ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ:What is an article?

Wikipedia data structure

ਨੇਮਸਪੇਸਾਂ
ਨੇਮਸਪੇਸ ਵਿਸ਼ਾ		ਨੇਮਸਪੇਸ ਗੱਲਬਾਤ
0	(ਮੁੱਖ/ਲੇਖ)	ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	1
2	ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ	ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	3
4	ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ	ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	5
6	ਤਸਵੀਰ	ਤਸਵੀਰ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	7
8	ਮੀਡੀਆਵਿਕੀ	ਮੀਡੀਆਵਿਕੀ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	9
10	ਫਰਮਾ	ਫਰਮਾ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	11
12	ਮਦਦ	ਮਦਦ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	13
14	ਸ਼੍ਰੇਣੀ	ਸ਼੍ਰੇਣੀ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	15
100	ਫਾਟਕ	ਫਾਟਕ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	101
118	[[ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ:ਡਰਾਫਟ|]]		119
710	TimedText	TimedText talk	711
828	ਮੌਡਿਊਲ	ਮੌਡਿਊਲ ਗੱਲ-ਬਾਤ	829
Deprecated
2300	[[ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ:ਗੈਜੇਟ|]]		2301
2302	[[ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ:ਗੈਜੇਟ|]]		2303
ਇੰਸਟਾਲ ਨਹੀਂ ਕੀਤਾ
90	ਥਰਿੱਡ	ਥਰਿੱਡ ਗੱਲਬਾਤ	91
92	ਸੰਖੇਪ	ਸੰਖੇਪ ਗੱਲਬਾਤ	93
108	ਪੁਸਤਕਾਂ	Book ਗੱਲਬਾਤ	109
442	ਕੋਰਸ	Course ਗੱਲਬਾਤ	443
444	ਇੰਸਟੀਟਿਊਸ਼ਨ	ਇੰਸਟੀਟਿਊਸ਼ਨ ਗੱਲਬਾਤ	445
446	ਸਿੱਖਿਆ ਪ੍ਰੋਗਰਾਮ	ਸਿੱਖਿਆ ਪ੍ਰੋਗਰਾਮ ਗੱਲਬਾਤ	447
2600	ਵਿਸ਼ਾ		2601
ਬਣਾਵਟੀ ਨੇਮਸਪੇਸਾਂ
-1	ਖ਼ਾਸ
-2	ਮੀਡੀਆ
Current list (API call)

Help:Contents

See also: Wikipedia:FAQ.

A Wikipedia article, or entry, is a page that has encyclopedic information on it. A well-written encyclopedia article identifies a notable encyclopedic topic, summarizes that topic comprehensively, contains references to reliable sources, and links to other related topics. Most articles consist of paragraphs and images, but they may also be formatted as stand-alone lists or tables. These lists or tables are also considered articles for Wikipedia's purposes.

Disambiguation pages, templates, navboxes, user pages, discussion pages, file pages, category pages, help pages and Wikipedia policy pages are not articles.

Article title

See Wikipedia:Article titles to learn how we title articles.

Article scope

Each 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

Articles 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

"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 Wikipedia namespace for material about meta subjects related to Wikipedia (example, Wikipedia:Statistics and its talk page, Wikipedia talk:Statistics);
• the talk namespaces for discussing what the content of pages should be (for example, Talk:Mathematics)
• 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 writers (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; the most notable exceptions are:

• the Main Page;
• thousands of disambiguation pages, 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;
• for wiki-statistical purposes, some extremely short and simple pages are not counted as articles. The criteria have varied over time.

Every page in the main namespace can have a companion talk page, and these belong to the "Talk" namespace, i.e., the pagenames 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 Wikipedia itself.

Lists of articles and statistics

Special:AllPages has a list of all pages in the article namespace and Wikipedia:Statistics for 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 stublists (lists templates with little or no content).

See also

• Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Subpages
• Wikipedia:Featured article criteria
• What counts as an Article

External links

• Special:Statistics - Current article count
• More detailed (but less current) statistics