Constant Noble:Namespaces

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A namespace is a set of wiki pages whose names begin with a particular reserved word recognized by the MediaWiki software (followed by a colon). For example, in the user namespace, all titles begin with the prefix User:. In the case of the article (or main) namespace, in which encyclopedia articles appear, the reserved word and colon are absent. (Note: main space articles can optionally include a colon at the beginning with no reserved word, so [[Article]] and [[:Article]] are equivalent. This is usually only necessary for the advanced technique of transcluding a main space article into another page.)

MediaWiki's installation defaults carry eight subject namespaces, eight corresponding talk namespaces, and two virtual namespaces. On Miraheze sites, additional namespaces are provided by several extensions enabled at Special:ManageWiki/extensions; administrators have the option to add site-specific ones through Special:ManageWiki/namespaces. The list also makes itself available where needed in the dropdown menus of, for example, Special:Prefixindex, Special:Allpages, Special:Recentchanges, and Special:Contributions.

While browsing this site, a list of namespaces is available in two clicks: do an empty search, then click Advanced under the search box.

System structure

Subject material

MediaWiki defaults

Every site running MediaWiki carries eight default namespaces:

Wikis hosted by non-Wikimedia outlets, like Fandom (formerly known as Wikia) and Miraheze, use this namespace for topics pertaining to the subjects they focus on. On the Constant Noble site, this namespace is reserved exclusively for work listings.
  • User (2): Contains user pages and other pages created by individual users for their own personal use. Pages under this namespace can still be viewed and modified by others, so do not keep any of your sensitive data here. If a user has no page on a local Miraheze instance, then content from mh:login will appear as a placeholder.
  • Project (4): Except on MediaWiki's own site, Project is an alias that is substituted by the name of the site itself, in this case Constant Noble. Generally, this is reserved for pages concerning the features, maintenance, administration, policies, and guidelines of the site they are on.
  • File (6): Contains description pages for media files (images, videos, and audio files). A link starting with [[File: will display the media at that position on the page instead of showing a wikilink that leads to the specified file description page, so if you want the latter effect, use a link beginning with [[:File: (the colon trick).
Occasionally, wikis have InstantCommons enabled, which allows for usage of free-content files from Wikimedia Commons; Miraheze has its own version as well.
  • MediaWiki (8): A namespace containing interface texts, such as the links and messages that appear on automatically generated pages. Pages in this namespace are permanently protected against editing by regular users. For a list of these messages, see Special:AllMessages. (The prefix cannot be shortened to "MW" because mw is an interwiki prefix. See Interwiki links below.)
  • Template (10): Contains templates—pages that are intended primarily to be transcluded or substituted onto other pages to insert standard text or boxes such as infoboxes and navigation boxes. On this site, a full list can be accessed through Special:Templates or Special:AllPages/Template:.
  • Help (12): Contains pages which provide help in using a wiki site and MediaWiki, both for users of the encyclopedia and for editors.
  • Category (14): contains category pages, which are curated lists of related pages and subcategories, along with optional additional text. A link beginning with [[Category: has the effect of adding the page the link appears on to the specified category; it will not result in a wikilink to the category page itself. If you want the latter, use the colon trick: [[:Category:.

Extensions

Custom

The Constant Noble site makes extensive use of custom namespaces, each pertaining to a different aspect of the projects covered here. Their range starts at ID number 3000, the approach recommended at mw:Extension default namespaces (which also states that extensions should not use any numbers between 3000 and 4999).

Administration (Top-level)
General (Top-level)
  • Keyword (3006): Devoted to the site's tag system, and found in {{Work info}} (work listings) and {{Definition}} (Tovasala entries) among other templates. Originally proposed as Tag during the ByetHost phase, but changed to its current name to avoid conflict with Wikimedia/Miraheze's {{Tag}}. (Templates bearing a namespace title are reserved for local links to pages in those namespaces.)
  • Place (3008), Language (3010), Character (3012), and Species (3014): Profiles on elements connected to Constant Noble's projects. The Place namespace also carries in-universe information on Rogatia, as well as St. Isabel, Novissima, and the Tovasala realm.
Administration (Extra)
  • Parameters (3016): Pages in this namespace describe parameters of templates through TemplateData.
Adanson Jukebox
  • Volume (3018): For program listings of the Reflections and Revolution visual albums, as depicted in the Unspooled mythos.
  • Genre (3020): Equivalent to the general Keywords.
  • Artist (3022), Album (3024), and Track (3026): Real-world information on the music collected and relayed in those volumes.
Tovasala Dictionary
  • Voablivrile (3028): The Tovasala–English and English–Tovasala sections of this resource, which in Tovasala itself stands for "the dictionary". (Dictionary: is registered as an interwiki for DICT.org, the DICT Development Group.) Also carries etymological and alphagram listings, and the root page of the Rhymes section, as well as the Morpheme lexicon.
  • Grammar (3030): A re-upload/rewrite of the original Referata version; also carries the case handbook and various related resources.
  • Corpus (3032): Home to the Corpus of Tovasala, which handles translation of various text, extracts/quotations, and example sentences into that language.
    • Originally proposed as Translatorium (3032), Snippet (3034), and Sentence (3036); add 4 to any remaining NS number to get their once-intended code. (The first one was so named to avoid conflict with an existing extension namespace, Translations.)
  • Entry (3034) and Morpheme (3036): The core components of the Dictionary.
  • Rhymes (3038): Inspired by Wiktionary's counterpart feature.
Creative writing
  • From the Author (3040): For reruns of the Marigot Notebook, Unspooled's making-of blog, and various other social media postings by this site's founder; also doubles as a continuation of the original "What Lies Aground" feed formerly hosted on Google+ (June 2012–February 2019), Steemit (February 2019–April 2020), and hive.blog (April 2020–present). Proposed as Notebook during the ByetHost phase, but renamed at original press time (July 1, 2021) to avoid conflict with the experimental NotebookViewer.
  • Story (3042): The texts of Unspooled and The Sevton Saga, subpaged by the chapter. Proposed as Book during the ByetHost phase, but renamed at original press time (July 1, 2021) to avoid conflict with BlueSpice's BookShelf extension (already unsupported by Miraheze). ("Book" was also used as a Wikipedia namespace until its June 2021 retirement.)
  • Backstory (3044): In-universe information on motifs and plot elements found in these titles.
  • Family tree (3046): Genealogy of characters featured in Constant Noble's projects, powered by the Genealogy extension.
Extras
  • Tutorial (3048): For step-by-step tutorials of site founder Routhwick's creative works.
  • Data (3050): Devoted to census data and box-office figures as relates to the Constant Noble label's geofictional ventures. Content in this namespace is fetched by DynamicPageList3 (DPL3).

Talk pages

Main page: w:Help:Using talk pages

Each of the above namespaces (but not the virtual namespaces) has an associated talk namespace—these are also known as discussion pages. The talk namespaces are designated by appending the word talk to the namespace name. For example, the talk namespace associated with the user namespace has the prefix User talk:. The talk namespace associated with the article namespace is 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. The user talk namespace is special in that, whenever a user's talk page is edited, that user will see an orange box saying "You have new messages" on the top of every page that they view until they visit their talk page. By default, logged-in users will see a red notification square and a small orange box on the top right hand corner of the page; IP users will only see a wide orange box spanning the top of the page. (Minor edits made by bots no longer set off the new message bar. For logged-in users, the new-message bar may be disabled in Special:Preferences.)

Note that the prefix WT: expands to Wikipedia talk:, just as WP: expands to Wikipedia: (see Aliases below). For example, [[WT:Verifiability]] links to Wikipedia talk:Verifiability.

Virtual namespaces

In addition to subject namespaces, and their corresponding talk pages, there are two virtual namespaces (without corresponding talk pages) for specialist purposes:

Special

Main page: w:Help:Special page

The Special: namespace consists of pages (called special pages) that are created by the software on demand, such as Special:RecentChanges. These pages can be linked as usual, as with [[Special:RecentChanges]], except when they have parameters. To use parameters, the full URL must be given as an external link. For example, https://constantnoble.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&days=3&limit=10, which returns the last ten changes in the last three days.

You can create a redirect to a Special page, but the redirect will not be followed automatically.

For a list of special pages, see Special:SpecialPages.

Media

Main page: w:Help:Files

The Media: namespace can be used to link directly to a file, rather than to the file description page.

Aliases and pseudo-namespaces

See also: w:Wikipedia:Shortcut#List of prefixes

Aliases and pseudo-namespaces are not namespaces in themselves; their main role is to provide handy ways to link to actual namespaces, by providing shortened links.

The main difference between them being the way they work for this purpose; while aliases directly link to namespaces, pseudo-namespaces can only link to other namespaces by using specialist redirect pages in the main namespace called shortcuts. While aliases are also used for shortcuts, this isn't necessary if the pagename is not shortened.

Pseudo-namespaces all actually reside in main namespace; but a pseudo-namespace called Transwiki: exists as a pseudo-namespace before being moved to another namespace.

Aliases

The Constant Noble site offers 14 aliases defined for namespaces, all of which are case-insensitive:

Alias Namespace
Project Constant Noble
Project talk Constant Noble talk
Doc Documentation
Doc talk Documentation talk
Ref Reference
Ref Reference talk
Image File
Image talk File talk
FTA From the Author
FTA talk From the Author talk
FT Family tree
FT talk Family tree talk
Tree Family tree
Tree talk Family tree talk

These aliases are automatically translated by the Miraheze servers to the proper namespace prefix. So if a link is made to a page title beginning with one of these aliases, or else entered in the search box or used in a URL in a browser address bar, the alias links to the page with the corresponding true namespace prefix. Hence, entering Doc:Message is equivalent to entering Documentation:Message, and entering Ref:Raleigh (1907) is equivalent to entering Reference:Raleigh (1907).

Similarly, on Wikipedia, entering WP:External links or Project:External links is equivalent to entering Wikipedia:External links; and entering WT:External links or Project talk:External links is equivalent to entering Wikipedia talk:External links.

An alias cannot be used as the actual namespace in a page title. For example, you cannot create page WP:123; if tried, the page name is instantly converted to Wikipedia:123. It is, however, possible to change the displayed title on page Wikipedia:123 to make it WP:123 or Project:123.

This is very handy for the creation of shortcuts. For example, the shortcut for this section is WP:ALIAS, as shown in the right-side box. When the link is clicked, it automatically translated to Wikipedia:ALIAS. At this page is a redirect to Wikipedia:Namespace#Aliases. This means that the shortcut goes directly to this section from anywhere in Wikipedia. It can also be entered as a URL in the browser address bar as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ALIAS .

Pseudo-namespaces

Аpart from the regular namespaces, their aliases, and the two virtual ones, Wikipedia offers several title prefixes appearing in shortcut redirects pointing to frequently-referred-to pages. These prefixes are referred to as pseudo-namespaces and include the following:

A more complete list is available at w:Wikipedia:Shortcut#List of prefixes.

Pseudo-namespaces are not in any way recognised by the wiki software; they are purely a community custom. Titles in pseudo-namespaces actually belong technically in the main (article) namespace and are treated as such by the software: they are case-sensitive and appear in search results restricted to the main namespace. An alias is treated like a real namespace, resulting in a search for the pagename in its namespace, but the "pseudo-namespace:pagename" search is in mainspace, not its pseudo-namespace. For example, searching for "H:S" will not search Help.

To learn some of these shortcuts, first follow the pseudo-namespace link above, then follow one of the redirects listed on that page. It will take you to the target, where you then notice any {{shortcut}} boxes to the right of the page, which may also list some additional shortcuts to that same area. By observing these steps repeatedly, you can discover ways to shorten your typing. You will use pseudo-namespace names more often if you are an advanced editor, highly active in many namespaces, or constantly linking to pages that have a pseudo-namespace shorcut.

To understand the appropriateness of redirects of this type, see w:Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects. All shortcuts are discoverable by searching for redirects. There is also the category Wikipedia redirects.

As a final example, every Wikimedia Foundation project has a "Transwiki:" pseudo-namespace (sometimes a real namespace) for importing articles manually. A wiki project that would manually move many pages between sister projects uses this tag. Redirects/shortcuts are not directly involved here, as described above. Instead the page title is moved to "Transwiki:namespace:pagename", and that content is then copied and pasted into a new page name of that temporary title on the target wiki. When it is accepted the title is then moved out of the Transwiki pseudo-namespace there and becomes a real page name in its respective namespace.

Interwiki and interlanguage links

See also: w:Help:Interwiki linking

Interwiki and interlanguage prefixes do not define namespaces, but point to pages in other Wikimedia projects, outside the en.wikipedia.org website. They are mentioned here because they use a namespace-like prefix technique for linking. Examples of interwiki prefixes include w: for Wikipedia; m: (or meta:) for Meta-Wiki, mw: for MediaWiki, and wikt: for Wiktionary. Examples of interlanguage prefixes include en: for English language, fr: for French language, and de: for German language.

Important points to note:

  • In the presence of an interwiki prefix and the absence of an interlanguage prefix, the link will be to a specified project in the current language. So [[w:Internet]] links to "Internet" on the English Wikipedia, if the link is on any English-language Wikimedia project.
  • In the presence of a interlanguage prefix and the absence of an interwiki prefix, the link will be to a specified language in the current project. So [[:en:Internet]] will link to "Internet" on the English Wikipedia, if the link is on a Wikipedia project in any language.

When making links to other language Wikipedias, add an initial colon if you want the link to appear inline rather than in the skin's sidebar under "Languages"; see w:Help:Colon trick for an explanation. So [[:de:Internet]] is an inline link to "Internet" in the German Wikipedia; but if using an interwiki prefix this is unnecessary, for example [[w:de:Internet]] is the same inline link.

Further examples:

  • m:Meta:Babel and meta:Meta:Babel both link to the "Babel" page in the project namespace (Meta:, the 2nd prefix) of Meta-Wiki (m: or meta:, the 1st prefix).
  • wikt:fr:Discuter:pied/fusion daf links to the "pied/fusion daf" page in the talk namespace (Discuter:, the 3rd prefix) of French (fr:, the 2nd prefix) Wiktionary (wikt:, the 1st prefix).

Interwiki prefixes are not just for Wikimedia projects. For example, Dictionary: is the interwiki link for dict.org (the DICT Development Group). For a complete list of interwiki prefixes, see the interwiki map and interwiki table.

As with aliases, it is not possible to create a page with a title beginning with an interwiki or interlanguage prefix. It is also not possible to create redirects to interwiki pages, unless it is a soft redirect.

Case insensitivity

Standard namespace names, aliases and interwiki prefixes are case insensitive. The same applies to the first character after the colon. Hence the following all link to the same page:

API

The site's namespace and ID list can also be accessed through MediaWiki API.

See also

From Wikipedia
From Wikipedia

Part or all of this page uses material from Wikipedia:Namespace, originally located at Wikipedia. The list of original contributors can be found in its page history. Text on Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license; additional terms may apply.