Help:Contents
From Halbeeg, the open encyclopedia · Af-Soomaali
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Help:Contents is the general name for help pages on wiki projects, particularly those running on MediaWiki such as Wikipedia. These pages explain how to read, edit, and manage articles, and form part of the project namespace rather than the encyclopedia content itself.
In technical terms, a namespace refers to the section of a page's title. Any page beginning with "Help:" belongs to the help namespace. This makes it possible to distinguish help pages from content articles in search results and article counts.
Structure of help pages
The main page of this namespace, typically "Help:Contents", is a list of links organizing topics. These include how to create an account, how to start a new article, wiki markup syntax (wikitext), inserting links and images, how to use talk pages, and how to view edit history.
Distinction from project namespace
The help namespace differs from the project namespace ("Wikipedia:"), which contains community rules, policies, and decisions. Help focuses on technical procedures and steps to follow, while the project namespace discusses laws and agreements.
Translation and sharing
Some help pages are maintained centrally, translated from the MediaWiki interface on mediawiki.org, and then distributed to wikis in different languages. This means many pages have the same structure across different language versions, though each wiki also has help pages written by its own community.