Wikipitaka:Basic navigation

This page describes basic navigation to get you exploring Wikipitaka.

How to navigate Wikipitaka
Wikipitaka suttas and articles are all linked, or cross-referenced.

Wherever you see text like this, it means there is a link to some relevant page or Wikipitaka page with further information elsewhere if you need it. Holding your mouse over the link will often show you where a link will take you.

On top of every scripture page, there is a hierarchy string which tells you the categorization (e.g. Pitaka, Nikaya, Vagga) of the scripture. For example, the categorization of Yamakavagga is "Tipitaka » Sutta Pitaka » Khuddaka Nikaya » Dhammapada". This means, Yamakavagga is a subtopic of Dhammapada which is in Khuddaka Nikaya (The Minor Collection), a chapter in Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the three pitakas (baskets) of the Tipitaka. You can always follow the categorization; so you will not feel lost in translation.

There are other links towards the ends of most pages, for other pages of interest (e.g. significance, history, and interpretations), relevant external web sites and pages, and reference material. At the end of the article are relevant categories of knowledge which you can search and traverse in a loose hierarchy for further related information in a field.

You can add further links if a relevant link is missing, and this is one way to contribute.

Category browsing
Every page has a list at the bottom of all the major categories it belongs to. Each of these categories can be browsed and is linked to related categories in a loose hierarchy or web.

Sidebar (left)
To the side of each article are some standard options for navigation, and for tools, and on some articles, for languages:

Navigation options include:
 * Main page - the Wikipitaka home page
 * Community Portal - as a community building Tipitaka, Wikipitaka has a portal for users, giving easy access to many of the useful pages within Wikipitaka
 * Current events - latest Buddhist news reported within the Wikipitaka community
 * Recent changes - articles that are being edited at this moment
 * Random article - lucky dip, if you want to read the Tipitaka but don't know where to start. The Dhamma might guide you to some passage that suit you the most.
 * Help - exactly what it says

Toolbox includes:
 * What links here - useful for tracing where this article is referenced from.
 * Upload file - how you add images (and occasionally other files) to Wikipitaka
 * Special pages - all the special functions and administration options can be found here.

Other sidebar functions include:
 * Search - allows you to search the whole Tipitaka in one click. This goes across the whole of Wikipitaka.

Top tabs (above the article)
Each page in Wikipedia contains a Tipitaka passage or an article, and a discussion page (usually called "Talk...")

You can see these above, the article is labelled "article", the discussion page is the tab to the right of it. These are treated as two separate pages in Wikipitaka, but are shown side by side on the tab bar, for ease of use.

Whether you are looking at the article or project page, or the discussion page, you will see there is a button marked "edit", a button "history", a button "delete", and a button labelled "watch" or "unwatch".


 * Edit - this is the key to contributing to Wikipitaka. When you click this button, you change from viewing an article or discussion about an article, to being able to edit the article, or add comments to the discussion that is going on.


 * Occasionally, pages that are important or may be vandalized are locked, in which case the "edit" will show "view source", and you will not be able to edit the article at that time


 * Page editing is simple with Wikipitaka, and you cannot harm a page if you make a mistake, since all changes can be undone. This is part of Wikia's vandal protection.


 * History - You can click to see what changes were made on this page. Wikia's machine allows you to compare two versions of the page to see the change made easily.


 * Watch/unwatch - adds or removes a page from your watchlist, the list of pages you are tracking. You can view your watchlist with the user option button "my watchlist" at the top right of the screen.

User options (top right)
These control your user account. To create a user account you only need to choose a name and a password. An email address is optional and only used for password reminders.

Unless you create an account you will not be able to customize Wikipitaka preferences for yourself. Almost all experienced Wikipedia (our model) editors use an account in order to ensure accountability.

The user options also include links to view your watchlist (articles you are tracking), and contributions you have made.