Help:Namespaces

This page is a modified copy of MediaWiki.org's Public Domain Help Pages, which can be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software. See Help:Contents for an overview of all pages.

Pages without a ':' in their name are in the main namespace. These are typically the bulk of the content pages in a wiki. Pages which aren't directly related to this core content, may go in other namespaces. These pages have a name of the form "namespace:page", for example this page is called "Help:Namespaces" (this page belongs to the namespace 'Help' and the name of this page is 'Namespaces')

Use of namespaces can vary from one wiki to another, but a typical scheme would be as follows:

Help

Documentation about working with the wiki software. This could be mirrored from outside sites, or locally written.

Image

For descriptions of uploaded files or media files. You shouldn't create these directly; they are created when you click the Upload file link in the toolbox.

Media

Use this namespace to link to uploaded files directly, rather than through the description pages.

MediaWiki

Use this namespace to change the default system messages, See Help:System message on meta.

Project

Information about this wiki; i.e. policies that apply here. This namespace also has an alias, which is the name of the wiki installation.

Talk

Each page has a corresponding discussion page. This can be used for feedback/comments about that page, or other local notes that another group may want to associate with the page, without modifying the document directly, or for any other additional information to associate with the document.

Template

This is used for meta-information that is to be transcluded into multiple documents, such as tags to mark the status of a document.

User

For personal notes. Each User has a corresponding user page for their own information. Users can also create subpages, by using a / after their name.

User_talk

The discussion page on a user's page can be used for leaving messages. If this page is edited, the next time that user logs in they will see a box notifying them that they have new messages