Tools
To shop for more tools, see Wikipedia:Tools or Wikipedia:Tools/Browser tools.
- User scripts: A user script is a bit of JavaScript that gets loaded each time you visit a Wikipedia article and that does things for you. Their use is very varied. Some add popups to links, others make editing easier (regex search and replace), others change the way an article is formatted or simplify common tasks. Usually the script is copied into a user's .js file.
- Navigation popups: Installed in a user's .js file, this causes a small box to pop up when your mouse hovers over a wikilink. The box can show you the first paragraph of an article, whether it's tagged as a stub, how many categories it has, etc. Can be useful for finding stubs and for categorizing an article according to the text in the first paragraph.
- CatScan: Essentially a Boolean search tool. Enter a category or template and find items that use a different cat or template, find all items under a certain size, find images, etc.
- AutoWikiBrowser: The AutoWikiBrowser is a semi-automated Wikipedia editor for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP (or newer) designed to make tedious repetitive tasks quicker and easier. It is essentially a browser that automatically opens up a new page when the last is saved. When set to do so, it suggests some changes (typically formatting) that are generally meant to be incidental to the main change. At present, AutoWikiBrowser can create a list of articles from single or multiple categories, "what links here", the wiki links on an article, a text file, a Google search, a user's watchlist, or a user's contributions. More about AWB...
- {{DEFAULTSORT:}}: You can use this code to force an article to sort correctly (i.e. without an article, or by last name first), no matter what category it's in, even in stub categories. From the January 2007 Technology Report:
- The default sort key of a page for categories can be changed using the new {{DEFAULTSORT}} magic word. For instance, on George Washington, {{DEFAULTSORT:Washington, George}} would cause a subsequent ] to be equivalent to ], not ]. This is especially useful when the article belongs in many categories.
Read more about this topic: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub Sorting
Famous quotes containing the word tools:
“Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)