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.
Special pages are pages generated by the software on demand for special purposes, usually related to project maintenance. They are found in the Special:namespace, a virtual namespace whose pages lack corresponding talk pages. They are not written in wikitext and cannot be directly edited but elements of their pages can sometimes be edited through corresponding pages in the MediaWiki namespace. If you make a normal redirect to a special page, the redirect will not be immediately followed (though special pages can be targets of soft redirects), and directly creating any pages beginning with the Special: prefix is also not possible.
Special pages often take parameters. Sometimes these can be supplied after a slash (as in Special:Log/block); in other cases an index.php call is used; for example https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=3&limit=10. Also, the content of most special pages depends on preferences that have been set by the user, e.g. classic or enhanced Recent Changes, the number of titles in Recent Changes and the watchlist, etc.
A directory of special pages available for the current user can be accessed from Special:SpecialPages, which is found in the sidebar of every page on Wikipedia in the Tools section.
Modifying special pages
Although special pages are not themselves editable, they generally contain standard text which is modifiable (although only by administrators). To find the right portion of text, append ?uselang=qqx to the special page URL, or append &uselang=qqx instead if the URL already contains a ?. This will reveal message names in parentheses. Then, go to that name in the MediaWiki namespace. For example, Special:BookSources?uselang=qqx reveals "(booksources-summary)", so MediaWiki:Booksources-summary is used on that page. To propose a modification, leave an {{edit fully-protected}} request on the talk page of the relevant MediaWiki page. An administrator will make the change if it seems appropriate.
Special:SiteMatrix (Wikimedia wikis): lists all Wikimedia projects (such as different language Wikipedias) and their codes.
Special:SpecialPages: a list of most special pages currently available to all users.
Special:Statistics: total number of pages and users in various categories.
Special:Version: shows the version of the software the site is currently running and lists the extensions, skins, and libraries currently installed.
Page listings
Special:AllPages: allows the user to access a portion of an alphabetical list of all Wikipedia pages in a specified namespace. A starting point can be given as a parameter, e.g. Special:AllPages/T (pages in the main namespace, from "T"), Special:AllPages/Template: (pages in the Template: namespace, from the start). For the order in which pages are listed, see Help:Alphabetical order.
Special:Categories: shows an alphabetical list of categories, with numbers of members.
Special:PagesWithProp (Pages with a page property): lists pages that use a particular page property.
Special:PrefixIndex (All pages with prefix): similar to AllPages. Lists all pages of a specified namespace beginning with a given prefix. Useful to find subpages, for example: Special:PrefixIndex/User:Example.
Special:Export (Export pages): produces an XML file containing the wikitext and metadata of either the current version only, or all revisions, of one or more pages, specified in the form of a list; the XML file is in the format required for Special:Import; exporting is typically done either in preparation of applying the latter at another MediaWiki project, or for searching within old page revisions. See Help:Export.
Special:Gadgets: lists gadgets that users can enable in their preferences.
Special:Nearby: to see a list of articles around you (articles near your geographical location).
Special:Random: redirects to a random page from the main namespace which is not a redirect. Other namespaces can be specified as a parameter, e.g. Special:Random/Talk. See Wikipedia:Random for more details.
Special:RandomInCategory (Random page in category): redirects to a random page within the specified category (can be from any namespace).
Special:RandomRootpage: redirects to a random root page, that is, excluding sub-pages. Some wikis, such as Wikibooks, use a sub-page hierarchy. This function can be used there as a substitute for Special:Random, so it can be used to show "random books" in Wikibooks, instead of random pages.[1]
Special:AbuseLog (Edit filter log): the log generated by the Abuse Filter.
Special:AdvancedReviewLog or Special:QualityOversight: listed recent approvals and deprecations of pending revisions. (deprecated in 2022; see phab:T277883)
Special:ConfiguredPages (deprecated in 2022; see phab:T277883)
Special:Log (All public logs): combined display of various logs. The type of log, user and page affected can be specified. Parameters "block", "delete", "protect" and "upload" are available. e.g. Special:Log/block displays the block log directly. For more information, see Help:Log.
Special:NewFiles (Gallery of new files): gallery of new uploaded files.
Special:NewPages: newest pages with creation date and time, current size, user who created the page, and first edit summary, in reverse order of creation. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol.
Special:GlobalBlockList (List of globally blocked IP addresses): all IP addresses with global blocks.
Special:GlobalGroupPermissions (Global group management): lists the rights associated with global user groups. Also lists the members of global user groups, and allows for management of rights.
Special:GlobalUsers (Global accounts list): lists users across all Wikimedia wikis, along with global user group membership, and whether their account exists locally on English Wikipedia. Can also be filtered by global user groups.
Special:DisambiguationPageLinks (Pages linking to disambiguation pages), which lists all of the pages that link to disambiguation pages. (This is a replacement for the old Special:Disambiguations page which is deprecated.)
Special:DoubleRedirects: lists redirects that redirect to another redirect. May contain false positives.
Special:UserRights: can be read by anyone, however only administrators can use the page to assign and remove user access rights (e.g. rollbacker status).
Infrequently updated
The following special pages are updated on a less regular schedule. Some of these pages may have analogues on cloud services.
Special:DeadendPages: pages without any outgoing links. Updated on the 9th and 23rd of each month.[3]
Special:FewestRevisions (Pages with the fewest revisions): lists articles with the fewest revisions. Updated on the 13th and 27th of each month.[4]
Special:LonelyPages (Orphaned pages): i.e. articles with no links to them in the wiki. Updated on the 15th of every month.[5]
Special:MostCategories (Pages with the most categories): lists articles whose number of categories is largest. Updated on the 16th of every month.[6]
Special:MostLinkedCategories (Most linked-to categories): lists categories with the most pages. Updated on the 17th of every month.[7]
Special:MostLinkedPages (Most linked-to pages): lists pages linked from the largest number of other pages. Updated on the 10th and 24th of each month.[8]
Special:MostRevisions (Pages with the most revisions): lists articles with the most revisions. Updated on the 11th and 25th of each month.[9]
Special:MostTranscludedPagesorSpecial:MostLinkedTemplates (Most transcluded pages): lists templates for which the number of pages in which the template is transcluded is largest, not counting transclusions through redirects. Updated on the 18th of every month.[10]
Special:Impact, without parameter shows your impact on Wikipedia. Can be used to specify another user with their username followed after the slash symbol.
Special:MyLanguage, intended for multilingual sites. This special page goes to the page of the name supplied after the slash, e.g. Special:MyLanguage/Example goes to Example on this wiki. When an interwiki Page or an invalid page name is entered after the slash, this page redirects to Main page.
Special:MyPage, User page for active user, also used for generic link to User/sandbox
To present the list on a page, transclude the name:
{{Special:PrefixIndex/HMS}}
However, some pages cannot be transcluded and would produce only a wikilink (e.g., {{Special:Random}} → Special:Random). When non-existent pages are linked or transcluded, a red link is produced (e.g., Special:RedLinkExample).[a]
Because the ampersand character (&) is disallowed, it is not possible to create an ordinary link containing &action=editor&redirect=no in the URL query string.
Special pages in other languages
The term in the site language equivalent to the English word "Special" and the special page name in English (e.g. "Special:Statistics") is used in each project, for example:
"Especial:Estadísticas" in Spanish
"Speciaal:Statistieken" in Dutch
"Spécial:Statistiques" in French
"Spezial:Statistik" in German
These also appear in the URLs. The English word "Special" and the special page name in English (e.g. "Special:Statistics") always works, even on foreign-language sites, but non-English equivalents don't work on English-language projects, nor on other-language project besides the language edition one is on.
^MediaWiki:Nospecialpagetext is the message displayed for non-existent special pages. However, Special:Badtitle is peculiar as it has actual viewable content but is a red link, which is because this special page was intentionally and by design to be considered non-existent (unlike all other valid page names.) See phab:T262959 for more details.
