Wikipedia:Contents

Explore Wikipedia's contents

For Wikipedia’s internal directory, see Wikipedia:Directories and indexes.

Wikipedia is a compendium of the world's

knowledge. If you know what you are
looking for, type it into Wikipedia's search Contents
box. If, however, you need a bird's eye
Main subject classifications
view of what Wikipedia has to offer, see its
main contents pages below, which in turn Curated article collections
list more specific pages. Third-party classification systems
Reference collections
Main subject Special format collections
classifications Collections of articles
Collections of articles by quality or popularity
Wikipedia's main navigation subsystems
(overviews, outlines, lists, portals,
glossaries, categories, and indices) are
each divided into the following subject classifications:

Reference works – compendiums of information, usually of a specific type, compiled in a

book for ease of reference. That is, the information is intended to be quickly found when
needed.
Culture – encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as
the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits of the individuals in these
groups.
Geography – field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and
phenomena of the Earth and planets.
Health – state of physical, mental and social well-being.
History – the past as it is described in written documents, and the study thereof.
Human activities – the various activities done by people. For instance it includes leisure,
entertainment, industry, recreation, war, and exercise.
Mathematics – the study of topics such as quantity (numbers), structure, space, and change.
It evolved through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, from counting, calculation,
measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects.
Natural science – branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and
understanding of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and
experimentation.
People – plurality of persons considered as a whole, as is the case with an ethnic group or
nation.
Philosophy – study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge,
values, reason, mind, and language.
Religions – social-cultural systems of designated behaviors and practices, morals,
worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates
 humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.
Society – group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group
sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political
authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of
relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and
institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among
its constituent of members.
Technology – the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production
of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation.

Curated article collections

Overview articles

Overview articles summarize in prose a broad topic like biology, and also have illustrations and
links to subtopics like cell biology, biographies like Carl Linnaeus, and other related articles like
Human Genome Project.

Wikipedia:Contents/Overviews lists overview articles from covered fields in a single page.

Outline pages

Outline pages have trees of topics in an outline format, which in turn are linked to further outlines
and articles providing more detail. Outlines show how important subtopics relate to each other
based on how they are arranged in the tree, and they are useful as a more condensed, non-
prose alternative to overview articles.

Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines is a comprehensive list of "Outline of __" pages, organized by

subject. It is itself an outline, that links (almost) exclusively to other outlines.
Outline of academic disciplines covers subjects studied in college or university, and provides
links to prose overview articles and their corresponding outlines.
Outline of knowledge is the top-level outline, its subject being the broadest one of all. It is the
ancestor of all other outlines, and they branch out from it, in successive levels.

List of articles every Wikipedia should have

Main article: meta:List of articles every Wikipedia should have

These articles are considered the foundation that every Wikipedia should build upon.

meta:List of articles every Wikipedia should have - 1,000 most important articles
meta:List_of_articles_every_Wikipedia_should_have/Expanded - 10,000 most important
articles

Vital articles
Main page: Wikipedia:Vital articles
Vital articles are lists of subjects for which the English Wikipedia should have corresponding
high-quality articles. They serve as centralized watchlists to track the status of Wikipedia's most
important articles.

Vital articles level 1 – 10 most important articles

Vital articles level 2 – 100 most important articles
Vital articles level 3 – 1,000 most important articles
Vital articles level 4 – 10,000 most important articles
Vital articles level 5 – 50,000 most important articles

Third-party classification systems

Various third-party classification systems have been mapped to Wikipedia articles, which can be
accessed from these pages:

Library of Congress Classification

List of Dewey Decimal classes
Figurative system of human knowledge
Outline of Roget's Thesaurus
Propædia
Tree of knowledge system
Universal Decimal Classification

Reference collections
Wikipedia has several types of pages which provide content in a non-prose form, for reference
purposes.

List pages

List pages enumerate items of a particular type, such as the List of sovereign states or List of
South Africans. Wikipedia has "lists of lists" when there are too many items to fit on a single
page, when the items can be sorted in different ways, or as a way of navigating lists on a topic
(for example Lists of countries and territories or Lists of people). There are several ways to find
lists:

Wikipedia:Contents/Lists – A limited single-page collection of lists and lists of lists

List of lists of lists – A broad single-page collection of lists of lists
Category:Lists – Browse lists comprehensively via the multi-page Wikipedia category
system

Timelines

Timelines list events chronologically, sometimes including links to articles with more detail.
There are several ways to find timelines:

List of timelines has a long single-page collection

 Category:Wikipedia timelines has a comprehensive multi-page collection via the Wikipedia
category system

Of particular interest may be:

List of centuries
List of decades
List of historical anniversaries – e.g. events on January 1 of any year
Category:Graphical timelines – graphical timelines in the category and subcategories,
arranged alphabetically

Glossaries

Glossaries are lists of terms with definitions. Wikipedia includes hundreds of alphabetical
glossaries; they can be found two ways:

Wikipedia:Contents/Glossaries – A single-page list of glossaries

Category:Wikipedia glossaries – Browse glossaries comprehensively via the Wikipedia
category system

Bibliographies

Bibliographies list sources on a given topic, for verification or further reading outside Wikipedia:

Wikipedia:List of bibliographies is a list of bibliographies

Category:Wikipedia bibliographies has a complete multi-page listing of bibliographies on
Wikipedia

Category:Discographies

Discographies catalog the sound recordings of individual artists or groups.

Category:Discographies has a complete multi-page listing

Special format collections

Portals

Portals contain featured articles and images, news, categories, excerpts of key articles, links to
related portals, and to-do lists for editors. There are two ways to find portals:

Wikipedia:Contents/Portals – A single-page list of portals

Category:Portals – Browse portals comprehensively via the Wikipedia category system.

Spoken articles
Growing collections of Wikipedia articles are starting to become available as spoken word
recordings as well.

Category:Spoken articles – an organized list of all spoken articles

Wikipedia:Spoken articles – some general information about the spoken article technology

Collections of articles

Category system

Wikipedia's collection of category pages is a classified index system. It is automatically

generated from category tags at the bottoms of articles and most other pages. Nearly all of the
articles available so far on the website can be found through these subject indexes.

If you are simply looking to browse articles by topic, there are three top-level pages to choose
from:

Category:Main topic classifications – probably what you are looking for: Arts, History,
Technology, etc.
Wikipedia:Contents/Categories – a hand-crafted list of first- and second-level topic
categories

For biographies, see Category:People.

Category:Contents is technically at the top of the category hierarchy, but contains many
categories useful to editors but not readers. Special:Categories lists every category
alphabetically.

Alphabetical lists of articles

Wikipedia's alphabetical article indexes

Special:Allpages lists all of the current pages in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia:Contents/A–Z index provides an easy way to skip to a particular part of the
alphabet in the list of all articles.
Lists of alphabetical indexes
Category:Wikipedia indexes – alphabetical list of topic indexes
Wikipedia:Contents/Indices – indexes sorted by topic area

Current history entries

You can help us keep Wikipedia up to date! The list below is for encyclopedia entries that
describe and pertain to events happening on a current basis.

2020 – major events this year

2020 in politics and government – major current political news and developments
2020 in science and technology – major current news on science findings and technology
developments
 Portal:Current events – featured current events and related project activities
Category:2020-related timelines
Category:2020 by country
Deaths in 2020 – lists notable people who died this year
Category:Contemporary history by country

Collections of articles by quality or popularity

Featured content

Featured content is the best Wikipedia has to offer, via vigorous peer review. Presented by type:

Featured articles · Featured lists · Featured pictures · Featured topics

Most popular articles

Wikipedia:Top 5000 pages (of the last week)

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This page was last edited on 15 December 2020, at 12:33 (UTC).

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