Help:Namespace

Page titles in MediaWiki are composed of two parts: an optional namespace name, and the remainder of the title. For example, this page has the title : , so it is in the  namespace. A title without a colon, for example Goings-on, is in the main namespace.

By default, a wiki using the MediaWiki software has 18 namespaces, including:


 * the main namespace, where page names have no prefix
 * 15 additional namespaces, each with its own prefix. (Two namespaces, the so-called 'project' namespaces, get their names from the name of the wiki project, and so differ in name from one wiki to the next; on the ISFDB, they are called ISFDB: and ISFDB talk:. On each wiki, these project namespaces (whatever they may happen to be for that wiki), can be referred to by the pseudonyms "Project:" and "Project Talk:", respectively.)
 * two pseudo-namespaces

But take note:


 * If a page title contains a colon, but the initial part of the title is not one of the pre-defined namespaces, that page is considered to be in the main namespace.

Namespace uses
Namespaces allow, among other things, a separation of content from policy and discussion. They encourage separation of the pages of a wiki into a core set intended for public viewing, and private information intended for the editing community.

The core set is the main namespace. Other namespaces that are also useful to viewers are:
 * the image namespace (with the full-size images)
 * the category namespace (for navigation)
 * the help pages and the preferences page (as far as they concern viewing)

By default, searches and the random page feature are restricted to the main namespace, thus the user interface is directed towards readers who are not part of the community.


 * Special:Allpages can be applied to a namespace of choice.
 * So can Recent changes.
 * Searching can be restricted to any subset of namespaces

User contributions can show all or be restricted to a namespace of choice.

The subpage feature can be enabled for selected namespaces.

It is possible to customize the visual appearance of pages and the appearance and function of templates based on namespace. See sections Template programming and CSS based namespace detection below.

List of namespaces
The two pseudo-namespaces, main namespace and 15 auxiliary namespaces in this project (Meta) are as follows (the variables for them are also shown).

Note that the number of pages in each namespace may not be displayed on all MediaWiki projects, because this counting feature may be disabled): on this Wiki, per-namespace page counting is currently     :PAGESINNS:0   |disabled|available.

Note that all characters of namespace prefixes are case-insensitive, so one can write, for example, "mediawiki". Also, underscores in namespace prefixes are equivalent to any non-zero number of spaces (leading or trailing spaces or underscores are ignored) : underscores are used only when encoding URLs but treated otherwise like spaces.

These names are set in the MessagesXX.php language files. The English defaults are below: /* private */ $namespaceNames = array(	NS_MEDIA           => 'Media',	NS_SPECIAL          => 'Special',	NS_MAIN	            => '',	NS_TALK	            => 'Talk',	NS_USER             => 'User',	NS_USER_TALK        => 'User_talk',	NS_WIKIPEDIA        => $wgMetaNamespace,	NS_WIKIPEDIA_TALK   => $wgMetaNamespace . '_talk',	NS_IMAGE            => 'Image',	NS_IMAGE_TALK       => 'Image_talk',	NS_MEDIAWIKI        => 'MediaWiki',	NS_MEDIAWIKI_TALK   => 'MediaWiki_talk',	NS_TEMPLATE         => 'Template',	NS_TEMPLATE_TALK    => 'Template_talk',	NS_HELP             => 'Help',	NS_HELP_TALK        => 'Help_talk',	NS_CATEGORY	    => 'Category',	NS_CATEGORY_TALK    => 'Category_talk' );