To display the tip of the day on your userpage, use {{Tip of the day}} or {{totd}} (the boxed version).
On the project page is a list of links to subpages, titled by date. Each subpage either has or is scheduled to have a single Wikipedia tip stored in it.
Each subpage should be filled at least 60 days in advance of its title's date.
The Template:Tip of the day will automatically display the current day's entry. (The transclusion code has been left out until project launch.)
Submit new entries on this page, below.
Please help prepare the new entries below by proofreading and editing the tips for factual accuracy, clarity, readability, and proper formatting.
When you believe an entry is polished and ready, move it up to the ready to post section, for somebody else to post to the subpages.
Move entries from the ready to post section that you actually agree are ready to post to the subpages on the adjoining project page, one entry per subpage. If you feel an entry in Ready to post is not ready, move it back down to New entries. Do not post to subpages the entries that you placed in the Ready to post section. This ensures that each entry is given final approval by at least two editors. The only exception to this is if the project falls behind its 60-day safety buffer, which means there aren't enough people helping with the project!
Entries that are not worthy of this project get moved down to not suitable. Generally, this means that the subject matter doesn't fit here, or the tip is complete nonsense. Include a little message as to why, and your sig.
If you see an entry under "not suitable" that you agree is not worthy of this project (due to inappropriate subject matter), then delete it from this page. But please do not delete entries that you placed there. This again ensures that at least 2 editors are involved in the decision.
Once a tip you've written has been posted, you can proudly display one of these userboxes on your userpage:
Formatting required for entries: see the Wikipedia:Tip of the day/February 21, 2006 entry for the format. In order to allow users with table-formatted user pages to display the tip of the day template without it messing up their page, please do not include headings in the tips. Instead, we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way with <big>Tip of the day: Tip title'''</center</big>. Each entry must also include a link for users to be able to read more about the topic, if such a link exists. And of course don't forget the tip itself, which should take one paragraph, or two at the most. (These are tips, not treatises). The best tips are one sentence long.
The working page for recycling the 2004 archive is Wikipedia talk:Tip of the day/Recycle these. They need to be updated for accuracy, and rewritten for better readability. Instructions are at the top of that page.
Sometimes it is necessary to refer to a section of a page when linking, rather than the whole page. You can create a link to any subheading on any page in Wikipedia by including a # followed by the subheading at the end of a link. For example: Wikipedia:Community Portal#Things to do. In all section links, be sure to use a piped link for readability. Using a piped link, the previous example looks like this: Things to do. If a section title changes, rather than go red/inactive, the link will lead to the top of the linked page. Keep in mind that redirects do not follow section links, making it useless to include them there.
Including a template on a page (by surrounding the page name with double curly brackets and leaving out the "Template:" prefix), is called transclusion. However, certain other types of pages can also be transcluded. Pages in the following namespaces can be transcluded: Category:, Help:, Portal:, User:, and Wikipedia:. The only difference is that you must include the prefix with the page's name inside the double curly brackets. Images can also be transcluded, but this is done using double square brackets instead of curlies.
Templates are special pages that contain boilerplate text intended to be displayed on more than one page in Wikipedia. This Tip of the day box is an example of a template, and besides being displayed here is displayed on various userpages. Template names start with the prefix "Template:" followed by the page name. This template is called "Template:Tip of the day". To display a template on a page, go to the page, click "edit this page", and add the template's name (without the prefix) surrounded by double curly brackets to the page's source text. (The text you see in the edit box when you click edit this page is called "source text", because it is a lot like programming code, which is called "source code"). Remember, do not include the prefix ("Template:"). Including a template on a page in this way is called "transclusion".
To add this automatically updating Tip of the day box to your userpage, go to your user page, click edit this page, and add {{Tip of the day}} to your userpage's source text. (The text you see in the edit box when you click edit this page is called "source text", because it is a lot like programming code, which is called "source code"). Be sure to include the double curly brackets.
Using the advanced settings of Google, you can use it to search Wikipedia much more effectively than Wikipedia's search box in several ways:
Enter the desired search term(s) at Google, then go to Google's advanced search screen and insert Wikipedia's URL (web address) in the "Domain" box, and click "Google search."
Limit your Google search to Wikipedia by typing site:http://en.wikipedia.org/ before your search terms.
If you use the Google Toolbar in your browser, you can customize it to add a "Search Current Site" button, which will automatically restrict your results to Wikipedia when you begin your search from a Wikipedia page.
If you use Firefox, you can add Wikipedia to Firefox's search box's search engine selector, by going here and clicking on Wikipedia in the list provided. The search engine selector is the little pull-down menu in the search box.
Tip of the day: Wikipedia-specific searching with Firefox
In Firefox, the search box has a little pull down menu to allow you to choose which search engine it uses. Several popular search engines come included, but not Wikipedia. However, Firefox provides a page on their website listing more search engines you can add to that menu, including Wikipedia's search. To add Wikipedia, simply go here and click on Wikipedia in the list provided, and you're done. To activate it, pull-down the menu at the search box and click on Wikipedia there. Now you have a second Wikipedia search box. Unlike the search box in Wikipedia's sidebar, which disappears off the screen when you scroll down to read a long page, the Firefox search box always remains on the screen, ready to assist.
To get a list of all the subpages for a particular page, click on Special pages in the toolbox. Then click on All pages at the top of the list. Then select the namespace the page is in (from the pulldown menu), and enter the pagename in the inbox with the caption Display pages starting at, and press Go. If the page's name was "pagename", then all the subpages would start with "pagename/".
One type of article found on Wikipedia is the topic list. It is a list of links to articles on a particular subject. It is different than categories found in Wikipedia's category system in that categories are usually limited to one level each in a tree, while lists can be an entire tree, with many branches and many levels. This gives the benefit of having all the topics on a given subject in one place - this allows you to scroll down and read the whole tree, and every topic in that tree's subject.
There are three basic steps to building a topic list for Wikipedia: the first is to search Wikipedia to make sure it doesn't already have a list on the subject. The second step is to hunt down every word you can find on the subject, from your own memory, books, web directories, dictionaries, etc. Surround each term with double square brackets, and save the page. Because Wikipedia has become so extensive, don't be surprised if most or even all of the links turn out blue (those are live links, each leading to an article on Wikipedia). Dead-end links are red, but don't remove them, because they show what articles Wikipedia is missing — anyone can click on a red link to create an article on that topic. The third step is checking each live article in the list for links to related topics. When you find one, add it to the list.
Tip of the day: When is a Wikipedia project a WikiProject?
The term "WikiProject" is reserved for projects created for the purpose of managing a specific family of information within Wikipedia. It is not a place to write encyclopedia articles (that's done on the article pages themselves), but a resource to help coordinate and organize article writing. The attached talk pages are a convenient forum for those interested in a particular project. WikiProjects can also have associated Portals. The Tip of the day project is not a WikiProject, because it coordinates the development of self-referential content (Wikipedia instructions) rather than content of the encyclopedia itself (such as Roman Empire). Note that some self-referential projects have broken this guideline.
When a project has more than one page associated with its key functions, such as a project or operations page, an archive, templates, etc., it is generally best to redirect the discussion pages for all those pages to the main discussion page for the project. That way, participants remain aware of what is going on with the project without having to search out every nook and cranny where discussions may be taking place. The exception to this strategy is when a task is delegated that would generate a great deal of discussion, and centralizing it with the project's other discussions would create a discussion page of unmanageable size. For an example of this overall strategy, see the discussion pages of the tip of the day project:
Note that there is no page called "WikiProject" because that term is generally reserved for projects that develop and maintain the subject-matter of the encyclopedia itself. Tips of the day are instructions on how to use Wikipedia. Therefore, the talk page for the main operations page is used as the project page and its forum.
A redirect is simply a page that takes the user to the page that the author of the redirect thought was most likely what a user would be looking for if he or she typed in the name of the redirect. Redirects are used for abbreviations, misspellings, accents, capitalisation, nicknames, synonyms, scientific names, plurals, &c. To create a redirect, type in the address of the page you want to create and choose to "start the (pagename) article." To create the redirect, type #REDIRECT [[FOO]] to make it redirect to FOO.
Use the new <ref> tag to add footnotes to your articles. This tag is easy and convenient because it allows you to cite your sources within your text and then have them automatically numbered and added to your References section at the end of the article. When you want to site a source simply use the <ref> tag to cite the source right next to the phrase that needs backing up. Example: Haliburton park is the largest park in the world<ref>Bill Harton (2005). http://www.linkhere.com. Retrieved Mar. 3 2005</ref>. Then, at the end of your article, simply add the following template to include all of the citations in your article: {{subst:footnotes}}
To avoid having to scroll to and click in the Wikipedia search box when you want to use it, use a keyboard shortcut to move the cursor there. Alt-F works on most systems. For a search box in which the cursor is already focused, use www.wikipedia.org.
Some table formatting has color codes, margin codes, etc. repeated throughout. So when you want to change the color scheme throughout the whole table, each code needs to be changed multiple times. Don't fall into the trap of modifying these manually! Cut and paste the whole document from Wikipedia's edit box to a word processor in another window (Wordpad works well for this). Then use the wordprocessor's replace command to change each code throughout the whole document.
Tip of the day: Need ideas for your user page design?
Are you are ready to build your user page, but don't have a clue what to put on there? For some great ideas check out the user pages from the weekly EsperanzaUser Page Awards. There are 5 winners each week. Winners can be found on the Esperanza User Page Awards results page. To browse the user page nominations (there are 15 in each contest), you'll have to explore the history page of the contest page.
Instead of counting your edits 500-at-a-time in your contributions list, you could use tools made by Interiot that count your edits and provide graphs. or list the number of edits to specific articles.
Tired of having to type long links to targets, and then having to write out most of the link again to hide the namespace? Simply put a pipe at the end of the link, like so: [[Wikipedia:Tip of the day|]], which turns Wikipedia:Tip of the day into Tip of the day. This trick also works with parentheses: [[colon (punctuation)|]] becomes colon.
Like most other programs, Wikipedia has keystroke combinations that can speed up your use of the program. Like alt-e to edit, alt-p to preview, alt-s to save, and many more. See: Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts.
Just as Google can be used to supplement Wikipedia's searchbox, your browser's toolbar can be used to supplement Wikipedia's navigation aids and the Main Page. Use it to create alternate access points to Wikipedia, and as your own customized navigation bar.
Disambiguation pages are solely intended to allow users to choose among several Wikipedia articles, usually when a user searches for an ambiguous term. These pages aren't for exploration, but only to help the user navigate to a specific article. To make the searching more efficient, disambiguation pages should never link to pages other than the search terms, should not have pipes " | " in the wikilinks which conceal the actual title of a linked article by replacing it with other text, and should avoid distracting information,
The Wikipedia community decides whether articles meet certain criteria to be selected as Featured articles, representing the best that Wikipedia has to offer. A different featured article is chosen to appear on the Main Page every day. Any user can nominate an article as a Featured article candidate, or comment on any of the existing candidate articles.
Tip of the day: Wikipedia-specific Google searchbox
The default Wikipedia search engine can be slow and unreliable. Other versions are available, such as a customized Google searchbox, already preset to search Wikipedia: [1]
Cut and paste it to your Userpage, or click on it, and save it as a button on your browser's toolbar.
Any article with more than three headings automatically gets a table of contents (TOC). The TOC is placed above the first section heading. All text above the first section heading is commonly referred to as the introduction. The introduction should not exceed one or two paragraphs in length and should summarize the article's key points.
If you do not like the TOC placement in an article, you can move it by inserting __TOC__ where you would like it placed. If you do not want a TOC on a particular page, add the text __NOTOC__ anywhere on the page; if you, personally, do not like the TOC feature, you can disable it in your user preferences.
When you transclude a page (that is, automate the display of a page's content on another page), all its tags (like {{TOCRight}}) go with it, which will be implemented on the host page. Just add the following code if you want to add a right-aligned TOC to a page, but don't want it to be displayed on "derivative" pages:
The Help desk is for questions about how to use Wikipedia.
The Village pump is for more technical questions about Wikipedia.
The Reference desk is for questions about life, the universe, and everything (other than about Wikipedia). It's a virtual version of the reference desk at a library. Wikipedians are very knowledgeable, and if they don't know the answer, they can probably find it pretty quickly.
When you make use of Wikepedia's desks (Help desk, Village pump, and the Reference desk), please consider putting some time in as a volunteer by reading and answering some questions at whichever desk you think you will be the most helpful. Remember: the Help desk always needs help, and questions asked at the Reference desk span the breadth of all human knowledge. You're likely to know the answer to some of the questions.
Tip of the day: Check your work before you save, using show preview
While editing a page, you can use the show preview button (located right next to the Save page button) to see in advance what your edits will look like. This lets you check your work periodically without filling up the page history by making lots of smaller edits. The preview function can also help you avoid mistakes, such as when using an unfamiliar type of wiki markup. The preview will appear together with the edit box you have been working in (either above or below it, however you prefer).
Template messages vary in their placement. For example, a {{merge}} notice goes at the top of the article, but the {{stub}} message goes at the bottom. An External links section, if any, should be at the end of the article.
Being the gateway to the encyclopedia - The Main Page is our most frequently visited page. The main page is always protected and can only be edited by admins, but most of the content is piped in each day from various departments, via templates. Anybody can edit the pages that feed into the templates (up until the day they are displayed on the Main Page), and we encourage you to help.
The current events items and the "Did you know..." section about new articles need regular updates to keep them fresh.
The Picture of the day presents Featured Pictures in the order they were promoted to featured status, but this project needs volunteers to help with the chore of stocking the picture page queue.
Just remember to follow the guidelines, as the procedure for each template works differently.
Most Wikipedia related articles (but not actual encyclopedia articles!) have shortcuts to them. This makes it easier to get to that page by simply typing in the shortcut into the search box. The shortcuts redirect to the page you want. Pages with shortcuts have a specific template telling you what he shortcut is. It always begins with "WP:" (short for "Wikipedia:"), and then text that is different for each page. They may be an abbreviation (WP:SR redirects to Wikipedia:Simplified Ruleset), a whole word (WP:NOT redirects to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not), or sometimes something else (WP:-( redirects to Wikipedia:Vandalism). There may be more than one shortcut per page.
Tip of the day: Sister projects & interwiki linking
If you want to write a dictionary definiation, recipe or quotation archive, consider using one of Wikipedia's sister projects, such as Wiktionary or Wikiquote. These are more specialised, and focus on one type of page. Links can be made to these pages by adding the project name as a namespace ("Wikiquote:", "Wikibooks:", "Wiktionary:"), or using the shortcuts ("Q:", "B:" & "Wikt" respectively.
When using tables in articles, consider using class="wikitable" at the top of the table, like so: {| class="wikitable". This puts a grey border around all the cells, and gives heading cells a grey tint. This ensures that all tables across Wikipedia look similar.
Often, you'll be editing an article and need to make a link to a plural. For example, suppose you wanted to link "Fred Foo was famous for his study of puddles" to puddle, you could link it like so: [[puddle|puddles]]. However, you can save time instead by writing [[puddle]]s. This also works for adjectives ([[Japan]]ese), verbs ([[dance]]d) and any other suffixes or prefixes. It does not, however, work for some irregular verbs ([[try]]ied does not work; you have to do [[try|tried]]).
In order to compare the differences between two revisions of a page, click the "history" tab at the top of the page, then select two checkboxes to mark the revisions which you want to compare. Alternatively, click the "cur" link to see the differences between a revision and the current (most up-to-date) revision, or the "last" link to see the differences between a revision and the previous one. You'll see two columns of test next to each other, with any changes in red. You can also view the drafts on their own from that page, or change which versions you are comparing. Just be aware that changing templates are not recorded.
When uploading images or other media for use in Wikipedia articles, always remember to add the appropriate copyright tag to show what license the material is under, or if it is in the public domain.
Tip of the day: Cite the source on all image uploads
Regardless of how an image you've uploaded is licensed for use on Wikipedia, please include information on its source. This allows admins and other editors to verify the copyrights. This includes pictures you created yourself: if you took the photo, give yourself credit – you deserve it!
When linking an article to a category, you can tell the category how to sort the article alphabetically by using a piped link. For example, [[Category:Baroque composers|Bach, Johann Sebastian]] will alphabetize Johann Sebastian Bach in Category:Baroque composers under B instead of J.
If you're thinking about writing a new article from scratch, please do a search first to make sure you aren't creating a duplicate of an article that already exists. Following our naming conventions can help avoid this problem.
The easiest way to start a new article is to follow an existing link to a page that doesn't exist yet. Depending on your settings, these links may show up as red links or have a question mark at the end of the link (red links?). You can also type the title as the URL and get there directly:
Additionally, you can also use the search box on the left side of your screen to look for an article name. When told that the page does not exist, click the link either in red or with the question mark.
Besides the Village pump and article-related talk pages, there are other ways to talk to Wikipedians. The English IRC channel is quite popular, regularly reaching up to 300 users. If you care about our policies and general Wikimedia-related matters, you may also want to consider subscribing to one of the mailing lists (high traffic!).
Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Userboxes
Tip of the day: Userboxes
Userboxes are used to decorate user pages and to tell little details about yourself. They've become a fun tradition on Wikipedia. They are easy to design, and require just 3 things to make them: the userbox template, the name of an icon image page, and a blurb that you type in. To see the code for the userbox included here click "edit this tip." There are also hundreds of premade userboxes to choose from that other users have designed.
A userbox is a small box that looks like this, and can come in many styles.
The reason I say it's unsuitable isn't anything about userboxes in general, just that they shouldn't be a tip of the day. This should be saved for important things regarding wikiformatting and such, not something like userboxes. Ral315 (talk) 02:28, 6 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
General discussion
Latest comment: 19 years ago48 comments11 people in discussion
Don't forget the newbs!
Some general suggestions: don't forget newbies too. Don't post only something that is gonna be used by an experienced WPedian. Having said that, you could post about subst, class=wikitable, class="hiddenStructure". Renata04:59, 22 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Oh, and it would be really cool to have a topic for the week. For example, one week the tips would be all related to searching, another to navigation, third to templates, fourth to images and so on. Renata02:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Well, you could put entries on a different subpage, and then use something like this, but as this page is at the moment, it's impossible. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk)17:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Could built a parameterized template that took a header, body, and read more link, then doing a subst: on it would give you your text. - Ravedave03:52, 3 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
And done : User:Ravedave/TOTD_param Example use: {{subst:User:Ravedave/TOTD param |
Header = Returning April 20th, 2006 |
Text = Wikipedia '''Tip of the day''' will begin displaying tips on April 20th, 2006. |
Link = Wikipedia talk:Tip of the day
}}
Building a corpus of tips
You may be doing this already, but have you considered creating a corpus of say, 100 "tips" which can then be selected from on a rotation basis, to avoid this project running out of tips again? -- ALoan(Talk)12:12, 2 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
The start date is April 20th, for that very reason. I'm personally writing a minimum of one tip per day (and have been doing so since February 20th), and others have stopped by to contribute as well. Official announcements of the launch will be posted around Wikipedia one month prior, on March 20th, along with a call for volunteers at that time. Until then, I'm testing the procedures and such with the few people who happen to discover this page (I have put a few links out there). :-) --Go for it!16:12, 2 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
By March 20th, we should be ready for a large influx of volunteers. By then I'll have some more templates for the project. --Go for it!16:19, 2 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
By the way, we are shooting for a corpus of at least a few hundred tips. We'll easily make it to 100 tips by April 20th, and it should just keep growing from there. --Go for it!16:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Incidently, having the tip title enclosed on == == signs displays poorly on user pages with tables (see my user page for an example). Could it just be big and bold? smurrayinchester(User), (Talk)19:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Good point, If we wanted to make another style for displaying such as User:Ravedave/TOTDbox it doesn't work. (Personally don't like the current way of displaying it). I think the Div causes issues as well, maybe that should be a table. (Edit - Divs don't cause issues.)-Ravedave22:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
I'd still like a plain white background (users can always add coloured backgrounds etc. when they place the box on their user page, but other than that, I like yours. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk)22:12, 2 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
I also noticed there were several pages still including it, since it redirected it was including this whole page. Also we can set up a how to and I plan on setting up some "alternate" templates where its in a box etc, so having a sample is nice. -Ravedave04:03, 3 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Idea... If the template featured a transclusion of {{Wikipedia:Tip of the day/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTDAY}}}}, it would automatically update daily. It won't work currently (without a switch, which isn't a good idea (WP:AUMÓ)), since the scheme isn't up and running, but you can see an example of the link made: Wikipedia:Tip of the day/June 6, 2025.
I should have mentioned that that has been the plan all along. The reason it isn't on the templates currently is because the first active date page is April 20th. --Go for it!17:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Let there be light! (Lightbulb pic and userbox issue)
I found this image on commons, which by the sounds of the image description, was created for the original Tip of the day scheme. Could this be used, or at least replace the smiley in the userbox? smurrayinchester(User), (Talk)19:32, 2 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
By the way, that image is on the template (not the placeholder version) - see my last couple of entries in the template history. What I'd really love to see is a light bulb that is lit and glowing brightly. The current lightbulb is unlit, like it just came out of the package. We could either find another lightbulb, or recolor this one. Shiny! --Go for it!03:11, 3 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for pointing out the problem with headings in tables. Could you point me to a specific example, so I can study the problem? --Go for it!02:38, 3 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
I'm already in the process of doing this. (See this page's history). In order to track this better, I'll copy my working file for this to a subpage. As you recycle tips from there and place them on this page, remove them from the subpage, so tips don't recycled twice. --Go for it!02:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
When you are in google, working on non-wikipedia stuff, and then you all of a sudden want to do a Wikpedia search, the WP-specific search button on the toolbar comes in quite handy. --Go for it!02:25, 3 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Multi-tips need to be broken up into individual tips
Large tips defeat the purpose of this project. If the tip is too large (or too many tips are crammed into one), it might as well become a page, or a section thereof, and then a link can be provided to it. Or we can get more mileage out of it by breaking it up into multiple tips! --Go for it!02:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Upon a rethink, both have their uses. The multi-tips are good for intermediate and advanced users who want it all in one place. Breaking it up into tidbits so it is more easily digestible by newbies is also a good idea. We can present both, maybe the tidbits first, with the compilation to top 'em off (after a delay). --Go for it!03:04, 4 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
We need a little mascot, like a lightbulb with a (smiley) face on it, to place in Tip of the day related message traffic, etc. (Like when we ask the Help Desk for tips). And perhaps to insert in the tips themselves, for emphasis. It would give this project a stronger identity. --Go for it!08:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
I made this in Photoshop, I've still got the original file, so any suggestions such as gradients would be helpful. Or, edit it yourself! --Keycard(talk)08:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
OOh. Thanks for the graphic. And I do have a suggestion/question, or a suggestive question...
.png?lang=en){kind=small}
Here it is again. How do you make backgrounds transparent? --Go for it! 19:09, 4 March 2006 (UTC)