Help:Special pages

Shortcut H:SPECIAL

Special pages are pages that are created by the software on demand. They are located in their own namespace (Special) and are not editable directly as other pages.

Some special pages depend on the preferences that have been set by a user, e.g., the number of titles which is displayed on a user's watchlist.

Visiting Special:SpecialPages will take you to a list of almost all special pages on the wiki. A link to this page can be found in the "Tools" section of the sidebar.

The following is a list of useful special pages, and how to use them.

All pages

All pages is a special page that lists all the pages in the wiki, optionally filtered by namespace, and delimited by a start and end title (in alphabetical order). This feature is accessible at Special:AllPages. The page results are not adjustable in the user preferences.

Transclusion

This special page can be transcluded. An optional unnamed parameter can be passed after a / character; by default, this value is used for the from parameter, which delimits the start of the listing to all pages whose titles come after the given string (in alphabetical order).

{{Special:AllPages/Foobar}}

If the unnamed parameter matches an existing namespace name in the wiki, and ends with a colon, the value is used for the namespace parameter instead:

{{Special:AllPages/Help:}}

Furthermore, if text is added after the colon, it is used as the from parameter:

{{Special:AllPages/Help:Foobar}}

Parameter	Value type	Description
from	string	Start of the page listing (in alphabetical order)
to	string	End of the page listing (in alphabetical order)
namespace	string	Restrict the results to the named namespace

Diff

See: mw:Help:Diff

New pages

New pages is a special page that lists recently created pages in reverse order of creation, with creation date and time, current size, user who created the page, and first edit summary.

This feature is accessible at Special:NewPages. The page results are not adjustable in the user preferences.

Transclusion

This special page can be transcluded, with the first unnamed parameter specifying how many entries should be displayed.

{{Special:NewPages/50}}

Additional parameters may be used in a comma separated list such as:

{{Special:NewPages/limit=5,shownav,offset=20081210,namespace=Template}}

Parameter	Value type	Description
limit	integer	Number of entries to display
offset	date	Date to begin the list of entries
namespace	string	Restrict the results to the named namespace
hideliu	boolean	Hide logged in users (LIU)
hidepatrolled	boolean	Only show pages which have not been patrolled (admins only)
hidebots	boolean	Hide bots
showredirs	boolean	Show redirects
shownav	boolean	Display result navigation links above and beneath the results, i.e.: "(newest | oldest) View (newer 50 | older 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)"
username	boolean	Restrict the results to the named user.

Permanent link

Special:PermanentLink is a special page that allows users to create internal links to a specific revision. Revision numbers can be found in each page's edit history.

Such links are a little slower to load compared to external links but easier to type and they work in some places where external links do not, e.g. edit summaries.

Note that it is very common to see links to specific revisions implemented as external links because it is easy to cut-and-paste an entire URL to form an external link rather than creating an internal link using this special page.

Usage

• [[Special:PermanentLink/3591437]] → Special:PermanentLink/3591437 - Shows the link to a specific revision of the page where the revision number occurred in its edit history.

These links may be used in the edit summary as well as adapted like any other internal links, e.g. [[Special:PermanentLink/3501958|see this revision]] → see this revision.

Preferences

Main article: Help:Preferences

Random page

The random page feature allows users to view a wiki page at random. The default, and most convenient use is to show a random page in the main namespace, and is accessed through the Special:Random page. Users will be redirected to the selection.

Special:Randompage is an alias for the feature and works in the same manner.

Users can also opt to view a random page in a namespace of their choice. This is achieved by specifying a namespace as a parameter to the page, i.e. Special:Random/Help will select a random page in the Help namespace; Special:Random/Category will show the contents of a random category, etc.

Recent changes

Recent changes is a special page that lists recent changes in reverse order, with change date and time, change in the page size, user who created the page, and the edit summary.

This feature is accessible at Special:RecentChanges. The page results are adjustable using settings the Preferences section "Recent changes".

You can choose which Recent Changes you want to display. You can combine different kinds of filters to display the results you want.

Recent Changes display a list of results. More information can be found at Help:Tracking changes.

Transclusions

This special page can be transcluded, with the first unnamed parameter specifying how many entries should be displayed.

{{Special:RecentChanges/50}}

Additional parameters may be used in a comma separated list such as:

{{Special:RecentChanges/days=5,limit=40,hidebots,hideminor}}

Parameter	Value type	Description
days	integer	Maximum number of days to display
limit	integer	Maximum number of entries to display
namespace	integer	Limit results to the specified namespace
hidebots	boolean	Hide bots
bots	boolean	Show bots
hideminor	boolean	Hide minor edits
minor	boolean	Show minor edits
hideliu	boolean	Hide logged in users (LIU)
hidepatrolled	boolean	Only show pages which have not been patrolled
hideanons	boolean	Hide anonymous users
hidemyself	boolean	Hide the logged in user's own changes
hidecategorization	boolean	Hide page categorization
tagfilter	string	Only get entries for that tag

Watchlist

Main article: Help:Watchlist

See also

• mw:Help:Special pages

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