Welcome!

Hello, W-informal, and welcome to Wikipedia! This is one of the most popular websites in the world, and it's only through the contributions of editors like you. And Wikipedia is not just a collection of articles, it's an active community. The real fun here is contributing to Wikipedia, but don't feel hurt if some of your first few edits get removed, as there are some central guidelines you may not be familiar with.

Some good advice: be bold in your editing, and use the talk pages to discuss with other editors. Be kind to others, because there's a lot you can learn from them, and there's lots they can help you with.

There's lots of resources to help you become a great editor, from our basic introduction to our in-depth manual. But if you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page or place {{helpme}} on this page to get any help you need. If you haven't done so, tell us a bit about yourself. Oh, and please sign your name on talk pages and votes by typing ~~~~; our software automatically converts it to your username and the date.

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General topics lists

There are two types of general topics lists: Outlines and Indexes. Outlines are arranged hierarchically, while the topics in indexes are presented alphabetically.

The vast majority of lists on Wikipedia present the items of a class of things – those are item lists. The rest are general topics lists which are different than item lists because they present the subtopics of a given subject – their scope is an entire subject.

For example, for sharks, the item list is List of sharks and it presents shark species. A general topics list on sharks is the Outline of sharks, and its scope is everything about sharks.

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