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.


 * Special pages : Special:Specialpages : A list of all special pages
 * Preferences : Special:Preferences : Set your user preferences; for some project families, notably Wikicities, this applies for the whole family. See Help:Preferences.
 * My watchlist : Special:Watchlist : Show the pages you are watching. (Watchlist help)
 * 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
 * User list : Special:Listusers : A list of all registered users. For some project families, notably Wikicities, this applies for the whole family.
 * Admins list : Special:Listadmins : A list of all Administrators.
 * 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.
 * Orphaned pages : Special:Lonelypages : Lonely articles.
 * 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.
 * 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 : new pages in the main namespace - newest pages in the main namespace, 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 creation date and time, in order of creation
 * Dead-end pages : Special:Deadendpages : Pages without any outgoing links.
 * 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.


 * List of blocked IP addresses and usernames : Special:Ipblocklist : Blocked IPs and usernames
 * Book sources : Special:Booksources : ISBN Book Sources
 * Categories : Special:Categories
 * 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 : The version of the software the site is currently running
 * Wikimedia Board of Trustees election : Special:Boardvote : Voting software for the now finished elections
 * Special:SiteMatrix : list of all projects


 * Talk page : Special:Mytalk : Link to the talk page of the user who follows it.

Restricted special pages

 * Block user : Special:Blockip : Sysop only. Used to block or unblock users, IPs and ranges of IPs.


 * Restore deleted page : Special:Undelete : Sysop only. One way to undelete a page.
 * Make a user into a sysop : Special:Makesysop : Bureaucrat only.
 * Lock database : Special:Lockdb : Developer only. Puts the wiki in read only mode.
 * Unlock database : Special:Unlockdb : Developer only. Puts the wiki in read/write mode.
 * Show process list : Special:ShowProcesslist : Developer only.

Currently unavailable special pages

 * SQL query : Special:Asksql : Sysop only. Database interface for running queries. Currently disabled.
 * All system messages : Special:Allmessages : Displays all pages in the MediaWiki namespace. 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.
 * Maintenance page : Special:Maintenance : Currently disabled.

Logs

 * Special:Log - combined display of upload, deletion, protection, blocking, and sysop logs. You can narrow down the view by selecting a log type, the user name (case-sensitive!), or the affected page (usual case-sensitivity, but full name required, e.g. "Image:Map South Holland.png".

Old logs on   , until Dec 2004:


 * :Block log - blocks and unblocks
 * :Deletion log - deleted and undeleted pages
 * :Protection log - protected and unprotected pages
 * :Upload log - list of images uploaded

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

Special pages requiring a target page:
 * Special:Recentchangeslinked/Help:Template
 * Special:Whatlinkshere/Help:Template

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

Special page allowing a starting page: 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:Allpages/Template (Standard prefixes are ignored, compare Special:Allpages/Template:C and Special:Allpages/Templat:C)

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.

On a special page the tab labelled with the namespace, in this case "Special Page", oddly links to the Main page.