Help:About Namespaces
From Jackcentric
A wiki's basic structure consists of several parallel namespaces. All pages on a wiki exist in one of these namespaces. And unlike categories or tags, where an item can belong to as many as appropriate, a page can belong to only one namespace at a time.
There are eight primary namespaces on a MediaWiki wiki:
Main -- Most of the articles on a wiki will be in the main namespace. This is the main "content area" of the wiki; at Jackcentric, it includes all the fanwork listings. New pages are created in the main namespace by default, and page titles will not have any prefix. Typing [[XYZ]] will create a new page named XYZ in the main namespace. This is the only namespace where page titles do not need a prefix. It is also the only namespace included in the search function by default. If you want to search any of the other namespaces, you'll need to use the Advanced Search function and specifically tell it to look in the other namespaces.
Project -- The project namespace holds meta-type pages about the wiki itself, such as administrative policies, editing rules, community organizing pages, etc. All pages in the project namespace will have a prefix that changes according to the project name. Here, the project prefix is Jackcentric:. At the TARDIS Index file, the project prefix is TARDIS: and at Wikipedia it's Wikipedia:. To link to a page within the project namespace, you must include the prefix in the page title. For instance, to link to the Jackcentric:About Jackcentric page, you must type [[Jackcentric:About Jackcentric]]. If you just type [[About Jackcentric]], it will create a new page with that name in the main namespace, even if a page with exactly that name already exists in the other namespace.
Note that when adding a prefix to a page name, there should be no space between the colon and the page title. If you add a space after the colon, it will create a page whose name starts with an underscore.
Category -- Any time a category is created, it gets its own page in the category namespace. Category pages can be edited just like any other page, except that after the text proper, it will automatically generate a list of all the pages and subcategories within that category. At most wikis, the category namespace won't get much attention except from the most involved wiki editors, but at Jackcentric, it provides the directory structure that lets you browse for specific types of stories. You can see our complete category structure by starting at Category:Contents and drilling down.
User -- The User namespace includes individual userpages (the ones you reach by clicking a user's name) and any user subpages that have been created. Pages in the user namespace have the prefix User:.
Help -- Pages in the Help: namespace are exactly what they sound like.
MediaWiki -- Pages in the MediaWiki: namespace are created by the wiki software and used to generate system messages.
File -- Image pages and other uploaded files exist in the File: namespace.
Template -- The Template: namespace is reserved for files used to automate the formatting of other pages.
Each of these primary namespaces has an associated Talk: namespace that can be used to discuss the content of its corresponding primary page. Any page you reach by clicking a Discussion link is located in one of the Talk namespaces.
There's one other prefix you should be aware of. The Special: pages are not actually in their own namespace, but for all intents and purposes they act as if they were. However, you can't create new Special: pages. If you type [[Special:NewPageName]], you'll just get an error message.
Some wikis will also have custom namespaces that they use for their own purposes; we don't have any custom namespaces here.
See also:
