Wikipedia:URLs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Usually users do not have to know URLs, except http://en.wikipedia.org/ to go to the Main Page; this or another page such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges can be bookmarked, and mostly one just uses links. However, sometimes a URL is needed, and also knowledge of URLs that Wikipedia uses may help understanding the working of links.

Contents

[edit] Page

The URL of e.g. the article Train is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train

but one can also use

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train

A redirect is applied unless one uses, e.g. for Railway:

http://en.wikipedia.org../../../../articles/r/a/i/Railway.html

in which case the redirect page itself is given. In the case of a redirect to Wiktionary, Meta-Wikipedia, etc., or one of the Special Pages, this is the only way to get the page.

Parameters such as "redirect=no" (see below for more examples) can also be added to the short form. In that case the question mark comes after the article name, e.g.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train?redirect=no

The system itself uses the long form.

[edit] Recent Changes

To get the edits from 18 Sept 2003, 22:00 UTC, use

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&from=20030918220000

(format yyyymmddhhmmss, UTC time, as produced by {{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}}, currently giving 20080613204908; to construct a time stamp, e.g. for a given time ago, see Category:Date computing template); the maximum number is that specified in the preferences; if there are more changes only the most recent are given.

The maximum number can also be specified in the URL, e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&from=20030928100521&limit=25

To make sure you get all changes from the specified time, specify a large number as limit.

To get the last 12 edits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&limit=12

The maximum is 5000, larger numbers are converted into this. This maximum only works when not logged in; the actual maximum when logged in is lower, but not clear, and it may vary, see WP:RC.

Add &hidebots=0 to show bot edits (these are otherwise not shown).

[edit] Page history

The page history of Train is

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&action=history ,

edits numbers 91-95, counting backwards:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&limit=5&offset=90&action=history

[edit] Permanent link to a particular version of a page

The revision of Train as of 04:00, 17 Aug 2003 UTC is

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&oldid=1374279

This gives a link to a particular version of the page. The data seen by someone clicking this link will never change.

The permanent link for the page you are currently viewing can be found in the "toolbox" box on the left side of the page (except in edit views).

Note that an ID number is used, not the time. It determines which page is displayed, and which version of it. Note that "title=Train" only determines the header: if the ID number belongs to another page this gives an odd result (the other page, but with the header Train).

[edit] Viewing the differences between two versions

The difference between two particular versions is written as

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&diff=1374279&oldid=1260056

where diff is the version that will appear on the right-hand column of the diff page.

The ID number 0 means "most recent" in these tags. Thus, difference between the current version and a particular version is

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&diff=0&oldid=1374279

And the change between the two most recent versions is

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&diff=0&oldid=0

The page IDs can be found in the URLs of the datestamps in the page history.

[edit] User contributions

E.g. edits before 2002, from user Jimbo Wales:

http://en.wikipedia.org../../../../articles/c/o/n/Special%7EContributions_de0d.html

[edit] Watchlist

E.g. from 14.4 minutes ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&days=0.01

[edit] Related Changes

Last edit to all pages linked from Train:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Train&days=1000&limit=1000

[edit] What links here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Train and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Train are equivalent.

[edit] New pages

(See Wikipedia:Edit summary#Places where the edit summary appears)

Nrs. 2501-2505 in the list of created pages in the main namespace, in backward order:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&limit=5&offset=2500

[edit] Users

Log-in names nrs 16751-16850 (in alphabetical order, not to be confused with user-ID):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Listusers&limit=100&offset=16750

This can be used to see which names are in use near a given name without first listing all earlier names. The offset has to be found by trial and error.

[edit] Input box

<inputbox>
type=create
preload=A
editintro=B
default=entered_text
buttonlabel=Create!
bgcolor=#d0f0d0
width=30
</inputbox>

produces this URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=A&editintro=B&title=entered_text&create=Create+article

upon submission of this input form:

After entering the name of a non-existing page C, it gives the edit box of C, filled with the contents of A, with page B rendered after the title C. If the wikitext of page B contains {{PAGENAME}}, this is rendered as C.

After entering the name of an existing page C, it simply gives the edit box of C.

If A does not exist, the edit box is not pre-filled. If B does not exist, the default MediaWiki:Newarticletext is used.

If a default is specified, it will be entered in the text box; if not, the text box will be empty. An optional buttonlabel will appear on the form's submit button, instead of "Create article" if none is specified. If you do not specify a bgcolor, the background color will be white. The default input text width is 20.

The preceding documentation applies when the mandatory type parameter is type=create (all other parameters are optional.) The type parameter may also be type=comment — useful for adding a new section to talk pages, adding "&section=new" to the URL — or type=search with which you may wish to use the optional searchbuttonlabel parameter. Note that buttonlabel parameter is also valid within type=search inputboxes, the difference being that search results from the non-search button are shown as an optional offer to create the page instead of a search producing no results. Complete documentation is available at m:Help:Inputbox.

[edit] Default limit

If no limit for the number of results is specified, it is:

  • for Recent and Related Changes and New Pages: what is specified in the preferences (if not logged in: 50)
  • for the page history and user contributions: 50

[edit] Partial list of pages in a specified namespace, alphabetically from a given starting point

E.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allpages/Tr

or equivalently

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Allpages&from=Tr

or for another namespace

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Allpages&from=Tr&namespace=10

Please note that a-z come after A-Z, e.g. Wikipedia comes after WikiWiki. This means also that if you put "from=tr" you get only page titles starting with a special character, since no page title starts with a regular lowercase letter.

[edit] View source of protected page

To view the source of a page, even if is protected, one can use the URL for editing, e.g. for Mediawiki:Recentchanges:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mediawiki:Recentchanges&action=edit