Help:Special page

The namespace "Special:" consists of "special pages". These have no corresponding wikitext; they are created by the software on demand. Some depend on the preferences that have been set, e.g. classic or enhanced Recent Changes, and the number of titles in Recent Changes and the watchlist, etc.

Special pages for all users
All of the below linked Special pages produce content particular to whatever wiki you are viewing this document on. If you are looking for a list of the available Special pages from a given wiki, use its Special:Specialpages page to get a list, or try viewing the page on this wiki, then editing your web address to change the server name, leaving the page portion intact.

See also: SpecialPages grouped into categories : Modification which can sort the SpecialPages into categories
 * Special pages : Special:Specialpages : A list of all special pages for all users.
 * Recent changes : Special:Recentchanges : The latest edits in the project.
 * Upload file : Special:Upload : Upload a file to the wiki.
 * Image list : Special:Imagelist : List of images uploaded that can be sorted by size or date
 * New images : Special:Newimages : Gallery of new files.
 * User list : Special:Listusers : A list of all registered users. For some project families, notably Wikia, this applies for the whole family.
 * Admins list : Special:Listadmins : A list of all Administrators; an automatic list is at Special:Listusers/Sysop.
 * Statistics : Special:Statistics : total number of pages and users
 * Random page : Special:Randompage : redirects to a random page from the main namespace which is not a redirect. Other namespaces can be specified as a parameter, eg: Special:Randompage/Talk.
 * Orphaned pages : Special:Lonelypages : Orphaned articles i.e. articles with no links to them in the wiki.
 * Uncategorized pages : Special:Uncategorizedpages : Pages without category tags (note that after adding a tag to a page refreshing this page does not immediately reflects the change)
 * Unused images : Special:Unusedimages
 * Wanted pages : Special:Wantedpages : Articles which have been requested / most wanted, specifically those that have at least 2 incoming links, but do not exist.
 * Short pages : Special:Shortpages - pages in the main namespace, with size (of the wikitext excluding that of templates used) in bytes, in order of increasing size
 * Long pages : Special:Longpages - pages in the main namespace, with size in bytes, in order of decreasing size
 * New pages : Special:Newpages : Newest pages with creation date and time, current size, user who created the page, and first edit summary, in reverse order of creation.
 * Oldest pages : Special:Ancientpages - pages in the main namespace, with date and time of last edit, in order of last edit.
 * Dead-end pages : Special:Deadendpages : Pages without any outgoing links.
 * Most categories : Special:Mostcategories : Articles with the most categories.
 * Most revisions : Special:Mostrevisions : Articles with the most revisions.
 * All pages : Special:Allpages : all pages in a specified namespace in alphabetical order, including redirects (unfortunately without showing which are redirects); is on Wikimedia sometimes temporarily disabled.
 * From MediaWiki 1.5 one can also select all namespaces except a specified one; thus, although one cannot have a single list of all pages, one can select a small namespace and use the invert option, to get almost all pages. Namespace prefixes are given, but the sortkey is the pagename without prefix.


 * All system messages : Special:Allmessages : Displays all pages in the MediaWiki namespace.
 * Pages starting with a given prefix : Special:Prefixindex; if the last character of the prefix is a space or underscore it is ignored. One of many important applications is to find subpages with "fullpagename/".
 * Find external links
 * Special:Linksearch, see Help:Linksearch


 * List of blocked IP addresses and usernames : Special:Ipblocklist : Blocked IPs and usernames
 * Book sources : Special:Booksources : ISBN Book Sources
 * Categories : Special:Categories : shows the number of members, see also Help:DPL.
 * Uncategorized categories : Special:Uncategorizedcategories
 * Export pages : Special:Export : Produces an XML file containing the wikitext and metadata of either the current version only, or all revisions, of one or more pages, specified in the form of a list; the XML file is in the format required for Special:Import; exporting is typically done either in preparation of applying the latter at another MediaWiki project, or for searching within old page revisions. See Help:Export and import.
 * Version : Special:Version : Shows the version of the software the site is currently running, and a listing of extensions installed
 * Wiki matrix :Special:SiteMatrix : list of all projects
 * Captcha:Special:Captcha on projects supporting this feature.
 * Confirm my email address:Special:Confirmemail
 * My preferences : Special:Preferences : Select preferences to customise the appearance and behaviour of the software. For some project families, notably Wikia, this applies for the whole family. See Help:Preferences.
 * My watchlist : Special:Watchlist : Show the pages you are watching. (Watchlist help)
 * My page : Special:Mypage : Link to the user page of the user who follows it.
 * My talk page : Special:Mytalk : Link to the talk page of the user who follows it.
 * Login : Special:Userlogin : Creates new login cookie.
 * Logout : Special:Userlogout : Destroys cookie, see also Privacy policy.
 * ExpandTemplates: Special:ExpandTemplates (extension, enabled on Wikimedia sites): Provides an input box to enter wikitext, and another one to enter a pagename, and produces expanded wikitext, i.e., templates, parser functions and variables are expanded recursively; variables depending on pagename are expanded based on the supplied pagename. See also mw:Extension:ExpandTemplates.
 * Links to disambiguation pages: Special:Disambiguations - list of pages linked to a disambiguation page, each with the link target; a disambiguation page is defined as a page on which a disambiguation template is transcluded; a disambiguation template is defined as a template linked from MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage.

Restricted special pages

 * Block user : Special:Blockip : Sysop only. Used to block or unblock users, IPs and ranges of IPs.
 * Import pages : Special:Import : Sysop only. Imports the wikitext and metadata of one or more revisions of one or more pages by uploading an XML file in the format produced by Special:Export (typically after applying the latter at another MediaWiki project). See Help:Export and import.
 * Restore deleted page : Special:Undelete : Sysop only. One way to undelete a page.
 * Mass delete : Special:Nuke (extension) : Sysop only. Mass deletions of pages recently added by a given user or IP.
 * Make a user into a sysop : Special:Makesysop : Bureaucrat only.
 * Make a user into a bot : Special:Makebot (extension) : Bureaucrat only; see MakeBot.
 * Set user rights : Special:Userrights : Stewards only. Give and remove user access rights (e.g. sysop, bureaucrat, checkuser) on any Wikimedia project.
 * Get user IP : Special:CheckUser : see Help:CheckUser and Special:Listusers/checkuser.
 * : Special:Oversight : see Special:Listusers.
 * Lock database : Special:Lockdb : Developer only. Puts the wiki in read only mode.
 * Unlock database: Special:Unlockdb: Developer only. Returns the wiki to read/write mode.

Special pages currently not enabled on Wikimedia wikis

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

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

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

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

Miscellaneous

 * Special pages can be linked to as usual, like Special:Recentchanges.


 * Special pages requiring a target page may give an error message if the target is not supplied:
 * Special:Recentchangeslinked/Help:Template
 * Special:Whatlinkshere/Help:Template

or prompt for the target if it was not supplied yet; with target the link is e.g.
 * Special:Linksearch/*.kennisnet.nl


 * Special pages requiring a target user:
 * Special:Contributions/Jimbo Wales


 * In Special:Allpages both a namespace and a starting page can be specified:
 * Special:Allpages/Template - main namespace, from "Template"
 * Special:Allpages/Template: - Template namespace, from start
 * Special:Allpages/Template:T - Template namespace, from "T"

In some cases the full URL has to be given, like an external link, for example /w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&days=3&limit=10 (last 10 changes).
 * Special:Random/Template


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


 * "Special:" in URLs is e.g. "Speciaal" in Dutch, "Spezial" in German, "Speciális:" in Hungarian and "מיוחד:" in Hebrew. See e.g the prefix of "Recentchanges" in the URL of the link to the Recent changes.


 * Some special pages can be included, such as Newpages, Wantedpages, Allpages, Prefixindex, and Recentchanges.


 * gives 5 new pages: