Help:Namespaces
Namespaces are the types of pages that you can find on Wikipedia. These help separate the guidelines from the help documents, for example.
Namespaces
Main namespace
The most common namespace on Wikipedia is the main namespace. All articles that do not have any prefixes before their name will be part of this namespace.
Examples of pages in this namespace are the Main Page and Music.
Talk namespace
The Talk Namespace is used for discussion about an article. A talk page is made for every article that is made.
They are always prefixed with Talk:.
Examples of pages in this namespace are Talk:Main Page and Talk:Music.
Wikipedia namespace
The Wikipedia namespace contains articles that are related to Wikipedia. These are often guidelines, project pages or community pages.
They are always prefixed with Wikipedia:.
Examples of pages in this namespace are the Wikipedia:Community Portal and Wikipedia:Vandalism.
User namespace
The User namespace contains pages for each user on Wikipedia. It is usually bad to change a user's page if that user isn't you. You can change your user page to say anything you want.
They are always prefixed with User:.
Examples of pages in this namespace are User:Jordanhatch and User:Archer7.
User talk namespace
The User talk namespace contains talk pages for each user.
They are always prefixed with User talk:.
Examples of pages in this namespace are User talk:Jordanhatch and User talk:Archer7.
Help namespace
The Help namespace contains help articles for members of Wikipedia.
They are always prefixed with Help:. A list of all help pages can be found at Help:Contents.
Examples of pages in this namespace are Help:Small change and Help:How to change pages.
Special namespace
The Special namespace contains scripts and non-changeable pages of the encyclopedia.
They are always prefixed with Special:.
The most common page in this namespace is Special:Userlogin.
MediaWiki namespace
The MediaWiki namespace contains interface texts, such as the links and messages that appear on automatically generated pages and JavaScript gadgets. Pages in this namespace are permanently full-protected and may only be edited by administrators. For a list of these messages, see Special:AllMessages.
Programming
The 18 namespaces in Wikipedia are numbered for programming purposes:
| Namespace variable | Result (namespace name) | Namespace variable | Result (namespace name) |
|---|---|---|---|
| {{ns:-2}} | Media | {{ns:-1}} | Special |
| {{ns:0}} | (main namespace, returns empty string) | {{ns:1}} | Talk |
| {{ns:2}} | User | {{ns:3}} | User talk |
| {{ns:4}} | KidzSearch Encyclopedia | {{ns:5}} | KidzSearch Encyclopedia talk |
| {{ns:6}} | File | {{ns:7}} | File talk |
| {{ns:8}} | MediaWiki | {{ns:9}} | MediaWiki talk |
| {{ns:10}} | Template | {{ns:11}} | Template talk |
| {{ns:12}} | Help | {{ns:13}} | Help talk |
| {{ns:14}} | Category | {{ns:15}} | Category talk |