For the guideline on definite and indefinite articles in article titles, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name). See also: Wikipedia:FAQ Wikipedia information pageThis is an information page.It is neither an encyclopedia article nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.ShortcutsWP:ARTICLEWP:ARTICLEWP:WIAAWP:WIAA Wikipedia data structurevte Namespaces Subject namespaces Talk namespaces 0 (Main/Article) Talk 1 2 User User talk 3 4 Wikipedia Wikipedia talk 5 6 File File talk 7 8 MediaWiki MediaWiki talk 9 10 Template Template talk 11 12 Help Help talk 13 14 Category Category talk 15 100 Portal Portal talk 101 118 Draft Draft talk 119 126 MOS MOS talk 127 710 TimedText TimedText talk 711 828 Module Module talk 829 1728 Event Event talk 1729 Former namespaces 108 Book Book talk 109 442 Course Course talk 443 444 Institution Institution talk 445 446 Education Program Education Program talk 447 2300 Gadget Gadget talk 2301 2302 Gadget definition Gadget definition talk 2303 2600 Topic 2601 Virtual namespaces -1 Special -2 Media Current list
A Wikipedia article or entry is a page on this site that has encyclopedic information on it. A well-written encyclopedia article:
identifies a notable topic, summarizes that topic comprehensively, is written in an encyclopedic style of language, has been copyedited well, contains references to reliable sources, and contains wikilinks to and is linked to by other articles or article sections about related topics.Most articles consist of paragraphs and images (perhaps with other types of audiovisual media). However, articles may also be formatted as stand-alone lists or tables (not to be confused with disambiguation pages, which are purely nigation aids). These lists or tables are also considered articles for Wikipedia's purposes and are included in the main or article namespace, the one without a title prefix and colon (e.g. Template:).
The following items are not counted as articles (see also Wikipedia:Administration § Data structure and development):
disambiguation pages, redirect pages, templates, including nboxes (aka nigation boxes), user pages, drafts, portals, talk pages (aka discussion pages), file pages for media such as images, category pages, help pages, and Wikipedia policies and guidelines pages (along with everything else in the Wikipedia: namespace). Article titles Article creation Introductory Getting started with Wikipedia Article wizard Your first article Suggested articles Most-wanted articles Requested articles Images needing articles Concepts and guidelines Standard layout Lead section Sections Stub articles Categorization Development processes Article development Moving a page Merging articles Featured article criteria The perfect article Meta tools and groups WikiProject: Articles for creation Special:NewPages Special:NewPagesFeed New pages patrol New articles by topic Recent additions (DYK) vteSee Wikipedia:Article titles to learn how we title articles.
Article scopeEach article has a scope, which is what the article covers. The article should contain a readable summary of everything within the scope, given due weight, based on what reliable sources say.
Quality of articles Main page: Wikipedia:Content assessmentArticles range greatly in quality, from as high as featured articles to as low as candidates for speedy deletion. Some articles are quite lengthy and rich in content while others are shorter (possibly stubs) or of lesser quality.
Namespace ShortcutsWP:NS0WP:NS0WP:MAINSPACEWP:MAINSPACEWP:ARTICLESPACEWP:ARTICLESPACE Main page: Wikipedia:Administration § Data structure and development"Articles" belong to the main namespace of Wikipedia pages (also called "article namespace" or simply "mainspace").
The main namespace, article namespace, or mainspace is the namespace of Wikipedia that contains the encyclopedia proper – that is, where "live" Wikipedia articles reside, as opposed to sandbox pages.
The main namespace is the default namespace and does not use a prefix in article page names. This is distinct from other namespaces, where page names are always prefixed by an indicator of the particular namespace in which the page resides. For example, all user pages are prefixed by "User:", their talk pages by "User talk:", templates by "Template:", and various types of internal administrative pages by "Wikipedia:" (such as this page). Thus, any page created without such a prefix will automatically be placed in the article namespace.
The main namespace does not include any pages in any of the specified namespaces that are used for particular purposes, such as:
the talk namespaces for discussing what the content of articles in mainspace should be (for example, Talk:Mathematics) the Wikipedia namespace, for material about meta subjects related to Wikipedia and is where policies and guidelines, essays, information, and process pages reside, as well as other "meta" topics about editing Wikipedia (examples, WP:VERIFY and Wikipedia:Statistics); the Wikipedia talk namespace, for discussing what the content of pages in Wikipedia space should be, and interpretations of them (for example, Wikipedia talk:VERIFY and Wikipedia talk:Statistics); the special namespace, whose pages are created by the software on demand (see Help:Special page); the user namespace for pages that are used by individual Wikipedia editors (example, User:Example). the file namespace which is used for describing and attributing images (example, File:Great Horned Owl.USFWS.jpg) the MediaWiki namespace, which is used to define shortcuts and other text strings used around Wikipedia (example MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning)But not all pages in the article namespace are considered to be articles by everyone. Pages in mainspace that are not universally considered articles-proper are:
hundreds of thousands of stand-alone lists (although these are usually treated as articles, and can even be assessed as featured lists) including outlines, glossaries and indices; hundreds of thousands of disambiguation pages and set index articles, which are used to resolve naming conflicts; many millions of redirect pages, including soft redirects, which are used to re-route one page to another page; a small number of mathematical tables and data pages (e.g. Table of divisors, Table of nuclides (segmented, narrow), Ethanol (data page)); and the Main Page, which is a portal – but it's still in mainspace from a time before any other namespaces existed, and it would be more trouble than it's worth to move it now.Every page in the main namespace can he a companion talk page, and these belong to the "Talk" namespace, i.e., the page names start with the prefix "Talk:", followed by the name of the page in the main namespace. For example, "Talk:Wikipedia" is the talk page for Wikipedia's article on itself.
Lists of articles and statisticsSpecial:AllPages has a list of all pages in the article namespace, and Wikipedia:Statistics has statistics on Wikipedia and its growth.
The automatic definition used by the software at Special:Statistics is: any page that is in the article namespace, is not a redirect page and contains at least one wiki link. The statistics software currently has no method of detecting disambiguation pages, however; nor does it disregard stubs (but in any case, many articles tagged as stubs are quite substantial) or stub lists (lists templates with little or no content).
See also Wikipedia:Administration Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia? Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia Wikipedia:Subpages Wikipedia:Featured article criteria What counts as an Article (from English Wikipedia's newsletter, The Signpost) External links Special:Statistics (current article count) More detailed (but less current) statistics vteWikipedia technical helpGet personal technical help at the Teahouse, help desk, village pump (technical), talk pages, or IRC.Generaltechnical help Bypass cache Keyboard shortcuts Editing CharInsert Edit conflict Edit toolbar Reverting How to create a page IRC Tutorial Mobile access Multilingual support Page history Page information Page name Help Printing Software notices Editnotice Special characters Entering User access levels VisualEditor Help Specialpage-related Special page help AllPages Edit filter Emailing users Logging in Reset passwords Logs Moving a page History merging Non-admin and admin-only page moves Notifications/Echo FAQ Page Curation Page import Pending changes Random pages Recent changes Related changes Searching Linksearch Tags User contributions Watchlist What links here Wikitext Wikitext Cheatsheet Columns Line-break handling Lists Magic words For beginners Conditional expressions Switch parser function Time function Redirects Sections and TOCs Tables Introduction Basics Advanced table formatting Collapsing Conditional tables Sortable tables Using colours Links and diffs Links Interlanguage Interwiki Permanent Diffs Simplest diff guide Simple diff and link guide Complete diff and link guide Colon trick Link color Pipe trick URLs Media files: images,videos and sounds Media help Files Creation and usage Moving files to Commons Images Introduction to images Picture tutorial Preparing images for upload Uploading images Options to hide an image Extended image syntax SVG help Gallery tag Graphics tutorials Basic bitmap image editing How to improve image quality Graphics Lab resources Sound file markup Visual file markup Other graphics Family trees Graphs and charts How to create Barcharts To scale charts Math formulas Math symbols Musical scores Musical symbols Timeline EasyTimeline syntax WikiHiero syntax Templates andLua modules Templates Advanced template coding Template documentation Template index Template limits Template sandbox and test cases Citation templates Lua help Lua project Resources To do Substitution Purge Job queue Transclusion Labeled section Costs and benefits Guide to Scribbling Data structure Namespaces Main/Article Category Draft File File description page Help Portal Project/Wikipedia Talk Archiving Simple Template User User page design MediaWiki Bug reports and feature requests TimedMediaHandler extension Module Special HTML and CSS Cascading Style Sheets HTML in wikitext Catalogue of CSS classes Common.js and common.css Classes in microformats Markup validation Span tags Useful styles Customisationand tools Preferences Gadgets Skins Citation tools Cleaning up vandalism tools Customizing watchlists Hide pages IRC Scripts User scripts Guide List Techniques User style Tools Alternative browsing Browser tools Editing tools Nigation shortcuts Optimum tool set Wikimedia Cloud Services Beta Features at MediaWiki Automated editing AfC helper script AntiVandal AutoWikiBrowser Bots Creating history HotCat Huggle Nigation popups RedWarn Twinkle Ultriolet WPCleaner Inactive igloo STiki See also: Category:Wikipedia how-to Category:Wikipedia information pagesFurther nigation at: Help pages Administrators Accessibility Accounts Bots Referencing Citation metadata Templates User scripts