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Wikipedia's contents

Shortcut:

There are two ways to look things up in Wikipedia: by searching or by browsing.

If you know the name of the topic you are looking for, simply type it into Wikipedia's search box and press Go.

If you would like to look around the encyclopedia to see what's on it, use Wikipedia's Contents pages. Lists and indices are examples of contents for a published work, and Wikipedia has many of each.  Links to all of Wikipedia's main contents pages are presented below, and they in turn link to the more specific pages.

Wikipedia's reference lists

Overviews of Wikipedia

An overview is a survey of what is covered or included in an area. Overviews of Wikipedia's coverage include:

Featured content represents the best Wikipedia has to offer. Wikipedia's editors use rigorous peer review processes to continuously improve its content. The Wikipedia's best pages can be found on the following directories:

  • Featured articles — what we believe are the best articles in Wikipedia.
  • Featured pictures — images we find beautiful, shocking, impressive, and informative.
  • Featured lists — what we believe to be the best lists in Wikipedia.
  • Featured portals — portals we regard as being particularly useful, attractive, and well-maintained.
  • Featured topics — topics we believe have coverage which is both comprehensive and well written.
  • Featured sounds — sounds we find beautiful, impressive, and informative.

Lists of lists

Not only does Wikipedia have thousands of lists of topics, it also has many lists of those lists:

Two of the broadest collections are:

Glossaries

Glossaries are lists of terms with their definitions:

Portals

Portals are pages that feature selected articles, images, and news items about the Portal's theme subject. They also include topic lists, category lists, and to-do lists for the use of editors. Portals can be found at:

Timelines

Timelines are lists of articles organized chronologically. These are the top-level timelines and lists of timelines:

Wikipedia's indices

Categorical indices

Wikipedia's main categorical index, autogenerates from mark-up information (category tags) placed at the end of each article. The pages at the top of the category system hierarchy are:

  • Wikipedia:Categorical index — an index of all categories, plus a list of high-level categories, arranged by subject. This category page is an exception to the autogeneration rule, as it is crafted by hand.
  • Category:Categories — the highest level or "root" category in Wikipedia.
  • Category:Fundamental — the category into which all other article categories are classified.

Wikipedia's other broad categorical indices are:

Alphabetical indices