NameSpacesForPages

Additional hierarchy for the pages.

Rather than all pages being in one namespace, have a hierarchy of namespaces, addressible similar to InterWiki InterLinks.

supported in:

• PWiki2

see also:

• Wiki:LimitsOfHierarchies
• Wiki:CategoriesDiscussion
• Wiki:PleasePleaseDontCategorizeEveryPageOnWiki
• WikiFarm – several wiki in one installation

Contributors: DavidCary, LionKimbro, EvanProdromou

need to fit into FeatureTemplate

5 min improvement ( LionKimbro ) – needs more work

I wanted to note that namespaces are implemented in MediaWiki (what Wikitravel and Wikipedia use) for some very specific reasons. MediaWiki is particularly focused on MeatBall:ContentOverCommunity, and thus putting pages into different namespace silos keeps the “real” content that’s being generated separate from the meta-discussions about that content. MediaWiki has some basic namespaces built in:

• No namespace is used for the “real” content – Wikipedia’s encyclopedia or Wikitravel’s travel guide
• The “Talk:” namespace is for discussing individual articles. There’s a very rigid distinction between ThreadMode and DocumentMode on MediaWiki wikis – “Talk:Foo” is where thread-mode discussion about article “Foo” is kept.
• The “NameOfSite:” namespace is for meta-discussions about the wiki – starting points, policies and guidelines, manual of style, that kind of thing. Wikipedia has “Wikipedia:”, Wikitravel has “Wikitravel:”.
• There’s a “NameOfSite talk:” namespace, too, with paired thread-mode articles about the meta-discussions.
• The “User:” namespace separates out user front porches.
• The “User talk:” namespace is for individual messages specifically for the user. There’s a feature in MediaWiki that gives a visual indicator if there’s new messages on your User talk: page since the last time you viewed it. It’s like a primitive mailbox.
• The “Image:” namespace is for giving details (creator, copyright, etc.) on individual images. One such page per uploaded image.
• There’s an “Image talk:” namespace, too, but it’s not really used that often.

I think maybe a diagram would work here better…

[No namespace]   [Name of site:]   [User:]       [Image:]
      |                 |             |             |
  [Talk:]   [Name of site talk:] [User talk:]  [Image talk:]

Some Wikimedia projects use namespaces more like is discussed here. For example, Wikibooks has namespaces for different kinds of books. --EvanProdromou

Oh wow, this is interesting. I hadn’t heard of this!

That’s awesome.

Okay- so, we should make the NameSpacesForPages page follow the FeatureTemplate, and list in the “possibilities” section, this method of using namespaces for pages to organize these different types of talk.

Do give the case study of Wikimedia, if you are the one writing it up.

– LionKimbro 2004-01-21

PhpWiki2 and PmWiki both support Name Spaces.

– LionKimbro 2004-04-05

Some thoughts/challenges/questions: (--BillSeitz)

• in some cases would a separate wiki/space fill the same need as a NameSpace?
• in some cases would just having a standard beginning to a certain class of wiki name make sense? (e.g. “Category*”, or in MediaWiki “User*”)

What would be a single page on, say, the original Wiki:WikiWikiWeb – CommunityWiki:DocumentMode up top, a horizontal seperator, CommunityWiki:ThreadMode down below – has split into the Article and the Talk page on Mediawiki.

See also Wiki:WikiFarm, WorldWideWiki:WikiHive