Main subject classifications
Wikipedia's main navigation subsystems (overviews, outlines, lists, portals, glossaries, categories, and
indices) are each divided into the following subject classifications:
Reference works – compendiums of information, usually of a specific type, compiled in a book for ease
of reference. That is, the information is intended to be quickly found when needed.
Culture – encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the
knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits of the individuals in these groups.
Geography – field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of
the Earth and planets.
Health – state of physical, mental and social well-being.
History – the past as it is described in written documents, and the study thereof.
Human activities – the various activities done by people. For instance it includes leisure, entertainment,
industry, recreation, war, and exercise.
Mathematics – the study of topics such as quantity (numbers), structure, space, and change. It evolved
through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, from counting, calculation, measurement, and the
systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects.
Natural science – branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of
natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation.
People – plurality of persons considered as a whole, as is the case with an ethnic group or nation.
Philosophy – study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason,
mind, and language.
Religions – social-cultural systems of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts,
sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural,
transcendental, or spiritual elements.
Society – group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the
same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant
cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between
individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum
total of such relationships among its constituent of members.
Technology – the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or
services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation.
Curated article collections
Overview articles
Overview articles summarize in prose a broad topic like biology, and also have illustrations and links to
subtopics like cell biology, biographies like Carl Linnaeus, and other related articles like Human Genome
Project.
Wikipedia:Contents/Overviews lists overview articles from covered fields in a single page.
Outline pages
Outline pages have trees of topics in an outline format, which in turn are linked to further outlines and
articles providing more detail. Outlines show how important subtopics relate to each other based on
how they are arranged in the tree, and they are useful as a more condensed, non-prose alternative to
overview articles.
Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines is a comprehensive list of "Outline of __" pages, organized by subject. It is
itself an outline, that links (almost) exclusively to other outlines.
Outline of academic disciplines covers subjects studied in college or university, and provides links to
prose overview articles and their corresponding outlines.
Outline of knowledge is the top-level outline, its subject being the broadest one of all. It is the ancestor
of all other outlines, and they branch out from it, in successive levels.