Wikipedia:Tip_of_the_day

Wikipedia:Tip of the day

Wikipedia:Tip of the day


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For the complete library of tips arranged by subject, see Wikipedia:Tips.

This is the tip of the day (a.k.a. TOTD) project, providing useful daily advice on how to use or develop Wikipedia more effectively. This project is responsible for maintaining the Wikipedia:Tip of the day#Tip templates, and the collection of daily tips that are displayed by those templates.

History

The Tip of the Day was started on February 18, 2004 as an original feature of the newly created Community Portal. There were about 50 tips, displayed one per day, on a rotating basis.

In 2006 the project was revamped and expanded to a tip page for each day of the year. Later that year, a "yearless tip" was created, with no year included in the page titles, so that the same pages could be displayed automatically year after year. The tip collection grew to about 300 tips - still about 66 tips short of a full supply.

The tip of the day was added to the main help page, Help:Contents, on March 13, 2006. That page was renamed on September 20, 2012, to Help:Menu, to make way for a new main help page. In 2015, the tip of the day project underwent an overhaul, during which the display template functionality was enhanced and simplified, many new tips were added, replacing obsolete and duplicate tips. The tip of the day was added to the current help page on November 22, 2015.

Over the years, Tip of the Day project regulars, and other helpful editors have maintained the set of auto displaying tips, updating them, and creating new tips to replace redundant or obsolete tips.

Check the prominent locations

The three main places that the Tip of the Day is displayed, are the Community portal page (since 02/18/2004), the Help:Contents page (the top-level help page), and the Help:Menu (this was Help:Contents until 09/20/2012).

Another place where the tip resides is the Welcome to Wikipedia page (since 01/08/2007).

Sometimes the tip gets removed from those pages, either through vandalism or by an overly bold edit. If you notice it missing from any of them, please put it back. Thank you.

Displaying tips on your user pages

To add one of the many versions of the tip of the day template to your user page, go here.

Participating...

To participate in developing, proofreading, and scheduling new tips, see the instructions on the talk page.

Tip of the day scheduling queue

Chronological list of tips

Today is
     

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More information List of tips by date ...

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Alphabetical list of tips

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More information List of tips by order of name ...

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Tip templates

This is the list of tip display templates (also posted at Wikipedia:Tip of the day/July 21). Here is a gallery of display templates for you to view the display templates listed below:

  • {{totd}}  the main userspace version of the tip of the day template, with border, centered in the middle of the page. Complete with inspirational light bulb.
    • {{totd b}}  a more compact version of the above template. Useful for columns.
  • {{totd3}}  a purple box version, useful for displaying the tip in columns.
  • {{totd-random}}  this is the tip of the moment template, which automatically displays a different tip every time you enter a page it is on. If it doesn't update, try clearing your browser cache.
  • {{totd-tomorrow}}  this shows tomorrow's tip, and is used by Wikipedia tipsters to make sure that the tips are up-to-date and corrected before they go live.
  • {{tip of the day}}  the borderless version, with lightbulb.
  • {{tip of the day with h3 heading}}  the tip in heading/paragraph format (No light bulb).
  • {{totd2}}  the borderless version used on Wikipedia's Help page (which already has its own borders). (No lightbulb).
  • {{totd CP}}  like the help page version, but with a box & light bulb. Spans the whole field (screen or column) that it is in.
  • {{totd-static}}   like the totd version but the date is static. You have to manually change the date. Good for testing purposes.

Random tip


The following template {{Totd-random}} is for Wikipedians who can't wait until tomorrow for their next tip! It presents a random tip each time you reload the page it is presented on:

Tip of the moment...
Power search Wikipedia using AutoWikiBrowser

AutoWikiBrowser is a semi-automatic page loader and editor designed for working on large batches of Wikipedia pages. One of its tools, the database scanner, lets you do exhaustive searches of the encyclopedia's content. It can search article titles and article contents. The tool supports regex, so you have unlimited possibilities for search criteria.

The tool works off-line, directly on a copy of the Wikipedia database that you have downloaded.

It will find absolutely every occurrence of an entered search string, and return the names of all the articles that it comes across that contain it. Unfortunately, it only presents a maximum of 30,000 page names, at which point it will stop. So, the more specific the search criteria, the better.

For on-the-fly general discussion and support requests for AWB, try the AWB IRC channel: #AutoWikiBrowser connect

To add this auto-randomizing template to your user page, use {{totd-random}}

Tomorrow's tip


This template {{Totd-tomorrow}} is for monitoring the tip queue one day in advance for any editing needs:

Please proofread the daily tip...

It's displayed below one day early.

Some tips are obsolete. So we need new tips too. Please share your best tips and tip ideas at the Tip of the day department.


edit Tomorrow's tip of the day...

Super-customize your account with gadgets

Add abilities to your account in the form of "gadgets", programs that you can activate from the Gadgets tab in Preferences.

Gadgets range from very simple to extensive. Some of the most powerful gadgets are:

Read more:
To add this auto-updating template to your user page, use {{totd-tomorrow}}

Day-after-next's tip


This template {{Totd-day-after-next}} is for monitoring the tip queue two days in advance to make sure the tip is proofread before it goes live anywhere in the world:

Please proofread the daily tip before it goes "live"...

It's displayed below two days early, so it can be error-checked and made ready-to-display for all time zones.

Some tips are obsolete. So we need new tips too. Please share your best tips and tip ideas at the Tip of the day department.


edit Day-after-next's tip of the day...

Keyboard shortcuts

Wikipedia has keystroke combinations that can speed up your work, like Alt+⇧ Shift+F to jump to the search box, Alt+⇧ Shift+E to edit, Alt+⇧ Shift+P to preview, Alt+⇧ Shift+S to publish your edits, and many more. Those are for Windows users. On the Mac OS, press Ctrl instead of Alt.

Read more:
To add this auto-updating template to your user page, use {{totd-day-after-next}}

Note: with {{totd-tomorrow}}, it isn't tomorrow for all time zones, and so it may have already gone live for part of the world before you've edited it.

See also

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Wikipedia:Tip_of_the_day, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.