Difference between revisions of "Help:Namespaces"

Revision as of 04:39, 16 April 2015

A namespace is grouping pages that belong together. Every "normal" article is in the main namespace and has an associated discussion page in the "Discussion:" namespace to it. Every namespace has a prefix to its page title – with the only exception of the main space. So there is "Help:" for the help namespace and "Template:" for the template namespace.

Most namespaces are set up in the system already, but additional namespaces can also be set up. Some templates and forms add a new page automatically into a namespace.

The usage of namespace is meant for:

• Grouping pages that belong together, e.g. all lyrics in a namespace "Lyrics:".
• Necessary distinction between pages with similar names, like "Buenos Aires" for the city and "Lyrics:Buenos Aires" for the Tango song.

Namespaces

All namespaces can be seen in the dropdown in Special:AllPages. Some of these namespaces come with the software, some have been set up.

The namespaces you will most likely need for editing:

• Main: The main namespace is the only one that does not append a namespace prefix to the page title. Usually, it holds most of all the content pages of a wiki. If you simply create a new page/a new article, you will do so in the main namespace.
• Talk: Every page has an associated discussion page, where questions about the article can be talked about. It usually shows up as "discussion" next to the namespace tab on top. On this page, you will see "Help page" and the associated "Discussion" next to it.
• User: All registered users have their own page under their username, see your user page for this.
• User talk: The talk pages for user pages have their own namespace, namely the user talk namespace. It's like a discussion page for articles, it only has a different name.
• Category: Pages can be sorted into categories with simple links within the page, like [[Category:Milonga]]. Every category has its own page, where the pages get listed and additional information about the categorization can be entered like on any other page.
• Portal: Namespace reserved for certain landing pages around certain topics. The Portal:Contribute is an example for this.
• Rec: Recordings for songs are stored in this namespace. The recordings of songs are then shown on song, orchestra, singer etc. pages. See Rec:R000461 and its inclusion on Milonga, vieja milonga and Juan D'Arienzo as a random example.
• Lyrics: The lyrics to a song (as long as it is not an instrumental composition) are stored in this namespace. They get a link to the song page and vice versa for direct access. These lyrics can also be translated into any other language, after first being translated into English. See how Amor y tango and Lyrics:Amor y tango are linked.

More namespaces:

• Help: For helping content about the wiki, like the Help:User manual.
• Template: For templates, that can be included into articles and hold content that needs to be repeated often or for layout style that should be the same on more than one pages, like the Template:Infobox Festival.
• File: All uploaded files (images, archives etc) are stored in the file namespace. For embedding a file into a page, a simple link to the file, like [[File:darienzo.jpg]] is used. "Image:" is an alias for "File" and works as well.
• Media: Direct linking to files instead of the file description page or embedding is achieved via the media namespace.
• Special: In this namespace you find the special pages, listed under Special:SpecialPages. These special pages are indeed special: They cannot be edited as normal pages and do not have an associated talk page. They are related to software internal statistics, setup, maintenance and so on.
• MediaWiki: In the MediaWiki namespace are all system messages (=text for interface) stored and can also be changed there.
• Project namespace: The project namespace follows the name of the wiki, therefore in here it is called "TangoWiki:". It is used for information about the wiki, the project itself, e.g. TangoWiki:About.
• Translations: In this namespace all translations of the entire wiki are stored. When a page gets translated, it will get an entry here.
• Form: In this namespace all TangoWiki forms get stored. Forms are relying on properties and templates and can be filled by any registered user without knowledge of wiki markup.
• Property: Properties are used for semantic content storage in the wiki, which makes further usage and queries for data within the wiki a bliss.
• Concept: Concepts are stored queries for usage in other queries, like the Concept:Festivals 2015, which holds all festivals in 2015 to be used in queries for calendars, maps or the like. If one or many queries would become lengthy or repeat the same query data, a concept can be of good use.

Weblinks

• Help:Namespaces on MediaWiki.org