TheBestLinks.com:Namespace

From TheBestLinks.com

See also Help:Namespace, m:Help:Namespace

Like all wikis using the MediaWiki software, Wikipedia has 16 namespaces: the main namespace, where page names have no prefix, and 15 auxiliary types, each with its own prefix.

The concept of namespaces is similar to programming language namespaces and general namespaces.

Table of contents

6 Non-standard namespaces

7 See also

Overview

The 15 auxiliary namespaces in Wikipedia are the following (also the variables for them are shown). Note that if no namespace is specified in a reference, it corresponds to namespace 0.

{{ns:0}}	(main namespace, for regular Wikipedia articles)
{{ns:1}}	Talk (discussion pages for regular Wikipedia articles)
{{ns:2}}	User
{{ns:3}}	User_talk
{{ns:4}}	TheBestLinks.com
{{ns:5}}	TheBestLinks.com_talk
{{ns:6}}	Image
{{ns:7}}	Image_talk
{{ns:8}}	MediaWiki
{{ns:9}}	MediaWiki_talk
{{ns:10}}	Template
{{ns:11}}	Template_talk
{{ns:12}}	Help
{{ns:13}}	Help_talk
{{ns:14}}	Category
{{ns:15}}	Category_talk

Basic namespaces

The main namespace or article namespace is the encyclopedia proper (see Special:Allpages). It is the default namespace and does not use a prefix.

The project namespace (prefix Wikipedia:, also called the Wikipedia namespace) is a namespace that provides information about Wikipedia and how to use it. This page is located in the project namespace.

The user namespace (prefix User:) is a namespace that provides pages for Wikipedia users' personal presentations and auxiliary pages for personal use, for example containing bookmarks to favorite pages. If you see in the RecentChanges list that the user named "Jimbo" has updated some pages, this user name is a link not to Jimbo but to user:Jimbo. (See Special:Listusers).

The image namespace (prefix Image:, also called image description pages) is a namespace that provides info about images and sound clips, one page for each, with a link to the image or sound clip itself. See Special:Imagelist. There are three versions of links to images and sound files:

[[Image:Foobar.jpg]] will insert the image directly into the page (not for sound files)
[[Media:Foobar.jpg]] will make a text link to the image or sound clip
[[:Image:Foobar.jpg]] will make a text link to the image description page

The MediaWiki namespace (prefix MediaWiki:) is a namespace containing interface texts such as link labels and messages. They are used for adjusting the localisation (i.e. local version) of interface messages without waiting for a new LanguageXx.php file to get installed. Each label and message has a separate page. These are protected by default and unprotected ones listed at Wikipedia:Unprotected MediaWiki messages. An automatically generated list of all interface messages is at Special:Allmessages.

The Template namespace (formerly part of the MediaWiki namespace) is used to define a standard text which can then be conveniently added within pages, either the text itself at the time of adding, or a reference to the text at the time of viewing the page. The latter way effectively changes all such occurrences of the standard text automatically by just editing the page where the text is defined. These are listed at Wikipedia:Template messages and Wikipedia:Navigational templates. The majority of this type is not protected.

The Category namespace contains categories of pages, with each displaying a list of pages in that category and optional additional text.

A new addition is the Help namespace. Help pages previously in the Wikipedia namespace, and at Meta, may be moved here at some point in the future, but the namespace has not yet been implemented on all Wikimedia projects.

Talk namespaces

Except for special pages, each namespace has an associated talk namespace. The talk namespaces are designated by adding talk: to the normal prefix. For example, the talk namespace associated with the main article namespace has the prefix Talk:, while the talk namespace associated with the user namespace has the prefix User talk:. Most of the pages in the talk namespaces are used to discuss changes to the corresponding page in the associated namespace. Pages in the user talk namespace are used to leave messages for a particular user.

Virtual namespaces

There are two virtual namespaces that do not relate to pages stored in the database.

The special namespace (also called special pages) consists of pages that are created by the software on demand (for example, Special:Recentchanges). These pages can be linked as usual, like [[Special:Recentchanges]], except when they have parameters, then the full URL has to be given, like an external link, for example http://www.thebestlinks.com/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&days=3&limit=10 (last 10 changes). A redirect to a Special page is not recommended because of its complications, see m:redirect#Inter-wiki redirects and redirects to Special pages. See Wikipedia:Special pages.

The Media:namespace can be used to link directly to an image or sound clip, rather than to the image description page. See information above on the image: namespace.

Pseudo namespaces

The WP pseudo-namespace (also called WP shortcuts) appears to be a namespace with the prefix WP:. In reality, there is no such namespace, but it is a collection of pages that redirect to pages in the project namespace. Properly speaking, these pages are all located in the article namespace, but because they all lead to the project namespace, they effectively create a pseudo-namespace. For example, WP:WINAD redirects to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The pseudo-namespace provides easily remembered shortcuts for frequently visited pages in the project namespace.

The transwiki namespace is cross-project pseudo namespace used for temporarily storing articles which need to be moved from one Wikimedia project to another. See m:Transwiki for a full explanation.

Non-standard namespaces

Talk:Wikipedia:Namespace is an example of a non-standard (and not recommended) talk page name, which is discussed further at m:Talk:En:Talk:Wikipedia:Namespace; a page which is special itself, in that the link that is supposed to be to the corresponding article on meta is an interwiki link to the non-standard talk page on Wikipedia.

The Image:Image: namespace was never standard, and is no longer functional as of MediaWiki 1.3.

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