Help:Special pages

Special pages are part of the MediaWiki software. Most are designed to help with site maintenance and paperwork. Some perform activities indirectly related to editing, like uploading images or listing all links to a certain article.

Special pages never appear in lists of articles, and generally cannot be modified. Most have PHP configuration variables, and any explanatory text can be revised via. Parameters (such as the log type on ) can sometimes be passed to a special page in the URL; these are rarely documented, however. When typing a URL by hand, the camelcasing is not required.

As of January 2012, all special pages are "live", not cached. Therefore, repeatedly pounding the refresh button may overtax the database server. Lists of articles are limited to 5000 items in any case.

Pages marked with an asterisk (*) are omitted from the directory at, but may be accessed via certain auto-generated wikilinks, such as those in the sidebar.

Special:AbuseFilter
An interface for configuring the AbuseFilter extension. Algorithms for the filters are stored in numbered subpages. A table summarizes each filter's actions and indicates its total volume. The user can edit or import filters, test them on past edits, or view the text of rejected edits (some tools are restricted to administrators however).

Special:AbuseLog
A detailed log of changes to the AbuseFilter criteria (see ), with some advanced search options.

Special:AllMessages
Lists all text strings in the MediaWiki interface. Administrators can edit them. Messages differing from the defaults are stored in the MediaWiki: namespace.

Special:AllPages
Lists all pages within a specified namespace. Redirects are italicized.

Special:AncientPages
Lists articles by date of last edit.

Special:Block
Administrators can block an account or IP address from editing. IP ranges can be blocked using CIDR notation.

(*) Special:BlockIP
Redirects to.

Special:BlockList
Lists the accounts and IP addresses that are currently blocked, and for how long.

Special:BookSources
If you know a book's ISBN number, this page searches for it in various online stores.

Special:BrokenRedirects
Lists redirects pointing to nonexistent pages. Ideally this should be empty, but occasionally someone will create redirects with the intention of starting the real article later.

(*) Special:Captcha
Displays the help text for our captcha extension (MediaWiki:Questycaptchahelp-text and MediaWiki:Captchahelp-cookies-needed).

Special:Categories
Lists all categories in alphabetical order (see also ). Equivalent to in the Category: namespace.

Special:CategoryTree
Navigate categories and subcategories in an "expanding/collapsing folders" format. (See also ).

Special:CentralNotice
Allows administrators to configure the site notice, a banner that can appear on all pages. The underlying extension is somewhat buggy; relevant options can be set manually via if necessary.

Special:ChangePassword
Accessed from, this allows a registered user to change their password. An email address is not required.

Note that this does not permit resetting passwords deleted during the fork (since you have to be logged in to view your preferences). Instructions for that case are listed in the FAQ.

(*) Special:CheckUser
The Doom Wiki does not currently use the checkuser permission, but if it did, checks would be conducted here.

Special:Cite
Generates a formal bibliographic citation for a wiki article. Several standard formats are displayed.

(*) Special:ConfirmEmail
This page is linked from if the user has entered an email address. The address must be validated before MediaWiki will begin sending messages there.

Special:Contributions
Lists edits by a specified user. Deleted revisions and logged actions are omitted.

Special:DeadendPages
Lists articles with no outbound wikilinks.

Special:DeletedContributions
Administrators can view deleted edits by a specified user (unless they predate the fork).

(*) Special:DisabledUsers
Lists accounts whose password has been scrambled with and not yet reset by the user.

Special:Disambiguations
Lists all pages explicitly marked as disambiguation pages. (The relevant filters are defined by MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage.)

Special:DoubleRedirects
Lists redirects pointing to other redirects. These normally result from page moves where the editor forgot to check for redirects to the old title. To prevent an infinite loop, MediaWiki follows only the first link automatically, so double redirects should always be fixed.

Special:Editcount
Counts the total edits by a specified user, grouped by namespace. Deleted revisions and logged actions are omitted.

Special:ExpandTemplates
Test area for previewing the results of transclusions (templates, MediaWiki variables, and/or parser functions).

Special:Export
Dump one or more articles to an file. This file can normally be imported into another MediaWiki installation (see )

Special:FewestRevisions
Lists articles in ascending order of edit count.

Special:FileDuplicateSearch
Finds duplicates of a previously uploaded image (using file hashes). In the current version of MediaWiki, this search is run automatically as part of the upload process.

(*) Special:FileList
Redirects to.

Special:FilePath
If you know the full title of an image, you can bypass the File: page to view or download it directly.

Special:Import
An administrator can add pages or revisions en masse from an XML file generated by MediaWiki (see ).

(*) Special:IPBlockList
Redirects to.

Special:LinkSearch
Finds external links matching a specified URL or domain. Useful for tracking down large-scale spam, or when a domain has become dead.

Special:ListFiles
A table of pages in the File: namespace, with extra information like file size and upload summary.

Special:ListGroupRights
Specifies which MediaWiki permissions are assigned to which user groups. These settings can be changed only by the database maintainers, who are unlikely to do so absent a clear demonstration of consensus or a site performance issue.

Special:ListRedirects
Lists every redirect in every namespace, in the order they were created.

Special:ListUsers
Lists all users in a specified group. (See also .) Sorting by account age is currently broken.

(*) Special:LockDB
This page allows the entire site to be temporarily locked from editing. Currently unused and inaccessible, because we have no user groups with the siteadmin permission.

Special:Log
A record of all editing actions that don't involve revising the text of a page: abuse filter setup, account creations, file uploads, page moves, reviews, deletions, blocks, XML imports, history merges (currently disabled), page patrolling (largely unused), account merges, account renaming, and user rights changes.

The abuse filter entries do not show the criteria in detail, since that would make them easier to evade. See.

Special:LonelyPages
Lists articles with no inbound wikilinks.

Special:LongPages
Lists articles in descending order of size (mainspace only). In 2004, it was easy to overload an old computer or an outdated browser, but nowadays this is mostly useful for finding promotional editing.

(*) Special:MakeBot
Redirects to.

(*) Special:MakeSysop
Redirects to.

Special:MIMESearch
Lists uploaded files with a specified MIME type. Non-standard formats like LMP and WAD are classified as "text/plain".

Special:MostCategories
Lists pages that have a lot of categories.

(*) Special:MostImages
Redirects to.

(*) Special:MostLinked
Redirects to.

Special:MostLinkedCategories
Lists the categories containing the most articles/files.

Special:MostLinkedFiles
Lists files being used on many pages. All namespaces are included.

Special:MostLinkedPages
Lists pages with the most inbound wikilinks. All namespaces are included, and links within transcluded text (such as a navbox) are counted.

Special:MostLinkedTemplates
Lists templates with the most transclusions plus inbound wikilinks. (Thus some templates also appear in with reduced counts.)

Special:MostRevisions
Lists pages with many edits (mainspace only).

(*) Special:MovePage
Accessed via the move tab, this form executes a page move.

Special:MultipleUpload
Like, but up to five files can be processed at once. The wizard applies identical descriptions and licensing tags to each file; if this is inaccurate, the resulting File: pages must be edited afterward.

(*) Special:MyPage
Redirects to the User: page of the current user or IP address.

(*) Special:MyTalk
Redirects to the User talk: page of the current user or IP address.

Special:NewFiles
Displays a grid of recent uploads with thumbnails.

(*) Special:NewImages
Redirects to.

Special:NewPages
Lists page creations within the last 91 days. Highlighted entries have not yet been reviewed.

(*) Special:NoticeTemplate
An adjunct to, this adds predefined banner formatting to site notices.

Special:Nuke
An administrator can mass-delete pages created by a specified user. Obviously, this is only intended for use in clear cases of spamming or repeated vandalism.

Special:OldReviewedPages
Lists pages which were previously reviewed, but have additional revisions pending. "(under review)" means that the diff has been viewed by someone with reviewing permissions in the last 5 minutes or so (that user may decline to approve the revision, of course).

As of January 2013, only about half the mainspace (including redirects) has ever been reviewed. This list is short because many of our most active users are also Editors, meaning that their contributions are automatically approved.

(*) Special:PasswordReset
A bureaucrat can scramble any user's password. Because our most active bureaucrat currently has direct database access, this page is most likely vestigal.

Special:PopularPages
Lists pages in order of all-time views (mainspace only).

Special:Preferences
Logged-in users can customize the site's appearance and editing interface, and specify contact information.

Special:PrefixIndex
Search for pages whose titles begin with a certain string (technically redundant with, but less unwieldy). Redirects are italicized.

Special:ProblemChanges
Lists pages pending review, filtered by edit tag. The Doom Wiki has few extensions which apply tags (see ), so this page is normally empty.

Special:ProtectedPages
These pages are currently under some form of editing restriction. Administrators can change a page's protection level.

This list omits nonexistent pages "salted" against re-creation; for those, see.

Special:ProtectedTitles
Lists pages that cannot be created due to repeated counterproductive editing.

Special:QualityOversight
A version of the review log with some advanced search options.

Special:Random
Immediately loads a randomly selected page. The main namespace is used by default, but this can be changed in the URL, e.g.  http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Special:Random/Help .

A random file can be embedded using the RandomImage extension.

Special:RandomInCategory
Loads a random page within a specified category. This also may be included in a URL, e.g.  http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Special:Random/1994_WADs .

(*) Special:RandomPage
Redirects to.

Special:RandomRedirect
Like, but displays a redirect page instead of a normal page.

Special:RecentChanges
A chronological list of recent page edits plus "public" logged actions (such as deletions and file uploads).

All of the filtering options, including the timestamp, can be specified in the URL. The hard limit of 365 days was apparently lowered to 91 days at some point.

Special:RecentChangesLinked
Similar to, but confined to pages linked from a specified page, pages linked to a specified page, or pages within a certain category. The "Related changes" link in the sidebar brings up this page and performs a search on the currently displayed article or category.

(*) Special:RenameUser
Bureaucrats can rename an account. Because this is extremely database-intensive, and because copyleft requires edits to be accurately attributed, it should only be done for users with very few contributions.

Special:ReviewedPages
Lists pages that have ever been reviewed, by namespace and quality level. "prime revision" links to the version of each page displayed by default (to non-logged-in users). Pages are vaguely ordered by the timestamp of the initial approval.

(*) Special:ReviewedVersions
Abbreviated log generated by, listing all validated versions of a given page and who reviewed them.

Special:Search
Search in page titles or text by namespace. MediaWiki's indexing has become more powerful over the years (two-letter words can now be included, for instance).

Special:ShortPages
Lists articles in ascending order of size (mainspace only).

Special:SpecialPages
Nearly all special pages are linked here, grouped by topic.

(*) Special:Stabilization
Administrators can override the default public revision on an individual page without editing or reviewing it. This dialog is linked from the protection tab; the URL can be manually typed only if the target title is included, e.g.  http://doomwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Stabilization&page=Mace_of_Contrition .

As of May 2012, all administrators are also Reviewers, making this page largely redundant.

(*) Special:StableVersions
Redirects to.

Special:Statistics
Summarizes recent site traffic in terms of edits, page views, and registered users.

A nonzero job queue length means that certain edits presumed to be database-intensive (like changing a widely used template) have not yet propagated to all pages. If you suspect this in an article you want to edit, append  ?action=purge  to that article's URL.

Special:Tags
A list of tags which can be automatically added to edit summaries. Currently these are used only to identify possible spam or vandalism.

Special:UncategorizedCategories
Lists categories which are not themselves in a category. This should only contain one entry, Category:Categories.

Special:UncategorizedFiles
Lists files which do not belong to any category. This should be empty.

Special:UncategorizedPages
Lists pages which do not belong to any category (mainspace only). This should be empty, although subpages have proved challenging.

Special:UncategorizedTemplates
Lists templates which do not belong to any category. This should be empty.

Special:Undelete
Administrators can view and restore previously deleted content, unless it predates the fork.

(*) Special:UnlockDB
This page restores editability to the wiki if it has been locked (see ). Currently unused and inaccessible, because we have no user groups with the siteadmin permission.

Special:UnreviewedPages
The complement to, listing pages that have no reviewed revisions.

Special:UnstablePages
If has been used to cause unreviewed versions of a page to display by default, such pages will be listed here.

Projects which enable FlaggedRevs selectively, such as Wikipedia, have a corresponding Special:StablePages which lists all edits awaiting review. We apply it globally, so that page is absent.

Special:UnusedCategories
These categories have been created (description text, templates, categorization...) but contain no pages.

Special:UnusedFiles
Uploaded files which are not included on any page, mainspace or otherwise. Most of the time these will never be used, and may safely be nominated for deletion.

Special:UnusedTemplates
Templates which are not invoked on any page. Wikilinks pointing to the Template: page do not count, although those are included at.

Special:UnwatchedPages
Pages not on any user's watchlist. Unwatched pages are easier to vandalize, so this list is restricted to administrators.

Special:Upload
Upload images and media for embedding in articles. A page in the File: namespace is automatically created to document each file. Only certain file types are permitted (MediaWiki examines both the extension and the MIME type to determine this).

Special:UserLogin
Registered users can log in here.

(*) Special:UserLogout
Loading this page logs the user out.

(*) Special:UserMerge
Bureaucrats can merge one account into another. Because this is extremely database-intensive, and because copyleft requires edits to be accurately attributed, it should only be done for users with very few contributions. The discontinued account is completely removed from the site, not merely hidden or blocked.

Special:UserRights
Administrators can view and change the access levels of any registered account. Some changes are restricted to bureaucrats only (see ).

Special:ValidationStatistics
Data on how promptly new contributions are vetted for quality.

Special:Version
Some broad information about our MediaWiki configuration and the extensions currently installed. (Installed extensions are occasionally deactivated due to performance or stability issues.)

Special:WantedCategories
Categories which contain pages, but have not yet been created (description text, templates, categorization...). Subcategorization is a tedious procedure, so categories are often "proposed" in this manner.

Special:WantedFiles
Files that have been linked to, but not actually uploaded. Using this page indiscriminately as a to-do list is not recommended, due to copyright issues and vanity editing. In most cases, links to deleted images should simply be removed.

Special:WantedPages
Pages that have been linked to, but not actually created. Notability standards are ill-defined on the Doom Wiki, and this list includes all namespaces, so a single link means very little. Titles at the top of the list are far more likely to be relevant.

Special:WantedTemplates
Templates that have been linked to, but not actually created. Writing templates can be complex and time-consuming, so templates are often "proposed" in this manner. On the other hand, it might be a typo or vandalism.

Special:Watchlist
As a wiki grows, the full recent changes list becomes too unwieldy to follow. Any registered user can use this page to create a watchlist, which only shows edits to the pages they choose. Talk pages are automatically included along with their articles.

Special:WhatLinksHere
Lists all pages with wikilinks pointing to a certain page or file. This list can be generated from the sidebar toolbox, for the page currently in view.

Special:WithoutInterwiki
Lists articles without interlanguage links. Such lists are worthless on the Doom Wiki, which only has one subdomain, but fanatically maintained on Wikipedia.