Help:Magic

The magic of this wiki's software transforms text for you in several useful ways.

Substitution[edit]

Pipe trick[edit]

When you create a link which ends in a pipe character |, here's an example of what happens.

[[Wikipedia:Community Portal|]]

• turns into [[Wikipedia:Community Portal|Community Portal]]
• appears as Community Portal
• provides a link to the community portal, which is what you would expect

[[User:Example user|]]

• turns into [[User:Example user|Example user]]
• appears as Example user
• provides a link to the user page, which is what you would want most of the time
• This does not work in edit summaries.

[[User talk:Example user|]]

• turns into [[User talk:Example user|Example user]]
• appears as Example user
• provides a link to the user's talk page, which may not be what you want

[[:Category:Continents|]]

• turns into [[:Category:Continents|Continents]]
• appears as Continents
• provides a link to the Category page for continents
• Note that the first COLON CHARACTER prevents the link from causing the page containing it being listed in this category. This is how to link to a category without the link causing the page it is on being listed in the category. Only use the first colon if you DON'T want the page listed in that category. If you do want it listed in the category, use the regular category link without the first colon.

[[John Smith (explorer)|]]

• turns into [[John Smith (explorer)|John Smith]]
• appears as John Smith
• links to the John Smith (explorer) article
• This is appropriate when linking to disambiguated pages.

Suffix trick[edit]

[[Professor]]ial

• appears as Professorial but links to Professor, not to Professorial

[[Professor]]s

• appears as Professors but links to Professor, not to Professors

However this intentionally does not work with apostrophes, [1] so the 's in [[Professor]]'s does not become part of the link, and instead appears as Professor's in this example.

Initial character case insensitive[edit]

[[noodle]]

• appears as noodle but links to Noodle, not to noodle. So just use whichever initial case is appropriate for the text the link appears in.

Tildes[edit]

Use the TILDE CHARACTER to insert your username and/or a timestamp. This makes discussions easier to follow.

Three tildes (your name)[edit]

~~~

• turns into Uncle Ed (talk)

Four tildes (name and date)[edit]

~~~~

• turns into Uncle Ed (talk) 07:27, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Five tildes (just the date)[edit]

~~~~~

• turns into 07:27, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

ISBN, RFC and PMID automatic links[edit]

ISBN[edit]

ISBN codes automatically generate links, for example: the wikitext ISBN 978-0-45-152774-5 becomes ISBN 978-0-45-152774-5 which corresponds to Special:Booksources/9780451527745.

RFC[edit]

RFC 1149 becomes RFC 1149, which is the external link to the standard at: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149.

PMID[edit]

PMID 20610307 becomes PMID 20610307, which links to a reference in the medical literature at PubMed.

Templates[edit]

You can use templates to incorporate boilerplate text. You may have seen at the top of some articles notices like "merge with X" or "this page is marked for deletion" or "the neutrality of this article is disputed" or "an edit war was going on here, so we have locked the page".

They look pretty consistent, don't they? Well, it's all done with templates.

{{merge|help:templates}}

looks like

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with help:templates. (Discuss)

{{afd}}

looks like

This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed. For more information, particularly on merging or moving the article during the discussion, read the guide to deletion. Steps to list an article for deletion: 1. {{subst:afd}}   2. Preloaded debate OR {{subst:afd2|pg=Main page|cat=|text=}} ~~~~ (categories)   3. {{subst:afd3|pg=Main page}} (add to top of list)   4. Please consider notifying the author(s) by placing {{subst:adw|Main page}} ~~~~ on their talk page(s). Unregistered users placing this tag on an article cannot complete the deletion nomination and should leave detailed reasons for deletion on Talk:Main page. If the nomination is not completed and no message is left on the talkpage, this tag may be removed.

{{protected}}

looks like

This page is currently protected from editing until disputes have been resolved. This protection is not an endorsement of the current version. See the protection policy and protection log for more details. Please discuss any changes on the talk page; you may use the {{editprotected}} template to ask an administrator to make the edit if it is supported by consensus. You may also request that this page be unprotected.

{{NPOV}}

looks like

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

See also[edit]

• Help:Cheatsheet
• Help:Wiki markup