to Sports people or Sports figures, since the nature of the category (people, in this case) should be obvious.

Subject areas should be chosen carefully to simplify navigation. Use subject areas that are well-defined, and that group the entries into similarly sized sections. Very small sections may impede navigation, and should usually be avoided. Entries which do not fit neatly into any section should be placed in an "Other uses" section or subsection, at the bottom of the page or section (but above any "See also" section). The "Other uses" section should be relatively short; if it becomes excessively long, it may indicate that the page should be reorganized. Example:

Thingamajig may refer to:

In science:

· Thingamajig (biology), an invasive plant used as ground cover
· Thingamajig (chemistry), an isotope of chlorine
· Thingamajig (physics), a kind of pulsar

In world music:

· Thingamajig (Peru), a wind instrument similar to an aulos
· Thingamajig (Qatar), a seven-stringed musical instrument
· Thingamajig (UK), a wind instrument, similar to, but longer than the Peruvian one

On longer lists, section headings should be used instead of, or in addition to, bold headings. Using more than one level may be necessary, as on Aurora (disambiguation). Always use ==Level two== as the highest-level header. Section headings should not include links.

On longer lists, {{TOC right}} may be used to move the table of contents to the right hand side of the page. This reduces the amount of white space and may improve the readability of the page. If used, {{TOC right}} should be placed after the lead section of the wiki markup and immediately before the first section heading. Users of screen readers do not expect any text between the TOC and the first heading, and having no text above the TOC is confusing.

Images and templates

Including images and transcluding templates are discouraged unless they aid in selecting between articles on the particular search term in question. Examples of this are the images at Congo (disambiguation) and Mississippi Delta (disambiguation).

Icons, including flag icons, should not be used on disambiguation pages. Only if flag topics are being disambiguated and images are needed to do so, then flag icons or flag images might be added.

The disambig notice and categorization

After all of the disambiguation content (including the "See also" section, if present), but before any categories (see below) or interlanguage links, a template should be placed identifying the page as a disambiguation page. This generates a message to the reader explaining the purpose of the page, and also places the page in the appropriate category or categories.

The usual template to use is {{disambig}}, which produces a general disambiguation notice, and places the page in Category:Disambiguation pages. Parameters can be added to place the page additionally into other more specific disambiguation categories. For example, if a page includes multiple places and multiple people with the same surname (and possibly other items), use {{disambig|geo|surname}}. A full list of available parameters and their corresponding categories can be found in the {{disambig}} template documentation.

If a disambiguation page consists exclusively of items in one of the more specific classes, then a specific template should be used instead of {{disambig}}. For example, use {{geodis}} for locations, {{hndis}} for human names and so on. A full list can be found in the {{disambig}} template documentation.

If a disambiguation page needs cleaning up to bring it into conformance with this style manual, use {{disambig-cleanup}}. This replaces both {{disambig}} and {{cleanup-date}}.

Do not use {{subst:disambig}} or {{subst:disambig-cleanup}}, as the contents of this notice may change in the future Also, the Wikipedia software relies on links to the templates to determine which pages are disambiguation pages , and subst'ing breaks this feature.

Most disambiguation pages do not need to be placed into any categories other than those generated by the template. If such cases do arise (for example, specific categories of personal names that do not have corresponding template parameters), then the additional categories should be placed after the template.

Disambiguation pages with only two entries

A disambiguation page with only two meanings is not necessary if one of them is the primary topic for that term. The recommended practice in these situations is to place a hatnote on the primary topic article to link directly to the secondary topic. The {{for}} and {{redirect}} templates are useful. A two-entry disambiguation page with a primary topic can be tagged with {{only-two-dabs}}.

If neither of the two meanings is primary, then a normal disambiguation page is still used at the base name.

SUMMARY

When you edit disambiguation pages;

DO THE FOLLOWING

· Put the target link at the start of each entry.
· Keep descriptions short.
· Organize, in sections if needed, with "other uses" last.
· List the primary topic first, if one exists.
· Link to {{Wiktionary}}, if useful.
· Fix incoming links to point to the intended page.
· Tag pages needing work with {{disambiguation cleanup}}

DO NOT DO THE FOLLOWING

· Don't pipe links, unless formatting requires it.
· Don't include multiple blue links in an entry.
· Don't include entries without a blue link.
· Don't include red links that aren't used elsewhere.
· Don't include every article containing the title.
· Don't include dictionary definitions.
· Don't include references or external links.


Article Layout

Layout matters. Good articles start with introductions, continue with a clear structure, and end with standard appendices such as references and related articles.

Structure of an article

Introductory material

Good articles start with a brief lead section introducing the topic. We discuss lead sections in greater detail below. The lead section should come above the first header; it is almost never useful to add something like ==Introduction==. Sometimes, the first section after the lead is a broad summary of the topic, and is called "Overview", although more specific section titles and structures are generally preferred.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs should be short enough to be readable, but long enough to develop an idea. Overly long paragraphs should be split up, as long as the cousin paragraphs keep the idea in focus.

One-sentence paragraphs are unusually emphatic, and should be used sparingly. Articles should rarely, if ever, consist solely of such paragraphs.

Some paragraphs are really tables or lists in disguise. They should be rewritten as prose or converted to their unmasked form.

Headings

Headings help clarify articles and create a structure shown in the table of contents.
Headings are hierarchical. The article's title uses a level 1 heading, so you should start with a level 2 heading (==Heading==) and follow it with lower levels: ===Subheading===, ====Subsubheading====, and so forth. Whether extensive subtopics should be kept on one page or moved to individual pages is a matter of personal judgment.

Headings should not be wikilinked. This is because headings in themselves introduce information and let the reader know what subtopics will be presented; Wikilinks should be incorporated in the text of the section.

Images

If the article can be illustrated with pictures, find an appropriate place to position these images, where they relate closely to text they illustrate. If there might be doubt, draw attention to the image in the text (illustration right).

Standard appendices

Optional appendix sections containing the following information may appear after the body of the article in the following order:

· A list of books or other works created by the subject of the article (works)

· A list of internal "wikilinks" to related Wikipedia articles

· Notes and references (notes, footnotes, or references)

· A list of recommended relevant books, articles, or other publications that have not been used as sources (further reading)

· A list of recommended relevant websites that have not been used as sources (external links).

With some exceptions, any links to sister projects appear in further reading or external links sections. Succession boxes and navigational footers go at the end of the article, following the last appendix section, but preceding the category and interwiki templates.

Size

Excessively long articles should usually be avoided. Articles should ideally contain less than 50 KB worth of prose. When articles grow past this amount of readable text, they can be broken up into smaller articles to improve readability and ease of editing, or may require trimming to remain concise. The headed sub-section should be retained, with a concise version of what has been removed under an italicized header, such as Main article: History of Ruritania. Otherwise, context is lost and the general treatment suffers. Each article on a subtopic should be written as a stand-alone article—that is, it should have a lead section, headings, et cetera.

When an article is long and has many sub articles, try to balance the main page. Do not put undue weight into one part of an article at the cost of other parts. In shorter articles, if one subtopic has much more text than another subtopic, that may be an indication the subtopic should have its own page, with only a summary presented on the main page.

Articles covering subtopics

Wikipedia articles tend to grow in a way that leads to the natural creation of new articles. The text of any article consists of a sequence of related but distinct subtopics. When there is enough text in a given subtopic to merit its own article, that text can be summarized in the present article and a link provided to the more detailed article. Cricket is an example of an article covering subtopics: it is divided into subsections that give an overview of the sport, with each subsection leading to one or more subtopic articles.

Recommended order of article elements

A simple article should have at least a lead section and references. As editors add complexity where required, the elements (such as sections and templates) that are used typically appear in the following order, although they would not all appear in the same article at the same time:

1. Before the lead section
Hatnotes
Deletion/Protection tags (CSD, PROD, AFD, PP notices)
Maintenance / dispute tags
Infoboxes
Foreign character warning boxes
Images
Navigational boxes (header navboxes)

2. Body
Lead section (also called the introduction)
Table of contents (TOC)
Content

3. Appendices
Works or publications (for biographies only)
See also
Notes and references (this can be two sections in some citation systems)
Further reading
External links

4. Bottom matter
Succession boxes and geography boxes
Other navigation templates (footer navboxes)
Geographical coordinates (if not in Infobox) or {{coord missing}}
Authority control template
{{featured list}}, {{featured article}} and {{good article}} (where appropriate for article status)
Defaultsort
Categories
Stub template

Hatnotes

Hatnotes are short notes placed at the top of an article or section of an article. Hatnotes help readers locate a different article they might be seeking. Readers may have arrived at the article containing the hatnote because they were redirected, because the sought article uses a more specific, disambiguated title, or because the sought article and the article with the hatnote have similar names. Hatnotes provide links to the possibly sought article or to a disambiguation page.

Tables of content (TOC)

When a page in Wikipedia contains at least four headings of level 2, Wikipedia inserts automatically a TOC at the end of the lead section just before the first heading.

A TOC facilitates navigation within the pages, particularly in long articles. If you want to show the TOC in other place of the page you must insert _TOC_ in the point of the text you want. For many more options involving TOC's you can go to the Assistant of magic words.

Lead section

The lead section (also known as the lead or introduction) of a Wikipedia article is the section before the TOC and the first heading. The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents. It is not a news-style lead or lede paragraph.

The lead is the first part of the article that most people will read. For many, it may be the only section that they read. A good lead section cultivates the reader's interest in reading more of the article, but not by teasing the reader or hinting at content that follows. The lead should be written in a clear, accessible style with a neutral point of view.

The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies. The notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences. Like in the body of the article itself, the emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources. Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article.

As a general rule of thumb, a lead section should contain no more than four well- composed paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate.

The lead section may contain optional elements presented in the following order:

1. Disambiguation links (dablinks)
2. Maintenance tags

3. Infoboxes
4. Foreign character warning boxes
5. Images

6. Navigational boxes (navigational templates)
7. Introductory text, and

8. Table of contents, moving to the heading of the first section.

Sections

Articles longer than a stub are generally divided into sections, and sections over a certain length are generally divided into paragraphs; these divisions enhance the readability of the article. The names and orders of section headings are often determined by the relevant WikiProject, although articles should still follow good organizational and writing principles regarding sections and paragraphs.

Headings introduce sections and subsections, clarify articles by breaking up text, organize content, and populate the table of contents. Very short or very long sections and subsections in an article look cluttered and inhibit the flow of the prose.

Headings follow a six-level hierarchy, starting at 1 and ending at 6. The level of the heading is defined by the number of equal signs on either side of the title. Heading 1 (=Heading 1=) is automatically generated as the title of the article, and is never appropriate within the body of articles. Sections start at the second level (==Heading 2==), with subsections at the third level (===Heading 3===), and additional levels of subsections at the fourth level (====Heading 4====), fifth level, and sixth level.

This assistant helps to create headings of three nesting levels:

· Heading (level 2) - These are the headings of the highest level. It produces headings of a large serif font followed by a line all along the page. It is equivalent to the <h2></h2> tag of HTML code. Level 1 is restricted to the title of the article, which should not be included in the article.

· Heading (level 3) - These are headings with a sans serif font of a smaller size, but bigger than the regular text.It is equivalent to the <h3></h3> HTML tag.

· Heading (level 4) - These are headings of an even smaller font size in bold.It is equivalent to the <h4></h4> HTML tag.

Once you know the sintaxis, you can create headings for the fifth and sixth levels, but notice that these are not so easily distinguished from the subtitles of level 4.

Between adjacent sections, there should be a single blank line, but there is no need to include a blank line between a heading and sub-heading.

(For more recommendations see Wikipedia:Writing better articles in: Guidelines)


User pages

User Pages & User Talk Pages

User pages are administration pages in the User and User talk namespaces, and are useful for organizing and aiding the work users do on Wikipedia, and facilitating interaction and sharing between users. User pages are mainly for interpersonal discussion, notices, testing and drafts (see: Sandboxes), and, if desired, limited autobiographical and personal content.

User pages are available to Wikipedia users personally for purposes compatible with the Wikipedia project and acceptable to the community; Wikipedia is not a blog, webspace provider, or social networking site. Wikipedia policies concerning the content of pages can and generally do apply to user pages, and users must observe these policies. Users believed to be in violation of these policies should first be advised on their talk page using {{subst:uw-userpage}} when immediate action is not otherwise necessary.

Your user page has a name like this: User:Example. (This link is to yours.) Its normal use is to give basic information, if you wish, about yourself or your Wikimedia-related activities. You don't have to say anything about yourself. If you prefer to put nothing here, then you can redirect it to your user talk page for the convenience of other editors. You may also wish to create a global user page that will display on all Wikimedia projects where you have not created a local user page.

What may I have in my user pages?

There is no fixed use for user pages, except that usually one's user page has something about oneself, and one's talk page is used for messaging. Provided other users can quickly and easily find the pages they need, users may, within reason, freely organize their user pages as they choose.

Users may include a user page notice on their own user pages, user talk pages, or both. Placing the template {{User page}} at the start of a user page clearly identifies the nature of the page for readers, and also helps if people find the labeled page in copies of Wikipedia elsewhere (more about this below) and want to locate the original.

Contributions can also be given a wider license – for example releasing them into the public domain or multi-licensing them – by putting a notice to this effect on one's user page, or on a subpage linked from it. Note that it is not possible to give them narrower licensing: all edits on Wikipedia, including all userspace edits, are licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License and in most cases the GNU Free Documentation License as part of Wikipedia.

User pages may be mirrored by other sites. If there is material you do not want copied, reposted, or reused, do not post it on the site.

Besides communication, other legitimate uses of user space include (but are not limited to):

· Significant editing disclosures (voluntary but recommended)

· Notes related to your Wikipedia work and activities

· Work in progress or material that you may come back to in future (usually on subpages)

· Useful links, tools, and scripts

· Personal writings suitable within the Wikipedia community

· Experimentation (usually on subpages)

· Limited autobiographical content

· A small and proportionate amount of suitable unrelated material

You are also welcome to include a simple link to your personal home page, although you should not surround it with any promotional language. However, if a link to your home page is the only thing on your userpage, this may be seen as an attempt at self- promotion.

User pages are also used for administrative purposes, to make users aware of blocks, warnings, or other sanctions if they happen, and to notify of matters that may affect articles you have worked on or editorial issues you have been involved with. Others may also edit your user pages, for instance awarding you a barnstar or leaving notes and images for you, or adding comments and questions. Although you have wide leeway to edit your user pages, a few of these matters should not be removed (see below).

Personal material

Some people add personal information such as contact details (email, instant messaging, etc.), a photograph, their real name, their location, information about their areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, etc. Once added this information is unlikely to ever become private again. It could be copied elsewhere or even used to harass you in the future. You are cautioned to think carefully before adding non-public information to your user page because you are unlikely to be able to retract it later, even if you change your mind.

Userboxes

Userboxes are fun little boxes you can put in your user page to express yourself.

What may I not have in my user pages?

Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal website. Your user page is about you as a Wikipedian, and pages in your user space should be used as part of your efforts to contribute to the project.

Deletion of user pages

If you wish to delete your own page, tag the top of the page with {{db-u1}}, and an administrator will delete it for you. However, note that user talk pages are normally not deleted.

Templates

For user pages:

{{User info}}

{{User page}}

{{Userpage blue border}}

{{Userpage Blue}}

{{User page rounded}}

{{Userpageblue%26round}}, i.e., Userpageblue&round

{{User page mini}}

{{Userpage (no table)}}

{{Userpage otheruse}} for a cross-reference to an article

{{Userpage bar}} for not mentioning a mirror

For user talk pages:

{{User info talk}}

{{Usertalkpage}}

{{Usertalkpage blue border}}

{{Usertalkpage2}}

{{Usertalk bar}} for not mentioning a mirror

For drafts in the user namespace:

{{Userspace draft}}


Redirects

A redirect is a page which automatically sends visitors to another page, usually an article or section of an article. For example, if you type "UK" in the search box or click on the wikilink UK, you will be taken to the article United Kingdom with a note at the top of the page: "(Redirected from UK)". This is because the page UK contains special wikitext which defines it as a redirect page and indicates the target article. It is also possible to redirect to a specific section of the target page, using more advanced syntax.

Redirect pages can contain other content below the redirect, such as redirect category templates, and category links (which provide a way to list article sections in categories).

Redirects are used to help people arrive more quickly at the page they want to read; this page contains guidance on how to use them properly.

Reasons for creating redirects

· Alternative names redirect to the most appropriate article title (for example, Edison Arantes do Nascimento redirects to Pelé).

· Plurals (for example, Greenhouse gases redirects to Greenhouse gas).

· Closely related words (for example, Symbiont redirects to Symbiosis).

· Adjectives or adverbs point to noun forms (e.g., Treasonous redirects to Treason)

· Less specific forms of names, for which the article subject is still the primary topic. For example, Einstein redirects to Albert Einstein, whereas Johnson is a disambiguation page rather than a redirect, since no Johnson is regarded as the primary topic for that name.

· More specific forms of names (for example, Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union redirects to Articles of Confederation).

· Abbreviations and initialisms (for example, DSM-IV redirects to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). But often an abbreviation will have multiple meanings, none of which is a primary topic—in that case a disambiguation page should be created rather than a redirect.

· Alternative spellings or punctuation. For example, Colour redirects to Color, and Al-Jazeera redirects to Al Jazeera.

· Punctuation issues—titles containing dashes should have redirects using hyphens.

· Representations using ASCII characters, that is, common transliterations (for example, Pele also redirects to Pelé while Kurt Goedel and Kurt Godel redirect to Kurt Gödel).

· Likely misspellings (for example, Condoleeza Rice redirects to Condoleezza Rice).

· Likely alternative capitalizations (for example, Natural Selection redirects to Natural selection). This is not necessary for user searches made via Wikipedia's search engine, but may aid linking from other articles and external sites, as well as direct URL entry.

· To comply with the maintenance of nontrivial edit history, pursuant to Wikipedia:Merging#PROMERGE for copyright licensing requirements.

· Sub-topics or other topics which are described or listed within a wider article. (Such redirects are often targeted to a particular section of the article.)

· Redirects to disambiguation pages that do not contain "(disambiguation)" in the title (for example, Durham (disambiguation) redirects to Durham). These help maintenance by allowing deliberate links to disambiguation pages to be distinguished from links that need to be disambiguated.

· Shortcuts (for example, Wikipedia:V redirects to Wikipedia:Verifiability). This is commonly done in project space, but not in article space.

· Old-style CamelCase links (if already in existence) (AnnaKournikova redirects to Anna Kournikova).

· Links auto-generated from Exchangeable image file format information (Adobe Photoshop CS Windows redirects to Adobe Photoshop).

· Finding what links to a section, when links are made to the redirect rather than the section.

· There are redirect templates to explain the reason for a redirect.

Note that redirects to other Wikimedia projects, other websites, or special pages do not work. These should be avoided or replaced with a {{soft redirect}} template. Soft redirects are also used in category space (using the {{category redirect}} template).

How to make a redirect

To create a basic redirect, type #REDIRECT [[target page name here]] as the only text on the page. For instance, if you were redirecting from "UK" to "United Kingdom", this would be the entire body of the "UK" page:

#REDIRECT [[United Kingdom]]

Redirects can also be automatically created when you move (rename) an existing page.

Targeted redirects

It is also possible to create a targeted redirect, i.e. a redirect to a particular point on the target page—either a section header or an anchor. The text given in the link on a targeted redirect page must exactly match the target section heading or anchor text, including capitalization and punctuation.

It is often helpful to leave a hidden comment in the target text, to inform other editors that a section title is linked, so that if the title is altered, the redirect can be changed. For example:

==Vaccine overload==
<!-- linked from redirect [[Vaccine overload]] -->

To create a redirect to a point on the page other than a section heading, create an explicit target anchor in the page, e.g., by using the {{anchor}} template. Alternative anchors for section headings are ideally placed directly in front of the text of the heading:

=={{Anchor|anchor name}}Section title==).

The anchor text will not be visible, but it will serve as a permanent marker of that place on the page. Editors should generally not remove or alter such anchors without checking all incoming links and redirects.

#REDIRECT [[target page name here#Section header or Anchor]]

Warning

· Don't give an anchor the same name as a section heading – this creates invalid code, as anchor names must be unique.

· Be careful with anchor capitalization – section redirects are case-sensitive in standards-compliant browsers.

Double redirects

The software will not follow chains of more than one redirect – this is called a double redirect. A redirect should not be left pointing to another redirect page.

Double redirects often arise after a page is moved (renamed) – after moving a page, check whether there are any redirects to the old title (using the link on the move result page, or using "What links here"), and change them to redirect straight to the new title. (Double redirects are usually fixed by a bot after some time.)

Linking to a redirect

You can link to a redirect page just as you can link to an article page by placing the redirect page name within a set of double brackets, such as:

[[Redirect page name]]

replacing Redirect page name with the name of the redirect page to link.

To link to a redirect page without following the underlying redirect, use: {{No redirect|Redirect page name}} replacing Redirect page name with the name of the redirect page to link. Clicking on a no-redirect link will send the reader to the redirect page rather than the final redirect destination.


Titles in Wikipedia

Article Titles in Wikipedia

An article title is the large heading displayed above the article's content and the basis for the article's page name and URL. The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.

The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article, or it may be a description of the topic. Because no two articles can have the same title, it is sometimes necessary to add distinguishing information, often in the form of a description in parentheses after the name. Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. When this offers multiple possibilities, editors choose among them by considering several principles: the ideal article title resembles titles for similar articles, precisely identifies the subject, and is short, natural, distinguishable and recognizable.

This page explains in detail the considerations, or naming conventions, on which choices of article title are based. If necessary, an article's title can be changed by a page move.

Deciding on an article title

Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. There is often more than one appropriate title for an article. In that case, editors choose the best title by consensus based on the considerations that this page explains.

A good Wikipedia article title has the five following characteristics:

Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize.

Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.

Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.

Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.

Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, in the box above.

These should be seen as goals, not as rules. For most topics, there is a simple and obvious title that meets these goals satisfactorily. If so, use it as a straightforward choice. However, in some cases the choice is not so obvious. It may be necessary to favor one or more of these goals over the others. This is done by consensus. For instance, the recognizable, natural, and concise title United Kingdom is preferred over the more precise title United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Redirects should be created to articles that may reasonably be searched for or linked to under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names). Conversely, a name that could refer to several different articles may require disambiguation.

Treatment of alternative names

By the design of Wikipedia's software, an article can only have one title. When this title is a name, significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph. If there are at least three alternative names, or there is something notable about the names themselves, a separate name section is recommended. These may include alternative spellings, longer or shorter forms, historic names, significant names in other languages, etc.

Article title format

The following points are used in deciding on questions not covered by the five principles; consistency on these helps avoid duplicate articles:

· Use sentence case

Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text. When this is done, the title is simple to link to in other articles: Northwestern University offers more graduate work than a typical liberal arts college. Note that the capitalization of the initial letter is ignored in links. For initial lowercase letters, as in eBay, see the technical restrictions page.

· Use the singular form

Article titles are generally singular in form, e.g. Horse, not Horses. Exceptions include nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers) and the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages).

· Avoid ambiguous abbreviations

Abbreviations and acronyms are often ambiguous and thus should be avoided unless the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject (e.g. NATO, laser, SCSI). It is also unnecessary to include an acronym in addition to the name in a title. Acronyms may be used for parenthetical disambiguation (e.g. Conservative Party (UK), Georgia (U.S. state)).

· Avoid definite and indefinite articles

Do not place definite or indefinite articles (the, a, and an) at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea) or otherwise change the meaning (e.g. The Crown). They are noise words that needlessly lengthen article titles, and interfere with sorting and searching.

· Use nouns

Nouns and noun phrases are normally preferred over titles using other parts of speech; such a title can be the subject of the first sentence. One major exception is for titles that are quotations or titles of works: A rolling stone gathers no moss, or "Try to Remember". Adjective and verb forms (e.g. elegant, integrate) should redirect to articles titled with the corresponding noun (Elegance, Integration), although sometimes they are disambiguation pages, like Organic and Talk. Sometimes the noun corresponding to a verb is the gerund (-ing form), as in Swimming.

· Do not enclose titles in quotes

Article titles that are quotes (or song titles, etc.) are not enclosed in quotation marks (e.g. To be, or not to be is the article title, whereas "To be, or not to be" is a redirect to that article). An exception is made when the quotation marks are part of a name or title (as in the TV episode Marge Simpson in: "Screaming Yellow Honkers" or the album "Heroes" (David Bowie album)).

· Do not create subsidiary articles

Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another: even if an article is considered subsidiary to another (as where summary style is used), it should be named independently. For example, an article on transport in Azerbaijan should not be given a name like "Azerbaijan/Transport" or "Azerbaijan (transport)", use Transport in Azerbaijan.

· Follow reliable sources for names of persons

When deciding whether to use middle names, or initials, follow the guidelines , which means using the form most commonly used by reliable sources (e.g. John F. Kennedy, J. P. Morgan, F. Scott Fitzgerald), with few if any exceptions.

· Special characters

There are technical restrictions on the use of certain characters in page titles. The following characters cannot be used at all: # < > [ ] | { } _ There are restrictions on titles containing colons, periods, and some other characters, which may be addressed through Template:Correct title. Technically, all other Unicode characters can be used in page titles. However, some characters should still be avoided or require special treatment:

Characters not on a standard keyboard (use redirects): Sometimes the most appropriate title contains diacritics (accent marks), dashes, or other letters and characters not found on most English-language keyboards. This can make it difficult to navigate to the article directly. In such cases, provide redirects from versions of the title that use only standard keyboard characters.

Quotation marks (avoid them): Double ("...") and single quotation marks ('...'), as well as variations such as typographic quotation marks (“...”), "low-high" quotation marks („...“), guillemets («...»), grave and acute accents or backticks (`...´) and <q> HTML tags (<q>...</q>) should be avoided in titles. Exceptions can be made when they are part of the proper title (e.g. "A" Is for Alibi) or required by orthography ("Weird Al" Yankovic).

Similarly, various apostrophe(-like) variants (’ʻ ʾ ʿ ᾿ ῾ ‘ ’ c), should generally not be used in page titles. A common exception is the apostrophe character (') itself (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should, however, be used sparingly (e.g. Quran instead of Qur'an). If, exceptionally, other variants are used, a redirect with the apostrophe variant should be created (e.g. 'Abdu'l-Bahá redirects to `Abdu'l-Bahá).

Symbols (avoid them): Symbols such as "♥", as sometimes found in advertisements or logos, should never be used in titles. This includes non-Latin punctuation such as the characters in Unicode's CJK Symbols and Punctuation block.

Characters not supported on all browsers (avoid them): If there is a reasonable alternative, avoid characters that are so rare that many browsers cannot render them. For example, the article on Weierstrass p carries that title rather than the symbol itself, which many readers would see as just a square box.

Italics and other formatting

Use italics when italics would be used in running text; for example, taxonomic names, the names of ships, the titles of books, films, and other creative works, and foreign phrases are italicized both in ordinary text and in article titles.

Italic formatting cannot be part of the actual (stored) title of a page; adding single quotes to a page title will cause those quotes to become part of the URL, rather than affecting its appearance. A title or part of it is made to appear in italics with the use of the DISPLAYTITLE magic word or the {{Italic title}} template. In addition, certain templates, including Template:Infobox book, Template:Infobox film, and Template:Infobox album, by default italicize the titles of the pages they appear on; see those template pages for documentation.

Other types of formatting (such as bold type and superscript) can technically be achieved in the same way, but should generally not be used in Wikipedia article titles (except for articles on mathematics). Quotation marks (such as around song titles) would not require special techniques for display, but are nevertheless avoided in titles; see Article title format above.

Titles containing "and"

Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a title covering all cases: for example, Endianness covers the concepts "big-endian" and "little-endian". Where no reasonable overarching title is available, it is permissible to construct an article title using "and", as in Promotion and relegation, Balkline and straight rail, Hellmann's and Best Foods, and Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9. (The individual terms – such as Pioneer 6 – should redirect to the combined page, or be linked there via a disambiguation page or hatnote if they have other meanings.)

It is generally best to list topics in alphabetical order, especially those involving different countries or cultures, as in Canada–United States border. However, if there is an obvious ordering, such as at Life and death, that ordering should be followed instead. If one concept is more commonly encountered than the other, it may be listed first. Alternative titles using reverse ordering (such as Relegation and promotion) should be redirects.

Titles containing "and" are often red flags that the article has neutrality problems or is engaging in original research: avoid the use of "and" in ways that appear biased. For example, use Islamic terrorism, not "Islam and terrorism"; however, "Media's coupling of Islam and terrorism" may be acceptable. Avoid the use of "and" to combine concepts that are not commonly combined in reliable sources.


Internal Links
For external links see: External links

An assistant to convert a selected text to an internal link.
All wikitext markup languages have a simple way of hyperlinking to other pages within the site, but there are several different syntax conventions for these links. Many wikis, especially the earlier ones, used CamelCase to mark words that should be automatically linked. In MediaWiki, this convention was replaced with the [[…]] notation, which Wikipedia calls "free links".

In Wikipedia and some other wikis, free links are used in wikitext markup to produce internal links between pages, as opposed to the concept of CamelCase for the same purpose, which was used in the early days of Wikipedia.

In Wikipedia's markup language, you create free links by putting double square brackets around text designating the title of the page you want to link to. Thus, [[Texas]] will be rendered as Texas. Optionally, you can use a vertical bar (|) to customize the link title. For example, typing [[Texas|Lone Star State]] will produce Lone Star State, a link that is displayed as "Lone Star State" but in fact links to Texas.

Link to other wiki article

· Internally, the first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link has the same effect as typing a space, but is not recommended).

· Thus the link hereafter is to the Web address en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport , which is the Wikipedia article with the name "Public transport". See also Canonicalization.

· A red link is a page that doesn't exist yet; it can be created by clicking on the link.

· A link to its own page will appear only as bold text.

London has [[public transport]].

Renders as:

London has public transport.

Renamed link

· Same target, different name.

· The target ("piped") text must be placed first, then the text to be displayed second.

New York also has [[public transport|public transportation]].

Renders as

New York also has public transportation.

Automatically rename links

Simply typing the pipe character | after a link will automatically rename the link in certain circumstances. The next time you open the edit box you will see the expanded piped link. When previewing your edits, you will not see the expanded form until you press Save and Edit again. The same applies to links to sections within the same page.

· Automatically hide stuff in parentheses:

[[kingdom (biology)|]] >>> kingdom

· Automatically hide the comma and following text

[[Seattle, Washington|]] >>> Seattle

· Automatically hide namespace

[[Wikipedia:Village pump|]] >>> Village pump

Or both

[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)|]] >>> Manual of Style

But this doesn't work for section links

[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Links|]] [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Links|]]

Blend link

· Endings are blended into the link.

· Exception: a trailing apostrophe (') and any characters following the apostrophe are not blended.

· Preferred style is to use this instead of a piped link, if possible.

· Blending can be suppressed by using the <nowiki /> tag, which may be desirable in some instances.

Blending active

San Francisco also has [[public transport]]ation. Examples include [[bus]]es, [[taxicab]]s, and [[tram]]s.

San Francisco also has public transportation. Examples include buses, taxicabs, and trams.

Blending suppressed

A [[micro-]]<nowiki />second. >>> A micro-second

Link to a section of a page

· The part after the hash sign (#) must match a section heading on the page. Matches must be exact in terms of spelling, case, and punctuation. Links to non- existent sections are not broken; they are treated as links to the beginning of the page.

· Include "| link title" to create a stylish (piped) link title.

· If sections have the same title, add a number to link to any but the first. #Example section 3 goes to the third section named "Example section". You can use the pipe and retype the section title to display the text without the # symbol.

Example #1

[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics]] is a link to a section within another page.

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics is a link to a section within another page.

Example #2

[[#Links and URLs]] is a link to another section on the current page. [[#Links and URLs|Links and URLs]] is a link to the same section without showing the # symbol.

#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.

Example #3

[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics|Italics]] is a piped link to a section within another page.

Italics is a piped link to a section within another page.

Interwiki link

Interwiki links are links to any page on other wikis. Interwikimedia links link to other Wikimedia wikis. Note that interwikimedia links use the internal link style, with double square brackets.

By adding a prefix to another project, internal link style ("prefixed internal link style") can be used to link to a page of another project. A system of short-handed link labels is used to refer to different projects, in the context of interproject linking, as seen within the actual source text. Most common wikiprojects:

Project | Long form | shortcut
Wikipedia Wiktionary Wikinews Wikibooks Wikiquote Wikisource Wikispecies Wikiversity Wikivoyage Wikidata | [[wikipedia:]] [[wiktionary:]] [[wikinews:]] [[wikibooks:]] [[wikiquote:]] [[wikisource:]] [[wikispecies:]] [[wikiversity:]] [[wikivoyage:]] [[wikidata:]] | [[w:]] [[wikt:]] [[n:]] [[b:]] [[q:]] [[s:]] [[species:]] [[v:]] [[voy:]] [[d:]]

Example

For example, to link from here to the "surfeit" article on Wiktionary, you would include the wikilink [[wikt:surfeit]] It would appear as follows: wikt:surfeit.

The long form doesn't work within the same project. The shortcut works everywhere. (That is the intention; currently, it does not work on all projects.)

The interwiki map on Meta lists many prefixes, among others, [[wikipedia:]] ([[wikipedia:]]) for the English Wikipedia, working from any wiki supporting the Meta interwiki map, not only from MediaWiki wikis. Some prefixes work only with a page, for example: wikipediawikipedia: (fails) vs. wikipediawikipedia:Interwikimedia link (works). These prefixes are case insensitive.

Non-Wikimedia interwiki codes have a limitation, that they can only be used through a link. For example, the entry for "John" on Wiktionary, a Wikimedia project, can be accessed by [[wikt:John]] or http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/wikt:John . However, the latter method does not work for non-Wikimedia wikis. For example, the main page on the Mozilla Wiki can be accessed via [[MozillaWiki:Main Page]], but http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MozillaWiki:Main_Page results in an error. In these cases, Special:Search can be used ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/MozillaWiki:Main_Page ). You can see the Interwiki special page for a list of "forward" and "non-forward" prefixes.

In Interwiki linking, in the case of linking to another Wiki project, but in a different language, this may be done by first putting the project link target, then a colon followed by the target language as a prefix to the article page name, in the form:

[[projectname:languagecode:articlename]].

For example, to link from en.Wikipedia to a Chinese language text at Wikisource (zh.wikisource):

Type: [[wikisource:zh:天問]] To get: wikisource:zh:天問

Type: [[wikisource:zh:天問|天問]] To get: 天問

Type: [[wikisource:zh:天問|Heavenly Questions]] To get: Heavenly Questions

These 3 examples all resolve to the zh.wikisource page 天問, but without the misleading and distracting appearance of being an external link.

Interlanguage links

Interlanguage links are links from a page in one Wikipedia language to an equivalent page in another language. These links can appear in two places:

· In the "Languages" list – a sidebar that appears on the left side (default position) of the current page.

· Inline, in the text of a page ("local" links).

These two types of links are created and handled differently.

As of February 2013, the use of "local" links for interlanguage linking has been deprecated, with interlanguage link data being centralized on Wikidata, a structured knowledge base project. Pages with their interlanguage links on Wikidata display an "Edit links" button under the language list.

Wikidata

Wikidata is a separate project to create a collaboratively edited knowledge base. Part of this project is to centralize the interlanguage links for all the Wikipedia projects. The Wikidata entry for a page contains (among other things) a list of links for that entry in different languages. This list of links is then used for the list shown on the page in Wikipedia.

At the bottom of the Wikidata language list is a link labelled 'Edit links'. Clicking on this will reveal two text boxes, one for the language and another for the article title. In the first box type in the language code, for example, for Irish use the code "ga". In the second box, type the name of the article as it appears in that language's Wikipedia. Then click save. You can get directly to the Wikidata entry for a page by clicking the link labelled 'Data item' in the Toolbox section of the sidebar. The link does not appear on pages that haven't been linked to an item.
To edit an entry on Wikidata, click on the edit link next to the entry you wish to edit. A textbox will appear allowing you to edit the entry. Click on save when you are done.
You can remove a page from the list of Wikidata's links. To do so click edit, then click on the remove link.

When not to use Wikidata

If the scope of the two items is not in fact the same (typically, the article in one language is wider in scope than the article in the other language) and then they should not be linked. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism in Wikidata at present for linking articles that are related, but different in scope; it is possible to do it with local links.

Local links

Before Wikidata, interlanguage links had to be recorded in the text of the page itself. The problem with this approach was that each language had to maintain its own separate lists. So for example, if the name of a page on the English Wikipedia changed, then each language that linked to that page would have to separately notice this fact and then change their own links.

For most pages, these links are no longer needed and can be safely removed, but you should verify that the local list and the Wikidata lists match before doing so. There is an automated tool to help with that.

The local links do however still serve some purposes:

· They override the information that comes from Wikidata.

· They are required if more than one article (or redirect) in one language should point to a target article in another language.

· They are required in order to explicitly link to or from redirects. This can be used to level semantical or organizational differences between articles in different Wikipedias so that the links can go to the exact equivalent term in another language rather than to an article with a somewhat different scope or only related topic.

· They are required in order to link to sections of articles. For example, corresponding to the English article Spot welding, in Italian there is only a section rather than a full article, so Spot welding includes the local link [[it:Saldatura#Saldatura a punti]].

· They are required for pages that are not allowed on Wikidata, such as your userpage.

Syntax

The local interlanguage links take the following form:

[[language code:Title]]

where the language code is the two-letter code as per ISO 639-1.

It is recommended interlanguage links be placed at the very end of the article.
Interlanguage links are not visible within the formatted article, but instead appear as language links on the sidebar (to the left) under the menu section "languages".

Example:

Link from English article "Plankton" to the Spanish article "Plancton": [[es:Plancton]]

NOTE: These links are treated specially, and don't show up in the body of the text, but in a special sidebar section "Languages" listed by language name. They can go anywhere in the article source as their placement does not alter the visual appearance of the links on the rendered page except for the order. However, the convention is to put them at the bottom of the page. Remember, you only need these type links if you are overriding the information from Wikidata, otherwise you should edit the links on the Wikidata entry.


External Links
For internal links see: Internal links

External links are links to internet pages which not belong to any of the Wikimedia projects. Those links point to the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the destination page with the HTML scheme, that is, beginning the addresses with http:// or https:// which is the scheme accepted by all browsers. Do not use other schemes like ftp:// , news:// or mailto:// for external links.
A tool to insert external links into pages

Some characters appearing in the URL's do not work well in links, unless those are substituted by its percent code. The most common is the white space, which is substituted by the code %20. In such cases it might be necessary to substitute manually the character by its percent code:

space
%20
"
%22
'
%27
,
%2c
;
%3b
<
%3c
>
%3e
?
%3f
[
%5b
]
%5d

If you want to display an URL with link

If you want to display an URL with a link, you had better use the assistant which allows to create a formatted external link of a displayed URL.

The assistant is quite similar, but the code generated and the results are rather different. This kind of link is based on the template {{URL}}. See templates .

Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia (external links), but they should not normally be placed in the body of an article. All external links must conform to certain formatting restrictions.

Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on- topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy.

Some external links are welcome, but it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a lengthy or comprehensive list of external links related to each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable and common sense. The burden of providing this justification is on the person who wants to include an external link.

Besides those kinds of links, these external-link guidelines do not apply to citations to reliable sources within the body of the article.

If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it.


Citations Linked to the Article
For the Administrator of Citations see: Administrator of citations

An assistant to build, copy, move and insert wikicode for citations in article pages.

Citations linked to the article are those references whose wikicode was built during the edition session of the current article. Every citation or reference you create is, by default, linked to the current article. When you eliminate an article, the linked citations are automatically eliminated as well. But you can also copy or move citations from one article to another with the help of this assistant. A special protected record named !Citations not linked to any article was implemented to let the user save references for future editions, so you do not loose these citations when you delete the articles from which these citations were built.

If you've read many Wikipedia articles, then you've seen plenty of inline citations. These are usually small numbered footnotes like this: [1] They are generally added either directly following the fact they support, or at the end of the sentence they support, following any punctuation. When clicked, they take the reader to a full source in a reference section of the article.

When editing a page using the popular (most common) footnotes style, inline citations are usually between <ref> and </ref> tags.

The information within references is displayed together in one place on a page, wherever the {{Reflist}} template is present. This will usually be in a section titled "References". If you are creating a brand new page, or adding references to a page that didn't previously have any, don't forget to add a references section like the one below. If you don't, the citations you added won't be visible to readers. Such section should be placed at the end of the article and before the Categories:

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

This is by far the most popular system for inline citations, but sometimes you will find other styles being used in an article, such as references in parentheses. As a general rule, the first major contributor to an article gets to choose the referencing system used there. If an article uses a different system than the one you're used to, just copy an existing reference when adding any new reference, then modify it appropriately; don't mix styles.
Manually adding references can be a slow and tricky process. But Offline MediaWiki Code Editor offers an offline way to perform this operation quick and safe through this assistant although you do not know the sintax. The assistant is based on the templates {{Cite book}} , {{Cite journal}} and {{Cite web}} which are also included among the templates stored in the database (see: Templates ).

The Citations linked to the article are those citations tied to the active article. To be linked to an article does not mean that the citation is included into the the article, not appear in the reference list at the end of the article. For a citation to be actual part of an article it must be inserted into the text with the help of this assistant.

The purpose of this assistant is to help you to build the wikitext of the citation, saving you all the efforts to learn the sintax nor building the wikitext by yourself. This assistant offers you the options to:

1. Build citations to be inserted into the active article
2. Move a citation to another article
3. Link a copy of a citation to another article.
4. Eliminate citations
5. Rebrand citations

Every citation must be identified with a unique name. Try to give them short and informative names to handle them better. During the edition of an article you may declare all necessary citations or references you need. The citations so declared will be automatically linked to the active article. There are several types of citations you can built with the help of this assistant:

1. Citations of web pages or news.
2. Citations of books.
3. Citations of journal articles.

Each basic type has its own sintax. Note that some data are required, while other are not. If you fill all the required parameters of a citation you may insert the citation into the article clicking the command button <Insert citation>.

Citations of web pages

For web citations or news, it is required the URL of the page and its title. Other data are optional, but it is recommended to include also the date of publication and the name of the website.

Citations of books

For citations of books it is only required the title, although it is recommended to include authors' names, year of publication, ISBN, page and place of publication.

Citations of journal articles

For citations of journals it is required to enter the authors' names, year of publication, article title and name of the journal, but it is also recommended to include data of consultation, publisher, volume, number and pages.

The citations are kept linked to the article, until they are eliminated or moved to other article.

First appearance of a citation in an article

Often you will want to use the same source more than once in an article to cite multiple facts. In this case, Note that when the wikicode of a citation is generated prior to insertion, the assistant builds two versions of the same citation: One 'long' and another 'short'. For the first insertion of a citation into an article the assistant uses the 'long' (full) version.

When you insert a citation into an article, the text of the citation will not be shown in the site of the insertion in the browser window, but a numbered link instead. Don't forget to add a "References" section at the end of the article.

Additional appearances

To all additional appearances of the same article the assistant will insert the 'short' version which does not contains all data, but only the identifier of the citation.

Citations are saved

The application stores the wikicode relative to all citations linked to the article, although some of them may have not been inserted into the article. In other words, what is saved is only the wikicode generated by the assistant, but no the individual data employed to build the wikicode. Both long and short codes are saved, so you can reutilize this code for future articles.

Limitations of the assistant

This assistant does not cover all possible kinds of citations. So if you need to cite some other kind of source you may turn to the repository for templates and choose the type of citation you are interested in. The repository contains templates for citing conferences, encyclopedias, court decisions, radio or TV episodes, maps, patents, audio-video media and video games.

In interest of simplicity, the assistant for citations does not consider all parameters of the different templates involved, but only the most commonly used parameters. If you need to include more parameters in any of your citations, open the Repository of Templates and select the Citations or references group of templates. Then choose the template of your interest and insert it in the Edit Window . Finally fill the data manually.

List of authors

For the sake of simplicity the assistant was designed to list authors without credit. If you need to cite a credited author you should manually change the parameter |authors = for the parameters |last = and |first = (for the last name and the first name of the author) in the generated code. For several credited authors you should then use the parameters |last =, |first =, |last2 = and |first2 = and so forth. But you have to change these parameters manually (see the repository of templates for more options).

Common errors in citations

Dates

The |access-date= (or its alias, |accessdate=) is the date that the online resource addressed by |url= was added to the article. If |access-date= has been included in the citation without |url= then this message appears. If the citation does not use a web link, then |access-date= is redundant and should be removed. Without |url=, |access-date= is not considered useful. To resolve this error, provide a value for |url= or remove |access-date=.

URL value

The URL parameter must begin with a supported URI scheme. The URI schemes http://, https:// and the protocol relative scheme // are most commonly used; irc://, ircs://, ftp://, news:, mailto: and gopher:// are also supported.

Invisible character errors

An error is reported for citations with parameter values that contain invisible or non- printable characters known as control characters; the error includes the position at which the character can be found. For example: Line feeds U+0010 (LF) and carriage returns, U+0013 (CR) are common errors.

To resolve invisible-character errors, remove or replace the identified character. Because these characters are mostly invisible, the error message identifies the character's position in the parameter value counted from the left.


Templates

Assistant for Templates
For the Administrator of Templates see: Administrator of Templates

An assistant to insert templates stored in the database application.

A template is a Wikipedia page created to be included in other pages. Templates usually contain repetitive material that might need to show up on any number of articles or pages. They are commonly used for boilerplate messages, standard warnings or notices, infoboxes, navigational boxes and similar purposes.

The most common method of inclusion is called transclusion, where the wikitext of the target page contains a reference to the template, using the {{Template name}} syntax. Another method is substitution, where the content of the template is copied into the wikitext of the target page, just once, when it is saved.

Templates can contain any desired wikitext, including calls to other templates. They have some limited programming capacities: customizable values (called parameters), calculation and branchings (using parser functions) and access to wiki-specific variables (magic words), such as dates, times, and page names. They may also contain tags which define which parts of the wikitext are to be included when the template is transcluded or substituted. This means that the appearance of the template page itself need not be the same as that of the transcluded content (for example, it can contain documentation, categories, etc. for the template).

Notice that the same double-brace syntax is used for many MediaWiki variables and parser functions (see Help:Magic words). For example, the code {{NAMESPACE}} may look like a template call, but it is actually a variable whose value is the namespace prefix of the current page.

To transclude a template in an article type {{template name}} in the wikitext in the point where the template should appear.

Sintax

The basic transclusion sintaxis given above may be extended with the addition of parameters, used to control the display. The sintaxis is:

{{template name | parameter | parameter |...}}

where template name is the name of the template and each parameter may contain a value (unnamed parameters) or be in the form name=value (named parameters). The unnamed parameters are given numbers 1, 2, 3 etc.

White spaces, line-breaks and tabulations are disregarded from the beginning and end of the named parameters and values, but not from the middle: thus {{...| myparam = this is a test }} has the same value than {{...|myparam=this is a test}}. This is not applied to unnamed parameters, where all white spaces are preserved.
The parameters (if any) that can pass to a template, and the way they should be named depend on the codification of that template. The named parameters may appear in any order. The superfluous or non-identified parameters will be ignored, while unnamed parameters will receive default values. If a parameter is defined more than once, the last value will be taken.

A parameter value may be left blank (the vertical pipe or equal sign may appear before the following vertical pipe or by the closing braces. This is different from omitting the parameter leaving it undefined, although the templates are often codified to behave the same way in both cases.

Call

To call a template is not like calling a variable or function in a programming language: It is called with a reference and it returns a value. But like functions, some templates accept parameters that change the layout.

In MediaWiki, the variables have a more specific meaning which distinguish them from the templates, but both are identified by double braces {{ }} and both return a value.

While the variable names in MediaWiki are all in capital letters (see: Magic Words ), the template names have the same basic characteristics and limitations than all page names; they are case sensitive (except the first character), lower dashes become spaces, these cannot contain any of the characters # < > [ ] | { } because are reserved for wiki and HTML code.

Substitution

When a template is substituted, its content is inserted in the page instead being transcluded.

Examples with parameters

An example of a template which take parameters is {{about}}. Try typing {{about|how to use templates|how to use modules|Help:Module}} in the sandbox an it will produce the following text:

This page is about how to use templates. For how to use modules, see Help:Module.

{{about}} uses three unnamed parameters in this example, but you can use the template with a different number of parameters to produce a slightly different result. For example:

{{about || how to use modules | Help:Module}}.

Note that there is an empty parameter. At this instance the consecutive vertical pipes mean that the first parameter is an empty string, so in this template the initial phrase will be omitted, and the result will be:

For how to use modules, see Help:Module.

Other templates, the most complex ones, take named parameters or a combination of named and unnamed parameters. A simple example is the template Payoff matrix used to obtain a 2x2 grid. Example:

{{payoff matrix | UL = 5 | UR = 7 | DL = 2 | DR = 9 | Name = Example usage }}

left right
5
7
2
9

Example usage

This template is used without defining all possible parameters. The undefined parameters take default values. The spaces around equal signs are only shown for clarity, but are not necessary and are ignored evaluating the templates (although this do no happen with the unnamed parameters.

The names of the parameters are case sensitive. For example: You can not substitute "DR" by "dr" or "dR". When named parameters are not used, these are ignored.

Infoboxes

Templates for Infoboxes are mostly represented in this repository. Those are more than one- third of all templates stored in the application. Although the assistant contains by default more than 80 templates for infoboxes, including 55 of the most commonly used, these are only a fraction of the total. There are hundreds of templates, too much of them, and the editors are always creating new templates or improving the existing ones.

You can use any of the templates stored in the application, and also add templates of your particular field of interest you may have copied from Wikipedia (see: Administrator of Templates )

If you are looking for a particular infobox you may consult the list of infoboxes in the Collection of Guidelines of this application (see: Collection of Guidelines ). But if you are online, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_infoboxes

If you can't find out a suitable infobox template, you still have the resource to emulate one with the help of one of the assistants (see: Infoboxes emulated with tables ). The emulated infoboxes you can build with that assistant are entirely similar to the registered ones, except for the fact that the page will not be automatically included into the corresponding category. But this drawback may be easily overcome assigning manually the article to the corresponding category.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use a template in other projects?

No. If you need to use a template in another version of Wikipedia (in other language) you need to create it in that language. Templates in a language cannot be used in other language.

Are templates case sensitive?

Yes, except the first character, which can be either uppercase or lowercase.

Can I use a template inside another template?

Yes.


Magic words

Assistant for Magic Words

An assistant to insert magic words into a page.
Magic words are features of wiki markup that give instructions to Wikipedia's underlying MediaWiki software. Magic words are of three main kinds: "parser functions", "variables" and "behavior switches". These, for example, can suppress or position the table of contents, disable indexing by external search engines, and produce output dynamically based on the current page or on user-defined conditional logic. Some of these features are especially useful for templates.

Some magic words are case-insensitive, but not all. White
space is stripped from the start and end of keywords and
parameters, as in template syntax.
There are three main types of magic words:
· Behavior switches
· Variables
· Parser functions

Behavior switches

Uppercase words surrounded by double underscores, e.g., __NOTOC__ or other keywords using parser function syntax.
Variables

Uppercase words surrounded by double braces (thus resembling templates), e.g. {{PAGENAME}}. Variables can be grouped into several types:

· Page variables
· Site variables
· Date and time variables
· Revision data variables
· Statistics variables

Page-dependent magic words will affect or return data about the current page, even if the word is added through a transcluded template or included in a system message.

Parser functions

Keywords in double braces with parameters after a colon (some beginning with #), e.g. {{#expr:2+2}}.
It is possible to substitute parser functions and most variables in the same way that templates are substituted (using the subst: keyword). This causes their current value (as evaluated at the time of substitution) to be written into the wikitext.

Parser functions can be grouped into several types:
· Metadata
· Formating
· Path (URL)
· Conditional
· Other functions

This assistant is a repository of more than one hundred Magic words you can use in your edition. These are grouped in twelve clusters, . Just select the magic word you want to use and click on <Insert Magic word> to insert the selected item into the Edit window.


Special Characters

In Wikipedia the accepted characters are only those of the ASCII code (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). This is a code based on the latin alphabet that includes the following characters:

! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
@ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~

Characters not belonging to this code are regarded as special characters and SHOULD NOT be inserted into the wikitext using key combinations. Instead you must insert the corresponding HTML code for each special character. The assistant has the codes for the most used special characters. To insert one of them you should place the cursor in the insertion point and select the desired characters in the drop-down list of characters.

Many characters not on the standard computer keyboard will be useful—even necessary—for projects in a non-Latin-alphabet language. The panel of tools of the Edit window offers the user the possibility to insert many of the most common special characters. Here is a list of the special characters you can insert using the drop-down menu at the panel of tools:

Symbol
String
Result
Cent
&cent;
¢
Pound
&pound;
£
Copyright
&copy;
©
Registered sign
&reg;
®
Degree symbol
&deg;
°
Plus-minus sign
&plusmn;
±
Superscript two
&sup2;
²
Superscript three
&sup3;
³
Superscript one
&sup1;
¹
Micro
&micro;
µ
One quarter
&frac14;
¼
One half
&frac12;
½
Three quarters
&frac34;
¾
Inverted Exclamation Mark
&iexcl;
¡
Inverted Question Mark
&iquest;
¿
Euro (currency)
&euro;
€
Trade mark
&trade;
™
Multiplication sign
&times;
×
Division sign
&divide;
÷
Square root
&radic;
√
Unequal sign
&ne;
≠
Yen (currency)
&yen;
¥
Broken bar
&brvbar;
¦
Section sign
&sect;
§
Umlaut
&uml;
¨
Feminine Ordinal Indicator
&ordf;
ª
Left-pointing double angle quotation mark
&laquo;
«
Not sign
&not;
¬
Acute accent
&acute;
´
Capital letter A with grave
&Agrave;
À
Capital letter A with acute
&Aacute;
Á
Middle dot
&middot;
·
Pilcrow
&para;
¶
Cedilla
&cedil;
¸
Masculine ordinal indicator
&ordm;
º
Macron
&macr;
¯
Left-pointing double angle quotation mark
&laquo;
«
Latin Capital letter A with circumflex
&Acirc;
Â
Latin Capital letter A with diaeresis
&Auml;
Ä
Latin Capital letter Æ
&AElig;
Æ
Latin Capital letter C with cedilla
&Ccedil;
Ç
Latin Capital letter E with grave
&Egrave;
È
Latin Capital letter E with acute
&Eacute;
É
Latin Capital letter E with circumflex
&Ecirc;
Ê
Latin Capital letter E with diaeresis
&Euml;
Ë
Latin Capital letter I with grave
&Igrave;
Ì
Latin Capital letter I with acute
&Iacute;
Í
Latin Capital letter I with circumflex
&Icirc;
Î
Latin Capital letter I with diaeresis
&Iuml;
Ï
Latin Capital letter N with tilde
&Ntilde;
Ñ
Latin Capital letter O with grave
&Ograve;
Ò
Latin Capital letter O with acute
&Oacute;
Ó
Latin Capital letter O with circumflex
&Ocirc;
Ô
Latin Capital letter O with diaeresis
&Ouml;
Ö
Latin Capital letter U with grave
&Ugrave;
Ù
Latin Capital letter U with acute
&Uacute;
Ú
Latin Capital Letter U with circumflex
&Ucirc;
Û
Latin Capital Letter Y with acute
&Yacute;
Ý
Latin Small Letter sharp S
&szlig;
ß
Latin Small Letter A with grave
&agrave;
à
Latin Small Letter A with acute
&aacute;
á
Latin Small Letter A with diaeresis
&auml;
ä
Latin Small Letter Æ
&aelig;
æ
Latin Small Letter C with cedilla
&ccedil;
ç
Latin Small Letter E with grave
&egrave;
è
Latin Small Letter E with acute
&eacute;
é
Latin Small Letter E with circumflex
&ecirc;
ê
Latin Small Letter E with diaeresis
&euml;
ë
Latin Small Letter I with grave
&igrave;
ì
Latin Small Letter I with acute
&iacute;
í
Latin Small Letter I with circumflex
&icirc;
î
Latin Small Letter I with diaeresis
&iuml;
ï
Latin Small Letter N with tilde
&ntilde;
ñ
Latin Small Letter O with grave
&ograve;
ò
Latin Small Letter O with acute
&oacute;
ó
Latin Small Letter O with circumflex
&ocirc;
ô
Latin Small Letter U with grave
&ugrave;
ù
Latin Small Letter U with acute
&uacute;
ú
Latin Small Letter U with circumflex
&ucirc;
û
Latin Small Letter Y with acute
&yacute;
ý
Latin Small Letter Y with diaeresis
&yuml;
ÿ
Latin Capital Letter U with breve
Ŭ
Latin Small Letter U with breve
ŭ
Latin Capital Ligature OE
&Oelig;
Œ
Latin Small Ligature OE
&oelig;
œ
Latin Capital Letter S with caron
&Scaron;
Š
Latin Small Letter S with caron
&scaron;
š
Latin Capital Letter Y with diaeresis
&Yuml;
Ÿ
Right-pointing double angle quotation mark
&raquo;
»
Left double quotations
&ldquo;
“
Right double quotations
&rdquo;
”
Left simple quotations
&lsquo;
‘
Right simple quotations
&rsquo;
’
Lesser or equal
&le;
≤
Greater or equal
&ge;
≥
Therefore
&there4;
∴
Right arrow
&rarr;
→
Down arrow
&darr;
↓
Up arrow
&uarr;
↑
Left arrow
&larr;
←
Double side arrow
&harr;
↔
Infinite
&infin;
∞
Pipe
&#124;
|


Images

For the display of series of images see: Galleries

Menu of assistants for displaying single images

The Menu of images is a panel of buttons which gives you several techniques to display a single image:
· Single image - To display a simple image as is, without modifications. This is the simplest way to insert an image in a page

· Cropped image - To crop an image detail and display it as if it were a new image, You do not need to save it as a new image when you want to emphasize some detail of an existing image.
· Annotated image - To display an image with superimposed annotations. You do not need to embed annotations in an image to point out some details. Embedded annotations do not display well when the images are re-sized neither allow text modifications. Superimposed annotations permit to make use of the same image for different articles in different languages and make easier subsequent editions
.
· Wide image - A solution to display a very wide image inside a box with an horizontal scroll bar which allows readers visualize the entire image.

· Tall image - A solution to display a very tall image inside a box with a vertical scroll bar to save page space and allow readers visualize the entire image.

More complex images

If you need to display more complex images you may combine techniques from different assistants. For example, if you need to display a cropped image with annotations, you do not need to nest templates, because both assistants are based on the same template. Generate code for the cropped image and then generate code for the annotations and combine them in the same template.

If you want to make use of other templates to display complex images, see: Templates


Single images

Assistant for Single Images
For other solutions to display images see: Images

An assistant to insert single images into a page.

Single Images are commonly inserted in Wikipedia articles. But only an image already hosted on Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons can be inserted in Wikipedia articles. Do not attempt to insert images from other sources.

MediaWiki software assumes that the image name you add to an article refers to one at the English Wikipedia, if one exists there. If the English Wikipedia doesn't have an image with that name, the software looks at Commons. That's another good reason to name an image at the Commons in such detail that it's unlikely you'll accidentally choose one that already exists at the English Wikipedia. (No, the software won't warn you.)

Basic recommendations When there is more than one image in an article, spread the images evenly within that article. Each image should be relevant to the section it is in, and normally there should be only one image per section.

For accessibility and other reasons, you should put an image inside the section it belongs to, after any "Main" or "See also" template at the top of the section. The more general rule is to put an image immediately above the paragraph of text to which it most closely belongs. It's certainly okay to have text following the image, within the section where it's placed.

Multiple images within a single section, while not forbidden, can cause problems, particularly if the section is short. In particular, don't place an image on the left side of a section and a second image directly opposite, on the right side. For some readers, this squeezes text into a tiny column between the two images. On some computer screens the images may even overlap. (Even if you know how to use special parameters in the image links to force blank space between the images to avoid squeezing the text, don't do it. The blank text looks terrible on larger computer screens).

Image alignment

Some editors prefer to put all images on the right side of an article, aligned with any infoboxes. Other editors prefer them to be evenly alternated between left and right (for example, one image on the left in one section, and the next image, in a following section, on the right). Either approach is acceptable, but don't get into ownership issues over the arrangement of images—aesthetic judgments are inherently subjective, and not worth fighting about.

One place that's bad for an image is left-aligned immediately under a subheading. The heading ends up directly above the image (making it look somewhat like a label) and puts the subsection text to the right of the image, disconnecting it from the heading. If you want an image left-aligned in a subsection, make sure there is at least a paragraph of text between the image and the subheading. If you absolutely want the image to follow directly after a subsection heading, right-align it.

There are several techniques you can apply with the help of these assistants to insert images, even if you do not know the sintax.

Assistant for single images

Single images are easy to insert into an article if you know the file name (including extension) of the image. This assistant allows to customize:

1. Dimensions of the image
2. Alignment
3. A frame to contain the image
4. Alternative text (for the case the image is not shown)
5. Image caption (recommended)

Clicking on an image opens the image page in Wikimedia Commons by default. But you can point the link to any other page.

If you need to include links inside the caption, you can do this after inserting the image code in the Edit window. In the code, you can find the image caption between the last pipe (|) and the two closing square brackets (]]). Locate the image caption and make the necessary changes.

Assistant for cropped images

The Assistant for cropped images allows to crop an image to obtain an image detail and display it as if it were a single image. With this assistant you can fix the dimensions of the image detail, alignment, heading, caption and background color.

Assistant for images with annotations

This assistant allows the superimposition of explanatory notes on an image. These notes may contain links. Superimposed annotations are always more legible than embedded annotations. Another advantage of superimposed notes is that may be easily modified without touching the images.

The assistant also allows to customize detail dimensions, alignment, headings, caption and background color, likewise the format of the annotations, font size, text color, and background color if you need to highlight the annotations. The assistant also allows to turn the annotations into links.

See also

For other techniques involving images you can use the following templates:

{{Site plan}} To display an image such as a site plan or map with another image superimposed on it.

{{Superimpose}} To place one image over another.

{{Superimpose2}} To place up to 50 image layers over one another.

{{Location map}} To place a single image over another at a map coordinate location.

{{Location map+}} This template places one or more location marks on a map, with optional labels. It is in the same family of templates as the Location map template and the documentation for that template might be helpful. This template uses a helper template, Location map~, one or more times to generate a mark for each location.

{{Overlay}} To place up to 30 marker images of various configurable kinds over a base image with optional grid and legend.


Cropped images

Assistant for Cropped Images
For other solutions to display images see: Images

An assistant to build and insert wikicode for cropped images
A cropped image is part of an image you can show as if it were a different image. If you want to show only a part of an existing image, you can crop this part from that image and show this part as if it were a different image. This allows you to exclude non important parts of the original image and enlarge important parts.

The Assistant for cropped images helps you to show image details in Wikipedia pages even if you do not know the code sintax. This assistant is based on the template {{Annotated image 4}}, also know as {{AI4}} (see Templates :{{Annotated image 4}}).

Required data

The following data are required to crop an image to obtain an image detail:

Image name - Use only the image file name (including extension) and not the complete address. Both rasterized and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images are allowed.

Virtual width of the original image (image-width) - Virtual width (px) that you want to assign to the original image. You can give any size, no rasterized and vectorial images are allowed.matter the real size of the image. What is important here is the final size you decide to show the image detail. It is common to select a virtual width much bigger than the real width of the image as stored in Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons. For example, if you want to show a detail image with a final with of 200_px, while the detail you want to show occupies 1/10 of the total width of the image, then you must assign a virtual width of 10 x 200 = 2000_px, independently from its actual size.

1. Width of the image detail (width) - Final real width (px) you want to assign to the image detail.

2. Height of the image detail (height) - Final real hight (px) you want to assign to the image detail.

3. X-coordinate of the image detail (image-left) - X-coordinate of the detail image's top left corner (in pixels), relative to the top left corner of the box containing the original image (virtual size).

4. Y-coordinate of the image detail (image-top) - Y- coordinate of the detail image's top left corner (in pixes), relative to the top left corner of the box containing the original image (virtual size).

Optional data

The following data are required to crop an image and show an image detail, but enhance the informative value of the image shown:

Header - Adds a header text to the new image. By default, the header will appear centered and with a transparent background.

Caption - Adds a footnote to the resulting image

Alternative text - Alt text of image, for those readers who cannot see the image in their browsers

Box background color - Background color of the box containing the image. The default value is White, but the assistant offers a menu of 10 light shades to choose.

Alignment - Images are aligned to the "right" by default, accordingo to the prevailing style in Wikipedia. But you can switch the alignment to "Left" of "Center".

Wizard

Even if you are familiarized with the procedure of cropping images in Wikipedia, the calculation of the five required measures is rather complicated. The assistant offers a wizard which simplifies the procedure. Obtain a copy of the image you want to crop and do the following:

1. Open the original image with your favorite image editor (for example: Microsoft ® Paint) and take note of the coordinates of the area you want to crop, that is the x,y values of the top left corner and the bottom right corner. Enter the data into the wizard.

2. Enter the dimensions (width x height) of the original image (in pixel).

3. Enter the final desired width (px) you want to show the cropped detail in the Wikipedia page.

4. Click on the wizard button and let the wizard calculate the required data for you.

After doing this you can continue entering the image file name and the optional data.

Generate code and insert table

When you have entered all required and optional data, you can click on the <Generate code> button to generate wikitext code and display this code in the code window.

In the code window, you can make additional modifications if you know the sintax, such as inserting links changing text format, adding unbreakable spaces, special characters and so forth, But you can better make those modifications after inserting the image in the Edit window

Click on the button <Insert image> to insert the image in the Edit window.


Images with annotations

Assistant for Images with Annotations
For other solutions to display images see: Images

An assistant to build and insert wikicode for images with superimposed annotations.
Annotated images are images with wikitext notes superimposed. These notes can also be links to other parts of the article or to other Wikipedia articles. It is not advisable to upload images with embedded annotations to Wikimedia Commons. Embedded annotations are less readable, especially when the images are resized.

The superimposition of annotations allows no only to keep those annotations more readable when the images are re-sized, but allows modify the annotations not affecting the image. It facilitate the internationalization of the article, because those annotations can be translated to any language. Do not forget that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

The assistant lets you to include in your articles annotated images, although you do not know the wikitext sintax. This assistant is based on the template {{Annotated image 4}}, also know as {{AI4}} (see Template:{{Annotated image 4}}), which is the same template which allows to crop images (see the Assistant for Cropped images). But when you are using this template to produce annotated images you should also make use of the sub- template {{Annotations}} which has been designed to contain the coordinates of each annotation and its text format (see Template:{{Annotations}}).

Required data

The dimensions of the original file stored in Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons, are actually not required to build an annotated image, but the assistant asks for these data with the sole purpose of calculating the minimal dimensions of the containing box. So there are only four required data:

1. Image name - Only image file name, not the entire address. Only for images stored in Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons. Both rasterized and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images are allowed.

2. Desired image width (image-width) - Width of the image to be displayed in the Wikipedia page. This width may be different from that of the original image.

3. Width of the containing box (width) Total width (px) of the frame containing the image and the annotations. It is usual to declare the same image width, but you can use a greater value if you need to display annotations that exceed the limits of the image.

4. Height of the containing box (height) Total height (px) of the frame containing the image and the annotations. The minimum value is calculated automatically according to the aspect ratio of the image. But you can use a greater value to cover those annotations exceeding the limits of the image.

Optional data

The following data are not required to obtain an annotated image, but contribute to enrich the information and to improve the readability of the annotations.

Header - Adds a header text to the image. This header is centered and with a transparent background by default.

Caption - Adds a footnote to the image. After the generation or the wikicode , you can modify this text. Common modifications are: insertion of links, unbreakable spaces, special characters and changes in text format.

Alternative text - Alternative text for those readers who cannot see the image in their browsers.

Box background color - Background color of the box containing the image and the annotations. The default color is white, but this assistant offers a panel with other 10 shades. This parameter is of low importance, because this color can only be seen in the (less common) case when the the image is smaller than the containing box.

Alignment - The images are aligned to the right by default, according to the Wikipedia style. But if you prefer you can align the image to the left or even center it. The alignment to center is recommended only for wide images, to avoid large blank spaces in the page.

Annotations
The necessary data to enter for each annotation are:

· Distance X - Distance (in px) from left side of the box to the annotation.

· Distance Y - Distance (in px) from top side of the box to the annotation

· Text of the annotation - Text of the annotation if it is not a link.

· Text to display (if it is a link) - Text to be displayed instead of the link string.

· Font size (px) -

· Annotation background color - The default background color of the annotations is transparent, but the assistant offers a panel of 14 neutral shades, To use a background color for the annotations may be useful to improve legibility, especially when the image and the annotation do not contrast much.

· Text color - If you choose a transparent background color for the annotations, the default text color will be black. But the assistant offers a panel of six different web colors to choose: Black, White, DarkRed, DarkGreen, Indigo and OrangeRed. This panel does not intentionally include blue neither red, because these colors are reserved for links Observe that when you select a non-transparent background color for the annotations, then the assistant automatically decides for you the most contrasting text color, without your intervention, to maximize legibility.

The {{AI4}} template admits a limit of 30 annotations per image. Take note of the coordinates of all annotations. For each annotation you must find its coordinates in relation to the top left corner of the box containing the image, and enter these coordinates in the assistant. In other words, you must find the distance (x) in pixels from the left side of the box (not the image) to the point of insertion of the annotation, and the distance (y) in pixels from the top side of the box (not the image) to the point of insertion of the annotation. Note that coordinates are not related to the image but to the containing box. Remember that you can define a containing box greater than the image if you need to cover those annotations exceeding the limits of the image.

How can you find the coordinates of an annotation?

1. Using your favorite image editor (Microsoft ® Paint, for instance) create a frame with the same size of the containing box you want to display in the page. In most cases this box will have the same desired size of the image. If it is the case, then open the image in the editor and resize the image to the final desired size.

2. With the help of the mouse find the coordinates x,y of the point of insertion of the every annotation. The mouse coordinates are usually displayed at the state bar of the image editor.

Annotations as links

If you want an annotation to be a link, click on Convert to a link an enter the text that should appear in the link. The valid links will appear in blue, while the orphan links will appear in red . To prevent confusions to the readers, never use any of these two text colors in annotations.
Generate code and insert table

After you had entered all required and optional data, you are free to click on the <Generate code> button to generate wikitext code and display this code in the code window.

In the code window, you can make additional modifications, such as inserting links changing text format, adding unbreakable spaces, special characters and so forth, But you might better like to make those modifications after inserting the image in the Edit window

Once generated the wikicode, click on the button <Insert image> to insert the image in the Edit window.

Limitations of the assistant

The assistant does not consider all parameters of the template, but a selection of them. If you want to use some other parameters see: Templates (Annotated image4). We do not guarantee that all parameters are functional. Templates of the repository are described as are in the Template space of Wikipedia, but we have not tried them all.

Warning to post-generated editions

If you edit manually the parameters X and Y in the generated code, you must be aware
that including spaces between the vertical bars will result in a parsing error which will make you sad. As an example, to specify 200 by 300 pixels here, you should only use |200|300| instead of | 200 | 300| or similar.

For the font size the assistant uses pixels, but if you modify manually the code you can also change to percent values. Ex. 90%

The assistant uses web color names, but if you modify manually the code you can also use hexadecimal color code. Ex: #32CD32 for green


Wide images

Assistant for Wide Images
For other solutions to display images see: Images

An assistant to display very wide image in a page

Wide images are those images too wide to be placed in a Wikipedia page. You should use this assistant when you need to display an image which is so wide that cannot be seen entirely in the browser window, so you cannot display it in the usual manner. If you reduce the image enough to fit the page then it would be so thin that many details would go unnoticed. This assistant is based on the template {{Panorama}}.

This assistant allows to insert the image inside a box which automatically adjusts to the page width with an horizontal scroll bar so the reader can scroll the image to see it entirely. You should enter the following data.

· Image file name (required)
· Alternative text (optional)
· Caption (optional)
· Image height, px (required)
· Scroll right-to-left (optional)

It is not necessary to enter the width of the box, because it adapts to the page width.

There is a similar template named {{Wide image}} but this one does not allow to specify a desired height of the panorama, so we recommend to use {{Panorama}}.


Tall images

Assistant for Tall Images
For other solutions to display images see: Images

An assistant to display a very tall image inside a box

Tall images are those images too high to be displayed "as is" in a Wikipedia page. You should use this assistant when you want to display a very tall image saving page space. This is especially useful when there is few accompanying text and you want to avoid extra blank space. This assistant is based on the template {{Tall image}}

This assistant makes able to display a tall image inside a box with an scroll bar which allows the reader to visualize the entire image. You should enter the following data:

· Image file name (required)
· Alternative text (optional)
· Caption (optional)
· Image desired width (px)
· Box desired height (px)
· Alignment ("right" is recommended)

Suggestions

Select the desired dimensions according to the size of the image and to the available space in the page. When you have few accompanying text, you might prefer a shorter box to save page space.

If the caption contains an equal sign, it will not be displayed. To solve this modify manually the code to substitute the string |caption with the string |3=caption

When you select alignment to the "right" or to the "left" the entire box will be aligned, so the subsequent text floats on the free side of the page. But if you select "none" (in-line option), the box will align to the left but the subsequent text will not float on the right side, leaving this space blank.


Galleries

For the display of single images see: Images

Menu of galleries

A gallery is a series of images displayed horizontally, vertically or in a patchwork. Some assistants impose limitations to the number of images it can contain, making necessary to insert more galleries, one after another, to include all images.
There are four assistants in the application based on different techniques
· Assistant 1: Galleries based on wikitables
· Assistant 2 : Galleries based on the <gallery> tag
· Assistant 3: Vertical galleries and image arrays
· Assistant 4: Horizontal galleries

Assistant | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Intended layout of your gallery | Galleries based on tables | Galleries based on the HTML <gallery> tag | Vertical images and image patchworks | Horizontal galleries
Display images arranged horizontally | Yes | Yes | No | Yes
Display images arranged vertically | No | No | Yes | No
Display large images saving page space | No | Yes | No | No
Display an image array in patchwork | No | No | Yes | No

In case of enough accompanying text
In case there is enough accompanying text, vertical galleries are always preferable, because their appearance is not affected by the width of the browser window. Horizontal galleries do not always adapt to the window width. Only those based on the HTML tag do.
Galleries built with the assistants #1 and #4 have fixed widths and do not adapt automatically to the window width.

In case of few accompanying text
In case there is few accompanying text, horizontal galleries are preferable to fill the page space avoiding large blank space. If besides the images have a relatively large size, you might want to consider using the "slideshow" method of the assistant #2.

In case the images have different aspect ratio
In case the images of an horizontal gallery have different aspect ratios, you might want to adjust each image size to display all images with the same height, giving a more uniform aspect. This adjustment can be performed using the "compact" method of the assistant #2. This is the recommended method. The same result can also be performed with the assistant #4, but in this case it is required to enter not only the width, but also the height of the images so the assistant can calculate the aspect ratio.

If you want to customize the gallery
Both galleries build with the assistants #3 and #4 can be customized. These have options to add a header, a footer, or to modify background color.

Horizontal galleries

You can display an horizontal arrangement of images using any of the assistants, except #3 which was designed for vertical galleries only. If you want to display up to four images, not exceeding the usual page width, you may use the assistant based on tables (#1). This assistant behaves especially well with images that have a similar relation of aspect. For up to ten images you may use the assistant #4. But for an indefinite number of images, use the assistant based on the <gallery> tag (#2) which automatically adjusts the number of rows according to page size. Be aware that some mobile devices may display galleries vertically when the total width is greater than 320 px. Assistants #3 and #4 offers options to customize background color.

Vertical galleries

You can display a vertical arrangement of up to ten images using the assistant #3. Fixing the total-width of the gallery you can give the same width to all images. The galleries are aligned to the right by default but you can change the alignment in the assistant. This assistant also offers options to customize background color.

Slideshows

Slideshows are a resource to display a gallery of large images saving space. It consists of a frame showing the first image of the gallery, with buttons to shift images one after other. The assistant based on the gallery tag (#3) allows to build "slideshows". The maximum recommended width for a slideshow is 350 px.

Image patchworks

With the assistant for Vertical galleries and image arrays (#3) you can also combine up to ten images in a patchwork. The assistant offers two options for arrays:
· Equal number of images per row
· Unequal number of images per row
If you combine ten images and choose two images per row the assistant will generate code for five rows. If you choose an unequal number of images per row, the assistant can generate code for a maximum of four rows. The position in the gallery depends on the order of declaration of the images. Take it into account to enter the images in the right order to obtain the desired results. The dimensions of the images are automatically adjusted, so images can match without blank spaces. A good practice is to organize the images according to their relation of aspect.


Galleries based on Wikitables
For other solutions to display galleries see: Galleries

An assistant to build and insert wikicode for image galleries based on wikitables.
Galleries based on Wikitables are series of images using table cells as image containers. This is one of the simplest techniques to display image galleries in Wikipedia articles.

This assistant helps you to build and insert horizontal image galleries based on tables even if you do not know the sintax. The assistant creates a table of the wikitable class to contain the images. The galleries build with this assistant have the following general features:

· Withstand up to four images arranged horizontally in cells of fixed width
· Image width: 100 - 200 px.
· Cell background shade and thin borders.
· Captions with a smaller font size (87%).
· An alternative text may be displayed on mouseover
Note that the galleries build with this technique have a fixed width, so you should not make too much wide galleries which exceed the usual page width. Also note that if the gallery consists of one or two images, it will be aligned to the right (by default) making able that the following text can float on the left side. If you want to display the gallery of 1- 2 images aligned to the left you have to modify the code manually. But if the gallery consists of three of four images it will be centered in the page.

How to use this assistant?

1. In the upper table row, enter the names of the image files,
only the names (not the entire address).

2. In the second row, enter the caption of each image.

3. In the third row, enter the text to be displayed on mouseover.

4. In the fourth row, enter the desired width for each image.
5. Generate the wikicode of the gallery, clicking on the command
button <Generate code>.

6. If you know the sintax, make all links and format changes
to the the captions in the wikicode window. Or, if you prefer
make the changes after inserting the gallery in the article.

7. Insert the gallery clicking on the command button <Insert
gallery>

8. To build a new gallery click on the command button <Blank
gallery>.

9. Insert one after another as many galleries as you need.

Complete data from left to right. Do not left empty cells in the middle or you may obtain unexpected results. It is highly recommended to group together images with a similar aspect ratio. Once you entered the data, generate the gallery code and insert the code in the Edit window. The wikicode generated is not saved when you close the assistant, but the content of the cells persists until the next edition.

When images of the same gallery differ in aspect ratio, you might prefer to make a more compact gallery eliminating (manually) from the wikicode all instructions of the type:

|style="width: XX%;"

But if you do this, the captions will no longer be able to force line-breaks and long captions may make the cells wider than necessary. If you need to modify the caption, and you know the sintax, you can do it directly in the generated code. Long captions tend to expand cell width, so when the caption is too long it might be necessary to force line- breaks to limit cell width.

Create and insert as many galleries as you need, one after the other until completing the desired number of images.

Relative units instead of pixels

It has been recommended to use relative "em" units instead of fixed-pixel sizes for images. “em” units are measures relative to the actual font size. For example, if the font size of the document is 12pt, then 1em=12pt. So if you use "em" units do not forget to include the units. For example an image of 299x125px might also be also expressed as 25x10em.


Galleries based on the

Galleries based on the <gallery> Tag
For other solutions to display galleries see: Galleries

An assistant to build and insert wikicode for image galleries based on the HTML <gallery> tag.

Galleries based on the <gallery> tag are series of images obtained enclosing the filenames between the HTML tags <gallery>...</gallery>. This is the easiest method to display galleries in Wikipedia articles. Although there are several methods to build galleries using the gallery tag, this assistant does not cover all of them, but only a selection of four methods.

This assistant helps you to build and insert image galleries using the HTML gallery tag, even if you ignore the sintax. With this technique the number of images in each row adjusts automatically to the page width. Those images which have not enough space in a row, flow automatically to the following row. Although some galleries may be aligned to the left the subsequent text cannot float on the other side of the page as happen with other techniques.

How to use this assistant

Select the method you want to use to build the gallery and make the changes you want in the image dimensions:

· Enter gallery data:

· Name of the image file (required), not the entire URL
· Footnote (recommended); and
· Alternative text (optional).

· Include all the images you want. These data will be saved after closing the assistant.
·
You can generate the gallery code clicking on the command button <Generate code>. The generated code is NOT saved when you close the assistant. But, if an error occurs during insertion, the generated code is saved until the next opening of the assistant, unless you close the Edit window or leave the application.

· If you know the sintax, make links and format changes directly in the code window.

· Insert the gallery clicking on the command button <Insert gallery>.

· To erase data and build a new gallery, click first on the command button <Blank gallery>.

The assistant offers several methods to build image galleries based on the HTML <gallery> tag.

1. Traditional method

This method renders rows of four images arranged horizontally in boxes of fixed size, with a very light background color. The resulting galleries are quite similar to those based on tables. The boxes are surrounded by a thin grey border. Default size of the images is 120 x 120 px, but you can optionally increase this size to 180 x 160 px. If you want even bigger dimensions you should then change manually the figures directly in the code window. Galleries of this type, align to the left by default, but you can change the alignment manually in the code window.

As the size of the images are limited by the size of the boxes, this method renders images with different heights, what is more evident when the images have different aspect ratios. You can solve this if you gather images with a relatively similar aspect ratio. The footnotes appear aligned to the left by default.

2. No frames method

This method renders rows of images without frames, so the gallery is more compact. There is less padding, and therefore the images are closer to each other, although some space between images is still wasted. As occurs with the traditional method, this method renders images with different heights.

3. Compact method

This is the default method. It renders galleries centered in the page, without any space wasted among images. All the images are displayed with the same height. The default height is 125 px, but you can increase it up to 160 px to show bigger images in the same space. If you want to increase this value, you can do it manually in the code window.

4. Slideshow method

This method uses a combination of the <gallery> tag with table code. The gallery consists of a table aligned to the left with a single cell containing the image gallery. It produces an special type of gallery showing all the images within the same frame, but one at a time. Just over the frame there are buttons that allow to switch images.
This method is convenient for big images, because makes the best use of the page space. The assistant gives a default width of 350 px for the images. If you want to modify this value you can do it directly in the code window. The "alt" text is not considered by this method.


Vertical Galleries and Image Arrays
For other solutions to display galleries see: Galleries

Assistant for vertical image galleries and image arrays

This assistant helps you to display a series of 2-10 images arranged vertically, likewise series of images arranged in a patchwork of several rows.

Vertical gallery

Galleries of this type are aligned to the right by default (recommended) but you can change alignment according to your needs. The total-width of the gallery is 200 px by default, but you can change the figure. This galleries can optionally show a header and/or a footer.

The assistant is based on the template {{Multiple image}} which allows to display up to ten images per gallery. Selecting more than one image per row with this assistant you can also display image arrays where images appear in a patchwork of up to four rows. The data you must enter for every image are the following:

· Image file name (Required)
· Dimensions of the original image (width and height)
· Alt text (optional)
· Caption (optional)

The dimensions of the original images are required for the template to calculate image heights while adjusting the images to the same total-width. The default total- width is 200 px, but you can modify the figure.

The galleries aligned to the right (default) or to the left allow the subsequent text to float on the other side, but the centered galleries (not recommended) do not.

One image per row
This is the most common option. The images are displayed in one column and the width of all images is automatically adjusted to the same size .
Typical aspect

More than one image per row (patchwork)

With this assistant you can also build image arrays assigning two or more images to every row. An equal number of images per row is the simplest option, but you can also assign an unequal number of images per row. If you choose an unequal number or images, the assistant allows to build arrays of up to four rows.

The article Jerusalem shows a good example of the type of patchwork you might built with the help of this assistant. In the example there are four rows and the number of images per row are: 1-3- 1-2. Images are assigned to the rows according to their relation of aspect. The widest images are left alone in a row, while the narrowest images are two or three per row. Pay attention to this at the time to declare image data, to do it in the right order. Otherwise you will not achieve the desired results.

Background color

The default background color is white, but if you want to consider using a background color for the containing frame you can easily select a shade of white from a panel of 15 colors. If you prefer some other color aside from this panel you will have to type it manually in the generated code. Be aware that darker background colors might affect legibility.

Removing the border around the images

The border around the images can be removed using |image_style=border:none. Add this code after total-width and before the first image.

Increasing the gap between images

The gap between the images can be increased using |image_gap=N where N is the number of pixels. Ex. |image_gap=20 . This is a resource to increase the distance between images for the sake of clarity. Add this code after the total-width and before the first image.


Horizontal Galleries
For other solutions to display galleries see: Galleries

Assistant for horizontal image galleries

This assistant helps you to display a series of 2-10 images arranged horizontally.

Galleries of this type are aligned to the left by default (recommended) but you can change alignment according to your needs. Although image alignment to the right is typical in Wikipedia, it should be avoided for galleries built with this assistant, because galleries anchored to the left side of the browser window may overlap the left frame of the Wikipedia page when the browser window get narrower, offering an odd appearance.

This galleries can optionally show a header and/or a footer.

Note that the galleries build with this technique have a fixed width, so you should not make too much wide galleries which exceed the usual page width. But the galleries aligned to one side, let the subsequent text to float on the other side, which is not allowed with the technique based on the <gallery> tag (Assistant #2)

The assistant is based on the template {{Multiple image}} which allows to display up to ten images per gallery. The data you must enter for every image are the following:

· Image file name (Required)
· Dimensions of the original image (width and height)
· Alt text (optional)
· Caption (optional)

The dimensions of the original images are required for the template to calculate the relation of aspect while adjusting the images to the same height.

Main options:

· Resize all images to the same height
· Resize all images to the same width
· Fix the desired width for each image

Resize all images to the same height

This is the default option, and the most recommended for the sake of height uniformity. The images show different width, especially those differing in their relation of aspect. You have to declare the total desired width for the whole gallery and the template adjusts the corresponding width for each image

Resize all images to the same width

When the images do not differ in their relation of aspect, this option leads to similar results than the described above. But when the images have very different aspects the results are quite different. Here you have to declare the desired common width for all images, while the template ignores the dimensions of the original images

Fix the desired width for each image

To use this option you should not declare neither the total desired width of the gallery, nor the desired width for all images, but only the desired width for each image. This way you can individually assign a width to each image according to your needs.

Background color

The default background color is white, but if you want to consider using a background color for the containing frame you can easily select a shade of white from a panel of 15 colors. If you prefer some other color aside from this panel you will have to type it manually in the generated code. Be aware that darker background colors might affect legibility.

Removing the border around the images

The border around the images can be removed using |image_style=border:none. Add this code after total-width and before the first image.

Increasing the gap between images

The gap between the images can be increased using |image_gap=N where N is the number of pixels. Ex. |image_gap=20 . This is a resource to increase the distance between images for the sake of clarity. Add this code after the total-width and before the first image.


Tables

A menu of assistants for tables.

A table is an arrangement of columns and rows that organizes and positions data. Tables can be created on Wikipedia pages using special wikitext syntax, and many different styles and tricks can be used to customize them.
A table is a complex list shown in a pattern of cells. Tables may be useful to show numerical data, comparative figures or sport results. These are also useful to show equivalent word in two or more languages, award results of other complex data. Before creating a table consider whether the information improves clarity organizing the data in rows and columns.

This menu give access to different assistants conceived for different purposes. The assistants for Tables with Regular Cells and Tables with Combined Cells are based on the wikitable class, which has the following traits:

· Title (optional) in bold type
· Automatic adjustment of the size of the cells to the content.
· Column headings and row headings centered and in bold type.
· Cells with thin frames and light gray background (darker in the headings)
· Cell text vertical align middle.

On the other hand, the assistant for Tables emulating infoboxes is based on the infobox class, which produces tables aligned to the right (by default) and a single column.

Which assistant do you need?

Regular tables with a few cells (up to 5 x 5) can be generated with any of the assistants and the result will be the same. But if you need such a table without column headings, you should better use the assistant for Tables with Combined Cells . The main advantage of this assistant is the possibility to merge cells to build complex tables. The following comparison table may help you to choose the most suitable assistant for your purposes.

Comparative table | Assistant for REGULAR CELLS | Assistant for COMBINED CELLS
Max number of cells | 10 columns x 50 rows | 5 columns x 5 rows
Can merge cells | NO | YES (optional)
Customizable cell width | YES | NO
Column headings | Always (not optional) | YES (optional)
Row headings | YES (optional) | YES (optional)

The context help of the assistants include several recommendations to obtain the maximum benefit of them and to improve the aspect of your tables.
Nested tables

Although nested tables may cause accessibility issues and should be avoided whenever possible, may also be useful to build complex tables, like infoboxes.
Infoboxes emulated with tables
An infobox is a panel, usually in the top right of an article, next to the lead section (in the desktop view), or at the very top of an article (in mobile view), that summarizes key features of the page's subject. Infoboxes may also include an image, and/or a map.
The assistant for Infoboxes emulated with tables makes possible to emulate an infobox using table markup of the infobox class, instead of using an infobox template. Consider this alternative only when you have not found a suitable template to your purposes.


Tables with Regular Cells

Assistant to build tables with regular cells and insert it into pages.

A table is an arrangement of columns and rows that organizes and positions data. Tables can be created on Wikipedia pages using special wikitext syntax, and many different styles and tricks can be used to customize them. Consider using a multi-column list when appropriate.

Tables with regular cells

The tables with regular cells are those tables where the total number of cells is the product of the number of rows x the number of columns. A regular table of 5 rows x 5 columns has 25 cells.

To create tables using this assistant you do not need to know the sintax. Just enter the table data and the assistant will generate the wikicode to produce tables with the typical appearance of tables in Wikipedia. The default features of the tables you can produce with this assistant are the following:

· Table size (% in relation to page width)
· Table title in bold type.
· The size of the cells is auto-adjusted to the content.
· Column headings and row headings centered and in bold type.
· Cells with thin borders and text aligned to the left
· Cells text vertically centered.
· Cell backgrounds in a light gray shades
· Up to 10 columns
· Up to 50 rows.

The assistant optionally allows to customize:

· Alignment of the title and cell content

· The proportional width of the columns.

If the proportional width of each column is not fixed, it is automatically adjusted to the content.

It is uncommon but not rare to see in Wikipedia regular tables with more than 10 columns and 50 rows, and the assistant is not able to build bigger tables. But if you pay a little attention to the generated wikitext you can manually add the necessary code to increase the size of your tables, if necessary.

Table alignment

By default centered tables float in the center of the pages, with no text at both sides. This centered position is particularly convenient for wide tables occupying most (or all) of the page width. But narrow tables look well aligned to one side. When a table is aligned to one side of the page, the surrounding text flows through the opposite side. This alignment is convenient in the case of narrow (and long) tables, to avoid an excess of blank space in the page.

Table title

Table title is centered by default, but you can optionally align the title to the left or to the right.

Table headings

All tables created by this assistant have column headings (255 characters max.). This means that the first table row is reserved to the column headings. This headings are centered and in bold type by default, with a background grayish shade of a more intense color than the rest of the cells.

By default, the tables generated with this assistant do not have row headings. But you have the option to reserve the first column for row headings. If you choose this option the first column of data will be the second column.

Alignment of the cell content

By default, the cell content is aligned to the left, except headings, which are centered. But the assistant offers the option to center the content of data cells.

Cell content is vertically centered by default. If the content of the different cells is very uneven you might prefer to align vertically the content in some cells. To do this, go to the generated wikicode and add the string style="vertical-align: top;" to the code line preceding the column:

|- style="vertical-align: top;" | Columns text

Doing this, the content of all the cells of this column will be vertically aligned to the top.

Column headings

Column headings are always required by the assistant. It is not required to fix the proportional width (%) of each column, because the size of the cells is automatically adjusted to their content. But if the cell content is very unbalanced, some of the columns might appear too much narrow. That is the reason why it might be advisable to fix the width.

Table cells

When you are entering data, be sure to fill the columns from left to right, not letting empty columns. Otherwise you might obtain odd results.

Generate code and insert table

When you had entered the table data, click on the command button <Generate code> and the wikicode will appear in the code window. Then click on the command button <Insert table> to close the assistant and insert the table code into the Edit window.

The generated code -but not the table title- will be saved until you restart the assistant clicking on the command button <Blank table> to build a new table.

Error inserting a table

If you forgot to select the point of insertion in the Edit window, an error message will make you note the omission. When this happens, the Assistant for tables is temporarily hidden until you place the cursor at the point of insertion and reopen the assistant, or you close the Edit window. In any case you do not need to enter table data again (except table title), because table data will always persist until the next time you open the assistant.


Tables with Combined Cells

An assistant to build and insert wikicode for tables with merged cells.

Tables with combined cells are those tables where two or more contiguous cells are merged, reducing the number of cells that would occur in regular tables. Tables of this type are not frequent in Wikipedia. But are sometimes necessary to display some kind of information.

This assistant for Tables with combined cells helps you to create tables with up to five rows and five columns, where you can merge adjacent cells in whatever the way you need.

Due to the complexity of the sintax and the rarity of these tables, the assistant do not produce tables with a higher number of rows or columns. But if you pay attention to the wikicode, you might manually add more cells to a table generated with this assistant.

The default features of the tables you can produce with this assistant are the following:

· Table title in bold type
· The size of the cells is auto-adjusted to the content.
· Column headings and row headings centered and in bold type.
· Cells with thin borders
· Cell content centered vertically
· Cell backgrounds in a light gray shades
· Up to 5 columns
· Up to 5 rows

Table alignment

The centered position is particularly convenient for wide tables occupying most of the page width. The alignment to one side is only convenient in the case of narrow (and long) tables, to let the surrounding text to flow through the opposite side avoiding an excess of blank space in the page.

Table title

Table title is centered by default, but you can optionally align the title to the left.

Heading options

· No headings at all - Choose this option if you want to have all the cells with the same format. Cell content is left aligned by default. Tables with no headings have a background with only one shade of gray. This option is not available in the Assistant for regular tables.

· Column headings only - When you choose this option the first row is reserved for column headings, where the text will be centered and in bold type, with a darker shade of gray in the background.

· Column and row headings - When you choose this option the first row is reserved for column headings, while the first column is reserved for row headings. All headings have centered text and bold type by default, and have a darker shade of gray in the background.

Table cells

The visual assistant is placed in the left part of the form. Enter data and merge cells from left to right and from up to down. Do not worry if after entering all data you can not visualize the entire content of all cells at the same time. The size of the cells will be automatically adjusted to the cell content.

Cell content is aligned to the left by default. But If you want to show the text centered, you should activate the option Center cell content. In the case you need to align to the right the cell content, first choose Center cell content and after generating the code, change manually the code value text-align:center to text-align:right

Cell content is centered vertically by default.

Do not leave cells blank, use &nbsp; instead. When you use this string inside an empty cell, it will be seen blank in the rendered page. If you leave any cell blank, the assistant will not work correctly and you will not achieved the desired results.

How to use this assistant

Do the following paths:

1. Enter table title and indicate if it should be aligned to the left.

2. Enter the text of the first cell (C1F1) which is in the left top corner of the table. When necessary merge this cell with one of the contiguous cells using the panel of buttons at the right side of the form.

3. Do the same operation with the next cell (from left to right). When you finish a row continue with the next until the table is completed. Merge the cells the way you want, but do not left empty cells. Left empty only those cells which will not belong to the table.

You may realize that there is a great number of possible cell combinations merging cells of a 5 x 5 table. The following is an example of one of the complex tables you can build with the help of this assistant:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
4. This example was based on a table of five columns and four rows, merging cells
to obtain a total of eleven cells with different sizes.

After entering all data, click on the command button <Generate code> to generate the code that will appear in the wikicode window. Then click on the command button <Insert table> to insert the table in the Edit window.

How to combine contiguos cells?

Contiguous cells are merged with the aid of the <Cell merger>. The <Cell merger> is a panel of buttons cross-arranged at the right side of the panel of cells.

In the following example you want to merge the cell A with the cell B which is in the same row. Left empty the cell B and place the cursor in the cell A and click on the button with the right arrow (è) in the <Cell merger>

A
B
C

This will be the result:

A+B
C

A + B were merged

If you click again it will produce the following result:

A+B+C

A+B+C were combined

Every click on the button with the right arrow will merge another cell to the combination.

If you want to undo the last combination, click on the button with the left arrow (ç). Every click releases a cell of the combination.

You can also combine cells of different rows if those cells belong to the same column. In this example you can merge cells A and B if you place the cursor in the cell A and click on the button with the down arrow (↓):

A
B

To undo this action click on the button with the arrow up.

You can also make more complex combinations involving cells of different rows and columns. This is an example of how to combine the four cells A, B, C and D: Place the cursor in the cell A and make a click on the button with the right arrow and another click on the button with the down arrow. Only two clicks are necessary to merge these four cells:

A
B
C
D

Button <Start>

The command button <Start> in the center of the panel has the function to restart the assistant. Clicking on that button you can undo all cell combinations and erase the content of all cells.

Blank cells

Do not leave empty those cells you want to display blank in the Wikipedia page. Type the chain &nbsp; In those cells you want to display blank. To do this easily you can make use of the facility with the button <Insert &nbsp;> appearing on the left side of the assistant form. Empty cells will not be considered by the assistant.
.

Generate code and insert table

When you had entered the table data, click on the command button <Generate code> and the wikicode will appear in the code window. Then click on the command button <Insert table> to close the assistant and insert the table code into the Edit window.

The generated code will not be saved if you close the assistant before inserting the code in the Edit window (the assistant for tables with regular cells behaves differently).

Error inserting a table

If you forgot to select the point of insertion in the Edit window, an error message will make you note the omission. When this happens, this assistant is temporarily hidden until you place the cursor at the point of insertion and reopen the assistant. So you do not need to enter table data again. But if instead, you close the Edit window, then the table data will be lost (the assistant for tables with regular cells behaves differently).


Infoboxes emulated with Tables

Assistant to build wikicode for an infobox (emulated with tables) and insert it into a page.

An infobox is a panel, usually in the top right of an article, next to the lead section (in the desktop view), or at the very top of an article (in mobile view), that summarizes key features of the page's subject. Infoboxes may also include an image, and/ or a map.

Infoboxes generally use the template software feature (see Templates ). The templates have parameters; to work properly, the parameter values have to be specified when the template is inserted in the page. This allows each infobox to show information relevant to the article subject, while requiring only a minimal amount of coding within each article. This assistant makes possible to emulate an infobox using table markup, although this loses the advantages of standardization and reusability.

Purpose of an infobox

When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content. Do not include links to sections within the article; the table of contents provides that function.
Example of an infobox built with the assistant.

Style, color and formatting

A good guideline is not to add extraneous style formatting over that in a default infobox without good reason. Infoboxes may tend towards greater abbreviation than that generally used in article bodies. As with navigation templates, the purpose of the infobox is for its utility, not appearance; therefore, infoboxes should not be arbitrarily decorative.
Many infobox templates insert decorative images in the main header, but this tool allows to emulate a generic infobox with LightGray background in the main header and in the section headers, which is the header default color in Infobox person, which is one of the three more extensively transcluded infoboxes. But if you know the default background color associated to the topic of the article you can change manually this color in the generated wikicode.

Images

When adding an image to an infobox, thumbnails should NOT be used.

Consistency between infoboxes

For consistency the following guidelines apply:

Before creating a new Infobox template, check first to see whether a suitable Infobox already exists.

If for some reason {{infobox}} is not suitable and the table is to be created manually, the template code should use class="infobox" for the main table declaration. This automatically picks the right alignment, font sizes and spacing to fit in with existing infoboxes. A width of 22 ems (22em in CSS) is suggested as an additional declaration to match the {{infobox}} default.

The template should have a large title line. Either a table caption or a header can be used for this. It should be named the common name of the article's subject but may contain the full (official) name; this does not need to match the article's Wikipedia title, but falling back to use that (with the {{PAGENAME}} magic word) is usually fine. It
should not contain a link.
Usually, infoboxes are formatted to appear in the top-right corner of a Wikipedia article in the desktop view, or at the top in the mobile view.

Geographical infoboxes

Infoboxes for geographical items (e.g. cities and countries) should generally be headed with the article title, although the formal version of a name (e.g. Republic of Montenegro at Montenegro) can be substituted. Alternate or native names can appear beneath this. Extensive historic names are often better in a second infobox, as at Augsburg.

Using infoboxes in articles

The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article. Like navigation templates, infoboxes should avoid flag icons and redlinks.

References in infoboxes

References are not needed in infoboxes if the content is repeated (and cited) elsewhere or if the information is obvious. If the material requires a reference and the information does not also appear in the body of the article, the reference should be included in the infobox. However, editors should first consider including the fact in the body of the article.

How to use this assistant

This assistant allows you to build generic Infoboxes using table markup instead of any infobox template. The infoboxes created with this tool look very similar to those created using templates (see example above). For the sake of consistency it is advisable to search for a similar infobox template in order to obtain a consistent look and choose consistent names for the parameters.

Infobox header (required)

This is the first row of the table. The usual header is the name of the article or the template {{PAGENAME}}, but this is not mandatory. It may contain the full (official) name of the article. The header will be shown as a large bold line with a colored background in the first row of the table.

Illustration image (optional)

An illustration image is usually placed in the second row of most infoboxes. If you want to include one, enter the image file name, only the name and not the entire URL. It must be an image stored in Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons.Type also the alternative text (alt) for those readers that cannot see the image in their browsers and type a caption that will appear below the image. The assistant will always place the image in the second row of the infobox.

Third and subsequent rows

The third and subsequent rows may be of three different kinds:

1. Section header

2. Single section

3. Divided section (section with two columns)

You must choose the type of every row before entering the corresponding information. The kind of each row can be selected in the leftmost column of the assistant.

Section header

A section header is any row containing a title. It is common to select a section header as the first choice immediately after the image, but you can choose any other option you prefer. You should type the title you want to show in the section header, just in the "Unique/First column" of the assistant, This title will appear centered in bold type with a colored background.

Single section

A single section is a row containing one or several lines of information. The text will appear always centered in normal type. Its very usual to force line-breaks. Do not forget that simple line breaks are ignored by the Wikipedia motor. You may use the command button <Insert line-break> to make a quick insertion of a line-break. Single sections can also contain additional illustration images. If you want to insert an image in a single section you must type the full image code in the corresponding single section cell. You should only type a code like this:

[[File:Example-serious.jpg|220px|alt=Example alt text]]
Enter the image caption in the following line, not in the same line.

IMPORTANT: Image width should not exceed 250px.

Divided section

A divided section looks like a cell divided in two columns (actually is a nested table with two columns and one row). You should type name of the parameters in the first column, and the corresponding data in the second column. You may also use the command button <Insert line- break> to force line breaks whenever necessary. You can include several parameters separated by line-breaks in the same divided section. It is not absolutely necessary to use a divided section for each parameter if the names are enough short. The names of the parameters in the first column are displayed in bold type, while data in the second column are displayed in normal type as is usual in Wikipedia.

These three different kinds of sections may be combined in any order you prefer to satisfy the requirements of your infobox. You can use as many sections as you need.

After having completed the information click on the command button <Generate code> to generate the wikicode of the infobox. Click on <Insert code> when you are ready to insert the code into the Edit window.

Where to insert an infobox?

Remember to insert the infobox at the beggining of the article, before the lead section and immediately after the hatnotes, Deletion/Protection tags and Maintenance/dispute tags. It will appear aligned to the right side of the page according to the style prevailing in Wikipedia.

List of infoboxes

You can consult a list of previously created infoboxes in the window Collection or guidelines :List of infoboxes or going online, in the page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_infoboxes

Here is a list of the 55 most commonly used templates in Wikipedia up to June 2017. Every one of these templates have more than 10 thousand transclusions each, covering 2'86,025 articles of a total of 5 474 000 articles. That is, 38% of the total of articles. This gives an idea of the importance of infoboxes and also the main fields of interest among users. These templates are included in this application:

Most common infoboxes in English Wikipedia arranged
in order of frequency from higher to lower.

Most used Infoboxes
Transclusion
count
Infobox settlement
444,500
Taxobox
243,551
Infobox person
223,712
Infobox medal templates
176,794
Infobox album
124,327
Infobox football biography
111,622
Infobox officeholder
103,361
Infobox musical artist
91,855
Infobox company
52,291
Infobox NRHP
47,075
Infobox single
45,462
Infobox French commune
36,806
Infobox station
31,592
Infobox book
31,535
Infobox military person
31,010
Infobox television
29,076
Infobox ship begin
27,481
Infobox ship characteristics
27,393
Infobox ship image
27,131
Infobox school
27,068
Infobox ship career
24,820
Infobox scientist
24,528
Infobox sportsperson
24,449
Geobox
23,991
Infobox writer
23,915
Infobox baseball biography
22,036
GNF Protein box
21,671
Infobox mountain
20,870
Infobox video game
20,175
Infobox UK place
19,895
Infobox radio station
18,629
Infobox university
18,397
Infobox NFL biography
18,383
Infobox NCAA team season
18,209
Infobox football club
18,206
Infobox road
17,547
Infobox military unit
15,062
Infobox airport
14,791
Infobox artist
14,625
Infobox organization
14,497
Infobox ice hockey player
13,802
Infobox river
13,599
Infobox royalty
13,364
Infobox German location
13,043
Infobox military conflict
12,889
Infobox cricketer
12,684
Infobox aircraft begin
12,124
Infobox basketball biography
11,824
Infobox building
11,704
Infobox body of water
11,567
Infobox planet
11,504
Infobox software
11,192
Infobox venue (stadiums, theatres, etc.)
11,174
Infobox aircraft type
10,917

The assistant for templates (see: Administrator of Templates) offers more than 80 original templates for infoboxes, including the 55 (see above) most commonly used in English Wikipedia.


Text Columns

Menu of assistants for columns

The application offers two different techniques to split a previously selected text block into columns:
Columns of equal widths . To automatically distribute a block of text into customizable columns with equal widths. Two techniques:
1. A technique recommended for bulleted lists
2. A technique suitable for regular text.

Columns of unequal widths . To distribute a block of text into two or three columns with uneven widths, where you can fix the relative width of each column and the width of the group of columns in relation to the page.


Columns of equal widths
See also: Columns of unequal widths

An assistant to divide a previously selected text into customizable columns of even widths.

Columns of equal widths refers to those columns of text which show a uniform width along the page. This is the most common way to distribute text in columns.

It is sometimes appropriated to distribute in columns some text block to reduce empty space in a page or facilitate reading. This is particularly recommended in the case of lists.

This assistant offers two different techniques to split a portion of text into columns of equal widths, even when you do not know the MediaWiki rules for columns. Columns built with this assistant are not supported by some older browsers, most notably Internet Explorer 9 and below, and Opera 11.0 and below. Columns will be shown only in browsers supporting one of the following CSS3 properties:

column-count

-moz-column-count (for Mozilla/Gecko-based browsers such as Firefox)

-webkit-column-count (for WebKit-based browsers such as Safari and Google Chrome)

Both techniques offered by the assistant can bear highly customizable columns, where you can optionally show:

· A background shade of white (15 different shades)
· A smaller font size (90%)
· Rules among columns

Method 1: Fixed columns widths
(based on the {{Div col}} template)

This method allows to create columns with fixed widths in em units.(1) , which are mostly used for bulleted or numbered lists, but also useful for regular text. This method is based on the template {{Div col}}.

If you want to apply columns to a list, first create the list without empty lines among list elements. In this application it is suggested to fix the columns width according to the length of the list elements to leave not too much blank space.

Note that the resulting number of columns depends on the width of the window. The wider the browser window the greater number of columns.

Method 2: Fixed number of columns
(Based on the {{Column-count}} template)

This technique fixes exactly the number of columns, so never appear extra columns.

You are free to choose the most suitable method to your purpose. Just be aware that if you use this method to list elements of short length, the final result will be unaesthetic, because the columns would unnecessarily appear too much separated. Many articles show columns with this appearance, because editors tend to use the simplest possible sintax and do not consider all the alternatives.

Background color

This assistant offers the option to assign a shade of white to the background of the columns, to distinguish better the columns from the rest of the page. A background color in columns is not commonly used in Wikipedia, and in such cases the color used is "GhostWhite" (hex:F8F8FF, RGB:248 248 255).

The assistant offers a menu with 15 shades of white. If you want to use one shade, remember to check the option <Background color> before clicking on <Apply columns>. Otherwise the background will be white like the rest of the page.

The following is a list of the shades of white offered by the assistant:

Shade of white
Hex code
RGB values
WhiteSmoke
F5F5F5
245 245 245
Snow
FFFAFA
255 250 250
Seashell
FFF5EE
255 245 238
Linen
FAF0E6
250 240 230
AntiqueWhite
FAEBD7
250 235 215
OldLace
FDF5E6
253 245 230
FloralWhite
FFFAF0
255 250 240
Ivory
FFFFF0
255 255 240
Beige
F5F5DC
245 245 220
Honeydew
F0FFF0
240 255 240
MintCream
F5FFFA
245 255 250
Azure
F0FFFF
240 255 255
AliceBlue
F0F8FF
240 248 255
GhostWhite
F8F8FF
248 248 255
LavenderBlush
FFF0F5
255 240 245

(1) “em” is a unit relative to the actual font size. For example, if the font size of the document is 12pt, 1em=12pt.


Columns of unequal widths
See also: Columns of equal widths

An assistant to divide a previously selected text into columns of uneven widths.
This assistant offers a technique to split a portion of text into columns of unequal widths and similar heights, even if you do not know the MediaWiki rules for columns.

This technique is partially based on the {{col-begin}} template. You can find more information about this template in the Template window (see: Templates ). This template does not automatically split text into columns, so users of this template must split manually the text and to assign portions of text to each column what implies a wasting of time making trials.

Content of each column is automatically selected
Although it is also based on the {{col-begin}} template, this assistant has been especially programmed to split automatically text into columns to produce columns of similar heights: Columns of equal widths

The assistant allows to choose the following:
1. Number of columns (more than three are not recommended).

2. Relative width of the group of columns regarding to page width.

3. Relative width of the first column (in %).

Number of columns.

The assistant allows to split automatically the text into two or three columns.The interesting aspect of this assistant is the possibility to produce automatically columns of unequal widths and similar heights making unnecessary to distribute the text manually as it is usual when using the {{col-begin}} template. It is rare to need more than three columns of text. But if you need more that three columns, you should better use the assistant for columns of equal widths: Columns of equal widths .

Relative width of the group of columns in relation to page width.

This width is normally limited to 95% to keep the columns inside the limits of the page. But you can choose even lower values. Note that with this assistant the group of columns will be always centered in the page.
Relative width of the first column.
You can fix the relative width of the first column. If you want to show two columns and fix the width of the first column in 30%, this means that the second column will have 70% of the total width of the group of columns. But if you want to show three columns, then the remaining 70% will be evenly distributed between the second and third columns, thus producing the following distribution:

30% for the first column

35% for the second column

35% for the third column
Remember that the assistant has been programmed to split the text in a way to produce columns of similar heights. But if you include, in any column, some complex elements, like citations, images, external links or infoboxes, the columns will no longer show similar height, so you should have to adjust the height of the columns moving manually some text from one column to another.


Charts

Assistant to build wikicode for graphs of different kinds.and insert it into pages.
The Assistant for graphs is a tool to insert wikicode producing graph into your wikitext pages disregarding the use of any image. All you have to do after inserting the desired code in the Edit window, is to change the given values by your own data values. The assistant offers graphs of different kinds:

Line charts

· For one data series

· For multiple data series (with legend)

Area charts

· For one data series

· For multiple data series showing blended overlap (with legend)

· For multiple data series with smoothed data values (with legend)

Bar charts

· For one data series

· For multiple data series (with legend)

· For multiple data series with stacked data series (with legend)

Pie charts (with legend)

· Pie chart (not showing values)

· Pie chart (showing values)

· Pie chart with sectors of different radius (showing values)

· Pie chart in a form of a circular crown (ring)

All previous examples are all based on the {{Graph}} template. The following templates are based on different templates (see the Assistant for templates ).

Brick charts

A square alternative to pie charts with legend. Customizable alignment and colors.

Line charts-2

Customizable line charts for multiple data series with legend. Professional look.

Vertical bars chart

Customizable vertical bars charts with legend. Professional look.


Line Charts

Line Chart with One Data Series

{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=100|type=line|x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,
12,6,14,2,10,7,9}}

Note: The y-axis starts from the smallest y value, though this can be overridden with the yAxisMin parameter.

Line Chart with Multiple Data Series

{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=100|xAxisTitle=X|yAxisTitle=Y|legend
=Legend|type=line|x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y1=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9|y2=2,4,6,8,13,
11,9,2|colors=#0000aa,#ff8000}}


Line Charts (version 2)

Line Charts-2

{{Line chart | color_background = white | width = 500 | height = 350 | padding_left = 40 | padding_right = 15 | padding_top = 10 | padding_bottom = 20 | number_of_series = 3 | number_of_x-values = 10 | label_x1 = Val. 1 | label_x2 = Val. 2 | label_x3 = Val. 3 | label_x4 = Val. 4 | label_x5 = Val. 5 | label_x6 = Val. 6 | label_x7 = Val. 7 | label_x8 = Val. 8 | label_x9 = Val. 9 | label_x10 = Val. 10 | y_max = 3000 | y_min = 1000 | scale = yes | interval_primary_scale = 1000 | interval_secondary_scale = 100
| S01V02 = 2200 | S01V03 = 2400 | S01V04 = 2500 | S01V05 = 2600 | S01V06 = 2500
| S02V01 = 1400 | S02V02 = 2000 | S02V03 = 1600 | S02V04 = 1800 | S02V05 = 2400
| S02V06 = 2400 | S02V07 = 2500 | S02V08 = 2000 | S02V09 = 1600 | S02V10 = 1800
| S03V01 = 1800 | S03V04 = 2000 | S03V05 = 1600 | S03V06 = 1800 | S03V07 = 2400
| S03V09 = 2400 | points = yes }} {{legend|red|Series 1}} {{legend|blue|Series 2}}
{{legend|green|series 3}}


Area Charts

Area Chart with One Data Series

{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=100|type=area|x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,
12,6,14,2,10,7,9}}

Note: The y-axis starts from zero.

Area Chart with Multiple Data Series

{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=100|type=area|x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,
12,6,14,2,10,7,9}}

Area Chart with Multiple Data Series and Smoothed Data Values

{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=100|xAxisTitle=X|yAxisTitle=Y|legend
=Legend|type=stackedarea|x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y1=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9|y2=
2,4,6,8,13,11,9,2|interpolate=monotone|colors=seagreen, orchid}}


Bar Charts

Bar Chart with One Data Series

{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=100|xAxisTitle=X|yAxisTitle=Y|type
=rect|x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9}}

Bar Chart with Multiple Data Series

{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=100|xAxisTitle=X|yAxisTitle=Y|
legend=Legend|type=rect|x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y1=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9|
y2=2,4,6,8,13,11,9,2|colors=#800000aa,#80ff8000}}

Bar Chart with Stacked Data Series

{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=100|xAxisTitle=X|yAxisTitle=Y|
legend=Legend|type=stackedrect|x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y1=10,12,6,14,2,
10,7,9|y2=2,4,6,8,13,11,9,2|y1Title=DataA|y2Title=DataB|colors= seagreen, orchid}}


Bar Charts (version 2)

Vertical Bar Chart

{{Vertical bar chart |color_12=blue |type=demographic
|1900|123|1910|225|1920|234|1930|345|1940|421|1950|542|1960|521|1970|622|1981|632|1991|645|2001|687|2009|676
|note=<small> {{legend|#88c2cc|[[Population]] (1900-1991) Residential population (2001) according to the U.S. Census Bureau}}
{{legend|#0000FF|Population by local area census.}}
</small> }}


Pie Charts

{{Graph:Chart|width=100|height=100|type=pie|legend=Legende
|x=A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I|y1=100,200,150,300,100,100,150,50,200}}

{{Graph:Chart|width=100|height=100|type=pie|legend=Legende
|x=A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I|y1=100,200,150,300,100,100,150,50,200
|showValues=}}

{{Graph:Chart|width=100|height=100|type=pie|legend=Legende
|x=A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I|y1=100,200,150,300,100,100,150,50,200
|y2=7,8,9,8,8,9,10,9,5|showValues=}}

{{Graph:Chart|width=100|height=100|type=pie|innerRadius=40
|legend=Legende|x=A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I|y1=100,200,150,300,100,
100,150,50,200}}


Brick Charts
 Previous Top

Brick Chart

{{Brick chart
| caption=Example of 6 amounts
| value1=42 | label1=one
| value2=32 | label2=two
| value3=12 | label3=three
| value4=3 | label4=four
| value5=2 | label5=five
| value6=0.4 | label6=six
}}

Note: The values are percentual (%) You can include up to nine values. The "other" value is automatically calculated by the template. The default brick colors for the first six values are: red, dark green, blue, yellow, purple, and cyan. But you can modify this using the "color" parameter (color1, color2, etc.) with other web colors. The graph is by default aligned to the right, but you can change this using the "align" parameter


.topic 340

Red links

A red link is a page that doesn't exist yet.

Do not be afraid to create links to potential articles that do not yet exist. Red links have been found to be a driving force that encourage contributions.

But if you consider there is excess of red links, you may turn blue some of them creating a simple stub
a redirect, or a disambiguation page

See a guideline for red links in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Red_links

.topic 600

Scalable Vector Graphics

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999.

SVG images and their behaviors are defined in XML text files. This means that they can be searched, indexed, scripted, and compressed. As XML files, SVG images can be created and edited with any text editor, but are more often created with drawing software.

All major modern web browsers—including Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Microsoft Edge—have at least some degree of SVG rendering support.

.topic 610

Raster Graphics images

In computer graphics, a raster graphics image is a dot matrix data structure, representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats.

A bitmap, a single-bit raster, corresponds bit-for-bit with an image displayed on a screen, generally in the same format used for storage in the display's video memory, or maybe as a device-independent bitmap. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and by the number of bits per pixel (or color depth, which determines the number of colors it can represent).

Raster Graphics images

In computer graphics, a raster graphics image is a dot matrix data structure, representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats.

A bitmap, a single-bit raster, corresponds bit-for-bit with an image displayed on a screen, generally in the same format used for storage in the display's video memory, or maybe as a device-independent bitmap. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and by the number of bits per pixel (or color depth, which determines the number of colors it can represent).


YourProject

Raster Graphics images

In computer graphics, a raster graphics image is a dot matrix data structure, representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats.

A bitmap, a single-bit raster, corresponds bit-for-bit with an image displayed on a screen, generally in the same format used for storage in the display's video memory, or maybe as a device-independent bitmap. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and by the number of bits per pixel (or color depth, which determines the number of colors it can represent).


YourProject

Red links

A red link is a page that doesn't exist yet.

Do not be afraid to create links to potential articles that do not yet exist. Red links have been found to be a driving force that encourage contributions.

But if you consider there is excess of red links, you may turn blue some of them creating a simple stub
a redirect, or a disambiguation page

See a guideline for red links in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Red_links


YourProject

Scalable Vector Graphics

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999.

SVG images and their behaviors are defined in XML text files. This means that they can be searched, indexed, scripted, and compressed. As XML files, SVG images can be created and edited with any text editor, but are more often created with drawing software.

All major modern web browsers—including Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Microsoft Edge—have at least some degree of SVG rendering support.