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Help:Namespaces
From Open Lives
Pages on Open Lives wiki are grouped into collections called "namespaces", which differentiate the purpose of the pages at a high level. Pages in certain namespaces can also have special properties or behaviors in their interactions with other pages.
Namespaces are indicated in page titles by prefixing the page name with "namespace:", so the prefix "Help:" in this page's title ("Help:Namespaces") indicates that this page is in the Help namespace. Note, however, that colons and prefixes can also appear in page titles without indicating a namespace: The page Foo:Namespaces is (or would become, if created) a page located in the "main" namespace because the namespace "Foo" does not exist. Similarly the page Help:Foo:Namespaces is or would be created in the "Help" namespace.
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Standard namespaces
The standard SMN Wikiware installation has 18 namespaces which can contain user-generated content; there are also two special namespaces which contain pages created 'on the fly' by the wiki software. Most namespaces are organized in pairs, with each pair containing a 'subject namespace' and a 'discussion/meta namespace'. A feature of SMN Wikiware is that the main namespaces had 3 others associated with it rather than just one. The purpose of this feature is to provide and in-house forum, specifically on the content of the wiki.
Media
This namespace is an alias used for direct linking to media files: the link Media:Wiki.png links to just the image rather than the image description page, which would be File:Wiki.png.
Special
This namespace is used to group special pages, reports and interfaces that are generated 'on demand' by the wiki and which are not directly editable. It is not possible to create pages in this namespace except by modifying or extending the wiki software.
Template:Ns:0(Main)
This is the 'null' namespace, not requiring any namespaces prefix at all and commonly called the "main namespace" or "mainspace". This namespace contains the bulk of the content pages of Open Lives. Associated to this namespace in one-to-one correspondence is its threaded Discussion namespace
Meta
This namespace contains pages with the exact same titles as those in the main namespace, with each page containing meta comment threads about the content of its corresponding main page.
User
Each user has a corresponding page in the User namespace, which is linked to from edit histories, watchlists, recent changes, etc; wherever an individual user is uniquely identified. This page, and subpages of it, can be used by users to record information about themselves or to test and draft new content. Pages of the form "User:UserName/Foo.js" or "User:UserName/Foo.css" can only be edited by the user themselves or by administrators.
User meta
This namespace is the talkspace associated with the User namespace. Pages in this namespace are mainly used to leave messages for particular users or inform them of discussions that may be of interest to them. To facilitate this, when a page User meta:UserName is edited, whenever the user 'UserName' loads a page, a notice is displayed at the top of the page informing them of the edit:
This notice continues to appear until the user loads their user talk page to read the message.
OpenLives
This namespace contains pages detailing the purposes, operations and developments of the Open Lives wiki.
OpenLives discuss
This namespace contains pages with the exact same titles as those in the OpenLives namespace, with each page containing both discussion and meta comment threads about the content of its corresponding OpenLives page.
File
The File namespace is used to store metadata for images, videos, sound files and other media accessed via the Media namespace. Each file has a corresponding page in the File namespace which is often used to hold licensing data. Linking directly to a page in this namespace instead includes the media file inline in the page:
[[ File
:Wiki.png|right]] produces the image to the right. See Help:Images for more details of this link syntax. To create an internal link to the file page, you need to add a colon to the front of the namespace:
[[: File
:Wiki.png|right]] produces File:Wiki.png. The standard MediaWiki installation has alias "Image" for File namespace - See Namespace aliases.
File discussion
This namespace contains pages with the exact same titles as those in the File namespace, with each page containing both discussion and meta comment threads about the content of its corresponding File page.
MediaWiki
The MediaWiki namespace is used to hold system messages and other important content. For instance, the page MediaWiki:Edit contains the text that fills the "edit" tab at the top of every page. If that page exists, it overrides the default content, which is "edit this page". Similarly, MediaWiki:Common.css is the system message which holds the CSS code that is loaded for all users for each page. It has the special property that the entire namespace is fully protected and can only be edited by administrators.
MediaWiki meta
This namespace contains pages with the exact same titles as those in the MediaWiki namespace, with each page containing both discussion and meta comment threads about the content of its corresponding MediaWiki page.
Template
The Template namespace is used to hold templates, blocks of text or wikicode that are intended to be transcluded in several other pages. To facilitate this it has the special property that it is the default namespace for transclusions: the wikicode
{{Foo}} is equivalent to
{{ Template:
Foo}} .
Template meta
This namespace contains pages with the exact same titles as those in the Template namespace, with each page containing both discussion and meta comment threads about the content of its corresponding Template page.
Help
The Help namespace is usually used to hold help files, instructions and 'how-to' guides.
Help meta
This namespace contains pages with the exact same titles as those in the Help namespace, with each page containing both discussion and meta comment threads about the content of its corresponding Help page.
Category
The Category namespace contains categories, dynamic lists of other pages. To facilitate this, linking directly to a category page does not output an inline link, but instead includes the page into the associated category page. So the code
[[ Category
:Help]] causes a category link to appear at the bottom of the page (at the bottom in the box marked "Categories"). Clicking on that link takes you to the category page, where this page is visible in the category list. To create an inline link to a category page, you need to add a colon to the front of the namespace:
[[: Category
:Help]] produces Category:Help. See Help:Categories for more details on category link syntax.
Category meta
This namespace contains pages with the exact same titles as those in the Category namespace, with each page containing both discussion and meta comment threads about the content of its corresponding Category page.
Discussion
This is the discussion namespace, which contains a page (and possibly subpages) of threaded discussions related to each main page with the same title. If the number of threads require subpages the subpage names with be "title-n", with n starting at one and going as high as necessary.
Discussion meta
This namespace contains pages with the exact same titles as those in the Discussion namespace, with each page containing meta comment threads about the content of its corresponding Discussion page.
Namespace aliases
On some wikis there are also namespace aliases: alternative names that will also be resolved to the localised names. For instance, a wiki might define "T" as an alias for Template, such that typing T:Foo is equivalent to Template:Foo, saving a few characters and seconds. By default, "Image" is an alias for File, so
[[Image:Wiki.png]] is equivalent to
[[ File
:Wiki.png]] .
Custom namespaces
- See Template:Mediawiki for more information.
Some wikis may wish to organise their content in ways that do not fit into this standard set of namespaces. A wiki may define additional namespaces to facilitate this; these namespaces behave exactly like normal namespaces, and generally have indices greater than or equal to 100. These custom namespaces generally have no special properties.
Identifying namespaces
There are a number of ways by which the namespace of a particular page can be identified:
- Magic words
The magic word {{NAMESPACE}} returns the value of the namespace the page is in.
- Javascript
The javascript variable wgCanonicalNamespace contains the full namespace name. The variable wgNamespaceNumber contains the numerical index of the namespace.
- CSS
The <body> tag of the HTML page output is given two CSS classes that vary by namespace: A class ns-#, where # is the index of the namespace, and ns-XXX, where XXX is "subject" for all content namespaces, "special" for pages in the Special namespace, and "talk" for talk namespaces. So CSS code such as the following can be used to change the appearance of an object based on its namespace: <source lang=css> .ns-subject a { /* All links on content pages to be green. */
color: #00FF00;
} .ns-talk a { /* Links on talk pages to be blue. */
color: #0000FF;
} .ns-3 a { /* and links on user talk pages to be red */
color: #FF0000;
} </source>
- API
You can get a complete list of all the namespaces used on this wiki from the API:
