Help:Empty pages
 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
This page provides technical details on how to start new pages other than articles aimed at experienced editors and administrators
- For more specific help creating an article, read Wikipedia:Your first article.
- For general editing matters and details on the markup language see Help:Editing. If you want to experiment, use the sandbox first.
Creating an empty page
[edit]The easiest way to create a new page with a given title is to type the desired title into the Wikipedia search box. If no page exists whose title exactly matches it, you will be given the option to create one.
A new page is distinguished from a blank page: the latter has a page history. However, creating a new page is just like editing a blank page, except that a new page displays the text from MediaWiki:Newarticletext (which may vary by project).
Occasionally it is useful to create an empty page - For example a template can be made such that, depending on a parameter, it produces either just a standard text or also an additional text. This is done by having it call another template, of which the name is a parameter; one version of the other template contains the additional text, the other version is blank. See optional text.
However when creating a new page MediaWiki will not save an empty page, or one with only whitespace. Instead you must first create a non-empty page, e.g. with just one character, then edit the page to make it empty.
Protecting a page from being created
[edit]A page that hasn't yet been created can be protected by an administrator (See WP:SALT). Such pages are generally not appropriate targets for red links.
Non-existing pages showing info
[edit]Category and image pages are partly dynamically generated, and partly editable. A category page contains a list of pages in the category, an image page may contain an image and info from Commons. Thus if the page does not "exist" it may still show info.
The edit page of a "non-existing" category page shows the pages it contains. However, the edit page of the local page of an image on Commons neither shows the image, nor the editable content on Commons, not even in preview, it does not even indicate that viewing the page provides an image and other content from Commons.
A link to a "non-existing" category page is treated as a link to a non-existing page, even if the category is non-empty. A link to a "non-existing" local image page of an image on Commons is treated as a link to an existing page, e.g. Image:Cow-on pole, with horns.jpeg, except in the case of a link from an edit summary or log. An indication of the "non-existence" is the lack of a page history link and a related changes link.
