Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines

This is a WikiProject, an area for focused collaboration among Wikipedians.

Wikipedia's goal is to provide knowledge. But knowledge is only useful if you can find it and make sense of it. The main limitation of a search box is that it can only look for what you already know exists. Our mission is to show what exists and provide easy access to that knowledge. Outlines, which present structured information, provide the following benefits:

They help the user see the overall structure and layout of the information related to a subject
The bird's eye view provided by outlines allows users to see patterns in the information in a relatively painless way
By the way they are organized, outlines help users find individual pages that match some criteria
Outlines reveal gaps in the information that need to be filled in

For examples of well-developed outlines, see those on anarchism, ancient Rome, Buddhism, canoeing and kayaking, cell biology, chess, forestry, Iceland, and Japan.

List of outlines[edit]

Other outlines[edit]

Wikipedia:Outline of Roget's Thesaurus

Scope[edit]

Each outline article is a list of a subject's topics arranged hierarchically to show the relationships between them: those that are the most important, general entries and those that give more specialist detail. Outlines show the structure of articles about a subject, opening a whole new way of navigating it. They could be considered Wikipedia's equivalent to Brittanica's Propædia.

Each outline is intended to help the reader become familiar with the subject it presents, and also serves as a table of contents or site map to that subject's coverage on Wikipedia. Outlines are different from portals or indexes. While a portal focuses solely on well-developed featured content, an outline's main purpose is to direct readers through a subject's related articles. Indexes are intended to be comprehensive alphabetical lists of articles related to subject, but finding something in an alphabetical index can be difficult if one does not know the article title (and if one does, one hardly needs the index). Outlines might not list every article in a subject, and often their links lead to lists or other outlines to provide further detail. For an example, compare Portal:Japan, Index of Japan-related articles, and Outline of Japan.

Article alerts[edit]

This project is now served by Article alerts, which can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Article alerts. This will allow us to know about any AfDs or other such discussions without having to rely on manual notifications. The Alerts page is easily transcluded into userspace if desired.

Redirects for discussion

07 Apr 2017 – United Kingdom/Basic Topics (talk · edit · hist) →Outline of the United Kingdom was RfDed by Train2104 (t · c); see discussion

Advice[edit]

Related guidelines

Related projects

Open Tasks[edit]

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Open tasks

What's going on with outlines[edit]

New outlines (under construction)

Outlines graduated from draft space

Drafts in development

Outlines undergoing overhaul or major development

Outline of South Africa

Outlines in need of attention

Articles that may be outlines

Classification
[[]]

Articles that include outlines in them

[[]]
[[]]

Add pictures[edit]

Examples of outlines with good picture support include:

Start a new outline[edit]

To start a new outline...

See also: Helpful tips (read it!)

First, decide which topic you'd like to outline. It could be as broad as Outline of mathematics, or as narrow as Outline of chocolate and start the page. The title should be in the format of Outline of $x$
Write a little introduction before outlining to get warmed up, this will also become the introductory paragraph of the outline.
Start listing articles on your topic. You can find them by using Special:PrefixIndex and a site allintitle Google search.
Organize links in a way that is accessible so that people can find the articles linked to. You might use an {{Outline generator}} template, like this: {{subst:Outline generator|topic uncapitalized|topic capitalized}} or, if you're outlining a specific country, {{subst:Template:Outline country|country name}}.
After that, you can add a few pictures to make the outline look nicer. Try using different ones than the ones on the article by searching on Wikimedia Commons.
Once you've finished, take a look back and see if you were able to outline the subject successfully and then post your work here so that other editors are aware it exists and can review it.

Work on an existing outline[edit]

Most outlines are incomplete, because subjects change over time, and so does Wikipedia's coverage of them.

See Portal:Contents/Outlines, and choose a subject that interests you, and start adding links.

Work on a draft[edit]

Here are some draft starts waiting to be developed enough to move to article space.

Drafts approaching graduation to article space:[edit]

Outline drafts with some meat on them:

Drafts that may benefit from WP books[edit]

Drafts to make for which the corresponding article is mostly an outline:[edit]

Bare bones drafts:[edit]

Start a new outline[edit]

Culture[edit]

Geography[edit]

Branches
- Outline of human geography
- Outline of physical geography
Regions
- Draft:Outline of the Soviet Union

Health[edit]

Outline of disease
Branches of medicine

History[edit]

By period
- Outline of the Industrial Revolution
By region
- Draft:Outline of American history
- Draft:Outline of the history of Eastern Civilization
By subject
- Wars

Natural scicsience[edit]

Philosophy[edit]

sub-disciplines and major philosophies

Social science[edit]

Technology[edit]

Biology[edit]

Draft:Outline of bacteriology
Draft:Outline of bacteria (redir to Outline of bacteriology)
Draft:Outline of virology
Draft:Outline of viruses (redir to Outline of virology)

Unsorted[edit]

(place the following links in the sections above)

Watch over the outlines[edit]

Wikiproject Watchlist - WikiProject Outline of knowledge

Links needing placement[edit]

The following links need to be placed in the appropriate outline(s):

List of online databases (reference works)

Templates[edit]

{{Outline footer}} - (placed at bottom of all Outlines)

For talkpages

{{WikiProject Outlines}} - (placed on talkpages of all Outlines)
{{Outline of knowledge coverage}} - (for main articles covered by an outline, talkpage banner)
{{Outline of knowledge coverage WPT}} - (for country WikiProjects covered by an outline, talkpage banner)

For building outlines

{{Outline generator}} - (template for outline creation)
- {{Outline country}} - (template for outline creation)
- {{Outline U.S. State}} - (template for outline creation)

Linkboxes

{{cto}} for the See also section of articles.

Userboxes

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/userboxes

Other project subpages[edit]

/Directory
- /List of discussions concerning outlines

Participants[edit]

If you'd like to get involved, and help with outline-related tasks, please add your username below:

Wikitext

Userbox

[[Category:WikiProject Outlines participants]] no userbox

{{User WikiProject Outlines}}

This user is a member of WikiProject Outlines.

{{User WP Outlines}}

This user proudly participates in WikiProject Outlines

{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Userboxes/User member}}

This user understands the importance of outlines, and is a member of

Wikiproject Outlines.

External watchlist[edit]

Wikiproject Watchlist - WikiProject Outlines

Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines

Contents

List of outlines[edit]

Other outlines[edit]

Scope[edit]

Article alerts[edit]

Advice[edit]

Open Tasks[edit]

What's going on with outlines[edit]

Add pictures[edit]

Start a new outline[edit]

Work on an existing outline[edit]

Work on a draft[edit]

Drafts approaching graduation to article space:[edit]

Drafts that may benefit from WP books[edit]

Drafts to make for which the corresponding article is mostly an outline:[edit]

Bare bones drafts:[edit]

Start a new outline[edit]

Culture[edit]

Geography[edit]

Health[edit]

History[edit]

Natural scicsience[edit]

Philosophy[edit]

Social science[edit]

Technology[edit]

Biology[edit]

Unsorted[edit]

Watch over the outlines[edit]

Links needing placement[edit]

Templates[edit]

Other project subpages[edit]

Participants[edit]

External watchlist[edit]

Navigation menu

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