Help:Namespace

Namespaces are rather like folders on your computer. They are discrete locations into which certain types of pages are created. For instance the File: namespace is the "folder" where we put pictures. The Talk: namespace is the place where we put discussions about how to edit articles. And the Help: namespace is where we put help files like this one.

Different namespaces, different rules
Just as on your computer, different kinds of folders can have different rules associated with them. Likewise, we can and have established certain rules about various namespaces. Our video policy governs what can be placed in the Video: namespace. Our spoiler policy specifies that only the Howling: namespace can have unrestricted spoilers about upcoming stories, and gives restrictions on the presence of spoilers in other namespaces. Our discussion policy applies to any namespace with the word talk in its name, but also to Forum: and Howling: namespaces as well.

By far, most guidelines focus on what's called "main space" or just "main". This is the biggest part of the wiki, and it contains what most people think of as "regular" pages. That is, none of the pages here have namespace prefixes. These are pages like Doctor Who, TARDIS and the like. Probably the most important set of guidelines governing this space is the Manual of Style.

It's important to understand the namespace to which a rule applies. To take a ubiquitous example, British spellings are required by the Manual of Style. But the MOS is only really enforced in main, or those things which can be seen on main, like category names. Thus, American spellings are routinely challenged and corrected in main, but almost universally ignored elsewhere. You'll find the American spelling of "licensing" in the File: namespace, for instance, and you might very well catch some Americanisms in help files like this, forum discussions, user pages, and video pages. But the rule doesn't apply here so it's not "wrong".

Powerful tool
Namespaces are a powerful beneath-the-surface way to organize the wiki. Because you can get the wiki code to recognize the namespace of a particular page, you can start to define actions that only happen in certain namespaces. One prevalent example of this is the message that appears when you create a new page. You may have noticed that this message changes, depending on the kind of article that's being created. This system fully leverages namespaces. You can examine the code at MediaWiki:newarticletext. If you're scared of coding, you may find that this very simple bit of coding actually reads in a way that's completely understandable. You may find that the code explains namespaces to you better than this entire help file.

List of namespaces
The following is a list of all namspaces present on this wiki. You'll note that each namespace is numbered. In most cases, most editors never need to know this number. However, there are some instances in advanced coding where it is more convenient to work with the number, such as when you want something to apply to all namespaces with a value under 10, or a number over 300. Ranges are more easily done with numbers than text.

You'll note that we only have one truly unique namespace, and that's for the Howling (112). The rest of these namespaces are standard across all Wikia wikis, so you can use this chart safely elsewhere on the wikia network. Because wikia haven't done a lot of fiddling to the MediaWiki defaults, most of these namespaces work well beyond wikia. Wikipedia, for instance, have very similar namespace numbering schemes.

We do have some namespaces that are not a part of the standard wikia installation, but they are nevertheless "standard" to the optional installation of the Semantic MediaWiki extension. You won't find namespaces in the 300s on every wikia wiki, but when you do, you know that means that Semantic MediaWiki has been installed. As of May 2011, we haven't quite rolled out our use of this extension, but when we do, you'll be seeing a lot more of these namespaces.