Contents

Wikipedia:About the sandbox

This is an information page. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts WP:ABOUTSAND H:SANDBOX

This page is notasandbox. It should not be used for test editing. To experiment, please use the Wikipedia sandbox, your user sandbox, or the other sandboxes.

Sandboxes, such as a user's sandbox or the more frequently edited Wikipedia:Sandbox, are pages designed for testing and experimenting with wiki syntax and the VisualEditor.

They were created as a place with fewer rules and policies than other pages on Wikipedia. For example, you don't have to follow the Manual of Style or reach community consensus before making a major change. However, they must not be used for malicious purposes, and policies such as no personal attacks, civility, and copyrights (such as non-free content criteria) still apply.

If you have an account, you can create your own sandbox in your userspace. You can find your user sandbox here. If you don't have an account, you can create your sandbox here. (And if it doesn't exist yet, feel free to create it!) For easy access, there is a link labeled "Sandbox" at the top right of every page on either a user icon menu or between the "Talk" and "Preferences" links. You can also put {{My sandbox}} on your userpage.

To create another sandbox, first make a subpage to your user page in your User namespace:

1. Decide on a name for the subpage, for example: sandbox2
2. Enter the following in the Search box, using your actual username: User:Your username/sandbox2
3. Then click on the reply, "Start the User:Your name/sandbox2 page."
4. Once the page is created, adding the {{user sandbox}} template onto the subpage designates that page as another sandbox. Unlike your primary sandbox, Wikipedia does not automatically keep a way to link to these, so be sure either to bookmark it or add a link to it on your userpage; you can also use the Special:PrefixIndex special page to display all the subpages of your user page, including sandboxes.

Wikipedia namespace

• Wikipedia:Sandbox

Draft namespace

• Draft:Sandbox, for testing with VisualEditor. It can be activated with VisualEditor by following this link.

Talk namespace

• Wikipedia talk:Sandbox, and the talk pages of all other sandboxes, for testing talk page techniques.

User namespace

• User:Sandbox, for testing in the user space.
• Your user sandbox, a personal place to test your editing skills in your own userspace.

User talk namespace

• User talk:Sandbox for user warnings, for testing semi-automatic user warning tools, such as Twinkle, Huggle, and RedWarn.
• User talk:192.0.2.16: A place to test gadgets on an IPv4 address.
• User talk:2001:DB8:10:0:0:0:0:1: A place to test gadgets on an IPv6 address.

Template namespace

• {{Template sandbox}} and {{X1}} through {{X20}} exist for testing Template-space techniques.
• {{TemplateStyles sandbox}}, for creating and testing pages with the sanitized-css content model, which can only be created in the template namespace.

Module namespace

• Sub-pages of Module:Sandbox, for creating and testing pages with the scribunto content model, which can only be created in the module namespace.

Category namespace

• Category:X1toCategory:X9, for testing category techniques.

File namespace

• File:Image page sandbox.png, File:Image page sandbox2.pngtoFile:Image page sandbox8.png and File:Image page sandbox.jpeg for testing editing on file description pages.

Portal namespace

• Portal:Sandbox and its subpages, such as Portal:Sandbox/1

Other

• Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Sandbox, for testing AutoWikiBrowser
• Sandboxes in other languages can be found in a list on the lower left of the English Wikipedia Sandbox. Although using sandboxes in other languages may be useful on certain occasions, it is important to keep in mind that, unless interwiki links are used, each Sandbox can only access the links, images, and templates on the Wikipedia in which it is located.

Some sandboxes are set up to be automatically cleaned by Cyberbot I, while some automatically have the sandbox header template re-added by Hazard-Bot.

• Help:My sandbox
• Wikipedia:Sandbox/Archive – contains earlier history of the main Wikipedia sandbox (along with relevant links)
• Wikipedia:Template sandbox and test cases – usage of sandboxes in testing of template changes
• Testwiki, a test version of Wikipedia on which significant code in JavaScript and CSS can be tested