Wikipedia:About the sandbox

The page Wikipedia:Sandbox
Image of the sandbox in the Wikipedia namespace showing the page title and sandbox header

Sandboxes, such as a user's sandbox or the more frequently edited Wikipedia:Sandbox, are pages designed for testing and experimenting with wiki syntax and the VisualEditor.

They were created as a place with fewer rules and policies than other pages on Wikipedia. For example, you don't have to follow the Manual of Style or reach community consensus before making a major change. However, they must not be used for malicious purposes, and policies such as no personal attacks, civility, and copyrights (such as non-free content criteria) still apply.

Sandboxes are really just ordinary pages — there's nothing special about them. It's when a page is called a "sandbox" it sends the signal "this page is for testing and experimenting, nothing in here should be assumed to remain permanently."

If you have a registered account, you can create your own sandbox in your userspace. You can find your user sandbox here. (And if it doesn't exist yet, feel free to create it!) For easy access, there is a link labeled "Sandbox" at the top right of every page on either a user icon menu User account icon or between the "Talk" and "Preferences" links. You can also put the {{My sandbox}} template on your userpage for a convenient link.

Temporary accounts aren't given sandboxes and since you aren't allowed to create pages using a temporary account, you cannot create a sandbox for a temporary account. Do feel free to test and experiment in the Wikipedia:Sandbox common to all users.

Creating more sandboxes in your User namespace

To create another sandbox, first make a subpage to your user page in your User namespace, then designate it as a sandbox and, optionally, keep a handy link to it.

Here is the procedure for User:Example:

  1. Decide on a name for the subpage, for example: sandbox2
  2. Enter the following in the Search box, replacing "Example" with your own username: User:Example/sandbox2
  3. Then click on the reply, "Start the User:Example/sandbox2 page."
  4. Once the page is created, add as the first line {{User sandbox|a=yes}} on its own. This puts the {{user sandbox}} template onto the subpage, telling any visitor this page is intended to be used for testing and experimenting. The |a=yes parameter changes the message from "This is the user sandbox of Example" to "This is a user sandbox of Example" - after all, in our example, you're creating another sandbox on top of the one you already have.
  5. Unlike for your primary sandbox, Wikipedia does not automatically provide a link to additional sandboxes, so be sure either to bookmark it or add a link to it on your userpage (in this case [[User:Example/sandbox2]]); you can also use the Special:PrefixIndex special page to display all the subpages of your user page, including any sandboxes you've created this way.

List of sandboxes

Wikipedia namespace

Draft namespace

Talk namespace

User namespace

User talk namespace

Template namespace

Module namespace

Category namespace

File namespace

Portal namespace

Other

Bots

Some sandboxes are set up to be automatically cleaned by Cyberbot I, while some automatically have the sandbox header template re-added by Hazard-Bot.

See also