Wikipedia:Tools/Editing tools

General editing tools
Tools which don't assist with a specific kind of edits, but just whatever edits the user is making.

Firefox addons
There are always a lot of different addons for editing or reading Wikipedia, sometimes not so stable or not so long lasting, but you can likely find some that will help you seriously.

Available at mozilla.org.

QuickWikiEditor
With this Firefox-add-on it is possible to make little edits to wiki-articles without having to leave or reload the page, so the flow in reading an article is barely disturbed.

Available now addons.mozilla.org.

wikEd
wikEd is a full-featured, in-browser text editor that adds enhanced text processing functions to Wikipedia and other MediaWiki edit pages (currently Mozilla, Firefox, SeaMonkey, Safari, and Chrome only).

Features include:
 * Pasting formatted text, e.g. from MS-Word (including tables)
 * Converting the formatted text to wikicode'''
 * Wikicode syntax highlighting
 * Regular expression search and replace and find-as-you-type
 * Server-independent Show preview and Show changes
 * Fullscreen editing mode
 * Single-click fixing of common mistakes
 * History for summary, search, and replace fields
 * Search/replace box that supports regular expressions.

Offline MediaWiki Code Editor
Offline MediaWiki Code Editor is a freeware offline application programmed with AutoHotkey script language for those Windows® users who want to edit articles in Wikipedia and other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. It includes tools and assistants with a simple and intuitive user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) which helps the user to generate much of the MediaWiki code. Among other gifts the assistants help the user to: • Apply list style

• Build links

• Split in columns

• Insert special characters

• Insert inline references

• Insert images

• Insert image galleries

• Insert tables

• Browse/Concatenate files

• Convert to HTML and preview

The application makes easier and faster the edition of articles, even if the user lacks previous knowledge of the markup rules. It helps to prevent mistakes during the process of edition, and pay less attention to the sintax. Although the application program was designed for users with no previous knowledge of the MediaWiki language, it is also useful for experts, once it saves time and reduces the possibility of typing errors. Although is not a visual editor, it offers the possibility to test offline most of your code in your default web browser. This tests simulate the behavior that would show the wiki code in a Wikipedia page. The installer may be downloaded free from the Offline MediaWiki Code Editor site.

Since the last update (May 2024) the application is bilingual: English/Spanish.

Visual Studio Code Plugins for Wikipedia and Mediawiki
The following plugins are available in Visual Studio Code for syntax highlighting and some additional features to help edit Wikipedia and Mediawiki pages and projects, including adding web citations.


 * Mediawiki by Jake Boone


 * Mediawiki by Jason Williams (deprecated in favour of the Wikitext extension below)


 * Wikitext by Rowe Wilson Frederisk Holme

Sublime Text Mediawiker
Mediawiker is a Sublime Text plugin that permits transparent opening, editing, and saving of MediaWiki pages within the editor itself. It is based on MWClient and supports syntax highlighting, completions, history, bookmarks, notifications, templates, and more.

Text comparison and edit merging
See Comparison of file comparison tools.

The most popular are probably Meld and Kompare (both cross-platform, free/libre open source software).

syncwiki
https://git.sr.ht/~enterprisey/syncwiki. Upload and download text files as Wikipedia pages.

WikiFundi
WikiFundi is a freely-licenced offline wiki editing environment based on MediaWiki, and thus mimics the familiar Wikipedia environment. It facilitates wiki-based teaching and content creation where internet access and electricity are expensive, intermittent, or unreliable.

It was realized by the Wiki in Africa association in collaboration with Wikimedia CH and Kiwix (Anthere, Emmanuel Engelhard (Kelson), Florent Kaisser, Renaud Gaudin, Tonygarfume and other members of the community).

WikiFundi needs a small portable local server to work; for example, a Raspberry Pi. It can be used by an individual, but was designed to help groups and communities to learn how to edit Wikipedia, and work on articles collaboratively. It is being used for education programs within schools such as the WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique.

Multiple languages are supported, including French, English, and Spanish. For more information, including instructions for downloading and use, see WikiFundi/en (most up to date) or its website http://www.wikifundi.org.

AutoWikiBrowser
AutoWikiBrowser – (Windows platform) Makes repetitive, tedious edits such as spell checkings or category moves faster and easier.


 * Request for program access should be made at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage
 * Make task requests at AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks
 * Typo fixing request should be made at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos
 * Bugs should be reported on Phabricator
 * Feature Requests: Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature requests

CSVLoader
CSVLoader is an AutoWikiBrowser plug-in that allows creating and updating articles using CSV data files.

mwpush
mwpush.pl is a Perl script which takes a Wikified text file or input and submits it to a target MediaWiki page.

PyAutoWikiBrowser
PyAutoWikiBrowser (PyAWB) is an editing assist tool for MediaWiki similar to AWB, but since it is written in Python, it is intended to be cross-platform. Currently it is under development, but it is available for testing as a command line tool. While in beta please restrict editing to your own userspace, or preferably, sign up at Test Wiki and use that. Enter the project test (not Wikipedia) and language test when running make.py to set up the software.

Pywikibot
Useful for creating bots, or for interactive repair of interwiki links.
 * mw:Manual:Pywikibot

DotNetWikiBot
DotNetWikiBot has an option to review and change each edit in Microsoft Word before saving it to live wiki. DotNetWikiBot is a client API on .NET, intended for building bots for MediaWiki sites.

Relink
Relink.pl is a Perl5 script that relinks wikitext. It removes red links, given a list of titles that it generates from the raw wikitext. It can also add links given a list of words to link. It will report link counts, how many times each link occurs, and the total number of outgoing links.

Navigation popups
Tools/Navigation popups gives a popup box containing the first paragraph of an article when hovering over a link; it also allows quick access to common editing operations. If the wiki provides the NavPop gadget, it can be enabled in user preferences under the gadgets tab. Otherwise, installed by editing the user's skin.js file.

Alternative preview
Alex Smotrov's QPreview adds an edit toolbar button that uses XMLHttpRequest to generate page preview without reloading the whole page. QPreview functionality has also been added to the wikEd editor tool.

WikiCheck watchlist tool
WikiCheck is a small tool to make checking your watchlist easier. Docked to the left screen edge it shows a list of changes that occurred since the last time the list was checked. Clicking on a change will open the corresponding diff in a new browser window. Recently rewritten.

From spreadsheet tables

 * User:Cacycle/wikEd editor extension functionality, see above
 * The CSV to Wikipedia converter allows you to convert tables in CSV format into the MediaWiki syntax for tables (or to HTML, if you prefer). This way you can import tables directly from spreadsheet applications like Excel or from databases. For more information, see de:Benutzer:Duesentrieb/csv2wp (en). (by de:Duesentrieb).
 * The HTML::WikiConverter Perl module (mentioned below) is also capable of table conversion.
 * A very simple Copy & Paste Excel-to-Wiki Converter
 * A free open source tool to convert from CSV and Excel files to wiki table format: csv2other
 * Spreadsheet-to-MediaWiki-table-Converter This class constructs a MediaWiki-format table from an Excel/GoogleDoc copy & paste. It provides a variety of methods to modify the style. It defaults to a Wikipedia styling with first column header.

From OpenOffice and LibreOffice

 * LibreOffice provides MediaWiki export functionality. The package libreoffice-wiki-publisher needs to be installed.
 * Writer2MediaWiki: OpenOffice macro for converting to MediaWiki format
 * Pandoc

From any productivity suite

 * VisualEditor, the WYSIWYG editor deployed on multiple Wikipedias allows for the copying/pasting of content from Word documents into a wiki page. Most formatting is kept intact - including tables. However, images and advanced formatting will need to be cleaned up upon import. For testing: mw:Project:Sandbox.
 * User:Cacycle/wikEd editor extension functionality, see above

From Microsoft Word

 * Pandoc
 * Microsoft Office Word Add-in For MediaWiki: Converts Word documents to wiki formatting. Doesn't do images. This may not work on newer versions of Word.
 * Excel2Wiki tool for converting Excel tables to wiki tables.


 * Transferring a single wiki page in MediaWiki to Word is easy, just save the desired webpage and then open the page in Microsoft Word.

From HTML

 * Online, no installation required
 * [//magnustools.toolforge.org/html2wiki.php html2wiki] (magnustools.toolforge.org)
 * An AJAX interface for the HTML::WikiConverter http://labs.seapine.com/htmltowiki.cgi (remove HTML head if not working)
 * A browser based HTML to Wiki converter Emiliano Bruni's I love wiki – HTML2Wiki Converter (also using Perl module HTML::WikiConverter, remove HTML head if not working)
 * HTML::WikiConverter on the Toolserver: http://toolserver.org/~diberri/cgi-bin/html2wiki/index.cgi (asf of 1 November 2011 the account has expired)
 * Note: You must change the "Wiki dialect" to MediaWiki or it won't work properly. You can enter a url to convert a web page. It is based on the Perl module HTML::WikiConverter which performs HTML→wiki conversion and is available on CPAN. (by en:Diberri). This converter can fetch a URL instead of pasting the html.
 * Tip: If you receive no conversion but an "Internal Server Error" or nothing at all, the HTML source may be too large
 * Tip: If you experience problems with non-ASCII characters, paste UTF-8 code as ASCII (Ã„ instead of Ä), convert and restore original encoding (SciTe could help you doing the encoding conversions)


 * https://gwicke.github.io/paste2wiki/ : HTML paste supported, offers both HTML clean-up and converts to wikitext using Parsoid. Decent support for HTML from Google Docs and GMail.


 * To download
 * Pandoc
 * Html2Wiki is an extension for MediaWiki that imports HTML
 * HTML::WikiConverter http://search.cpan.org/~diberri/HTML-WikiConverter-0.61/.
 * User:Cacycle/wikEd editor extension functionality, see above
 * Another HTML to Wiki converter http://www.dwheeler.com/html2wikipedia/
 * A C++ based program also called Html2mediawiki

From LaTeX

 * LaTeX2wiki converts sections, math, and references using a web form.
 * Pandoc

From source codes

 * Wikipedia supports syntax highlighting. For information on how to use it, and the languages supported, see Syntax Highlight Extension.

Upload tools
See commons:Commons:Upload tools.

Twinkle
Twinkle is a popular JavaScript Wikipedia gadget that gives autoconfirmed registered users many extra options to assist them in common Wikipedia maintenance tasks and to help them deal with acts of vandalism or unconstructive edits. It provides users with three types of rollback functions and includes a full library of speedy deletion functions, user warnings and welcomes, maintenance tags, semi-automatic reporting of vandals, and more. In addition, it gives administrators more tools to help them carry out their duties.

RecentChanges tools

 * Huggle (vandalism fighting tool)
 * RedWarn (user-friendly counter-vandalism tool)
 * STiki (vandalism fighting tool)
 * Vandal Fighter (recent changes monitor)
 * Igloo (vandalism fighting tool)

Spell Checkers

 * User:Symplectic Map/AutoSpell
 * Mozilla Firefox offers built-in spell checking since version 2.0. Link to additional languages.
 * Opera 10 has built-in Hunspell spellchecker (before v10 can use GNU Aspell (textboxes only).
 * Google Toolbar offers spell checking in various languages for Internet Explorer.
 * A well-designed spell checker for Internet Explorer is ieSpell.
 * Konqueror uses Aspell if it's installed and set up in your KDE Control Center.
 * A good stand-alone spell checker for English Wikipedia pages is Inspyder InSite. (The free version is good enough for fixing Wikipedia articles.)
 * The macOS universal spell checker is available in Wikipedia's "edit this page" mode while using Safari and in theory any other Cocoa-based browser.
 * RegExTypoFix is a large set of regular expressions meant to be loaded into AutoWikiBrowser to do automatic spellchecking.
 * Google Chrome contains a built-in spell checker as well.
 * Correct typos in one click, a tool that identifies typos within English Wikipedia and gives a interface to correct them easily.
 * Typo Team/moss runs a communal spell check on database dumps

Article maintenance

 * WPCleaner (various syntax fixes)
 * WP:reFill (expands bare references)
 * Reflinks (check and correct links in references)
 * Dabfix (unavailable) (maintenance of disambiguation pages)
 * Dab solver (links to disambiguation pages)
 * Checklinks (unavailable) (check and correct other links)
 * ProveIt (addition of citations and references)
 * Open access bot (add open access links to citations)
 * MW (Firefox Ubiquity script. It uses the MediaWiki API to suggest and insert an internal link.)

Additional tools which use OAuth can be found on Special:Tags.

Disambiguation fixer
Disambiguation fixer is a program to fix the links to Disambiguation pages. (See Disambiguation pages with links)

Regex: change heading levels
The following may seem trivial for Unix-experienced people, but a collection of ready-to-use regular expressions can help people who don't know anything or much about regular expressions. For these people: You can use regular expressions in many editors to perform complex editing tasks.

This will give the headings more (or fewer) equal signs. I can only provide a version which is verified to work in Eclipse, but it will work in many text editors which feature Unix-style regular expressions.

Please change the expressions only if you are very, very sure that it will work correctly, say you have tested that it works.

Verified in Eclipse
Search-string: ^=(=*?)([^=]+?)(=*?)=\s*$ For more equal signs replace with: ==$1$2$3== For fewer equal signs replace with: $1$2$3 To balance right equals signs to left: =$1$2$1=

Hints for text editors not mentioned
In other editors, the replace strings will have to be different:

For more equal signs replace with: ==\1\2\3== For less equal signs replace with: \1\2\3

Units of measure formatting and conversion tool and date formatting tool
User:MJCdetroit/monobook.js is a monobook tool that allows many common units to be correctly formatted (e.g. km² and not sq km) and converted between metric and imperial/U.S. customary systems with one click on a 'units' tab in edit mode.

Dates can be delinked and common errors associated with can be corrected with one click on a 'dates' tab in edit mode.

Units and dates can be combined by clicking the 'combined' tab in the edit mode.

To avoid false positives, editors can/should review the changes offered and accept or reject the changes offered and/or do more editing before pressing 'Save'. Simply add to your own monobook. Follow the instructions in your monobook to clear the cache (i.e., press Ctrl in Firefox or Ctrl in Internet Explorer) before it will work. — MJC detroit  (yak) 20:32, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Labelled Image Editor
The Labelled Image Editor is a Java tool that creates and edits labelled links for an image. Useful for creating clickable maps like Template:United States Labelled Map. http://mujibab.googlepages.com/labelledimageeditor

Interwiki link checker

 * to interwiki articles in different languages which ought to have a link.

Go-to-edit-page contextual menu item

 * This script for a Firefox extension allows one to go directly to the edit page of a right-clicked wiki page link (control-clicked on a Macintosh one-button mouse).

Timeline creation tool
For a tool to create nice graphical timelines, see Wikipedia Project Time Charts and the Easy Timeline Homepage. (by meta:Erik Zachte)

Extra edit page buttons


For extra edit page buttons, put the following code in your skin.js:. The buttons include: left aligned text, sub-script, super-script, insert table, insert quoted text. More details can be found at User:MarkS/Extra edit buttons.

Wiki Welcome
The code adds a tab when you are on user talk pages, you can then click it to add a welcome template and then save. A little time saver for me I thought I would share. Matthew Fenton (  contribs ) 16:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Footnote renumbering tool
If you have a page with many footnotes using fn and fnb, and they're all in the wrong order, this script could be useful. Written in Python, tested on a Linux system with Python 2.4.

User:Skagedal/Footnote renumbering tool

AFD tools
note : AFD stands for Articles For Deletion

Add the following to your monobook.js file
 * Added by ABCD


 * This should be improved by saving a 7-day cookie as to the hidden or shown status of each VFD --jnothman talk 02:01, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Afd helper
A script to speed up voting on AFDs. See afd helper. Feedback needed.

CSDHelper
A Greasemonkey script to add a menu with common WP:CSD criteria next in the form that appears when deleting articles. It saves time and provides more meaningful deletion reasons in the logs. Can be included directly into monobook.js with basic modification. It is available at User:Chairboy/csdhelper.greasemonkey.js. Wikipedia administrator access required.

AFD Organizer
An application used in AFD discussions. Loads a list of all the recent AFD's, and then pre-loads several useful pages when opening an AFD, saving valuable time and energy.

Image tagging tools
Script for quickly tagging images as lacking source, licensing, or fair use rationale. Also simplifies nominating images for deletion:

User talk:Howcheng/quickimgdelete.js