Bogleheads:Namespace

A namespace is a set of wiki pages whose names begin with a particular prefix recognized by the MediaWiki software (followed by a colon), or in the case of the main namespace have no such prefix. For example, the user namespace consists of all pages with names beginning "User:". Knowledge base articles appear in the main namespace, with no prefix.

The Bogleheads wiki has 18 current namespaces: nine basic namespaces, each with a corresponding talk namespace.

Basic namespaces
The basic namespaces and their functions are listed below.


 * Main namespace (no prefix): contains all knowledge base articles, lists, and redirects. Sometimes referred to as "mainspace".
 * User namespace (prefix    ): 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.
 * Project namespace or Bogleheads namespace (prefix    ): contains many types of pages connected with the Bogleheads project itself: information, policy, processes, discussion, etc.
 * File namespace or Image namespace (prefix File:): contains file description pages for image, videos or audio files, with links to the files themselves. See Special:Filelist.
 * The prefix Image: can be used instead of File: (see Aliases below).


 * MediaWiki namespace (prefix MediaWiki:): a namespace containing interface texts, such as the links and messages that appear on automatically generated pages. Pages in this namespace are permanently protected. For a list of these messages, see Special:AllMessages.
 * Template namespace (prefix    ): 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.
 * Category namespace (prefix    ): contains category pages, which display a list of pages and subcategories that have been added to a particular category, and optional additional text.
 * Help namespace (prefix    ): contains pages which provide help in using Bogleheads and its software, both for users of the knowledge base and for editors.

The basic namespaces are sometimes referred to as "subject spaces", especially in contrast to "talk spaces". For instance: "File space is the subject space of the File talk space."

Talk namespaces
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 adding talk: to the normal prefix. For example, the talk namespace associated with the main article namespace has the prefix Talk:, while the talk namespace associated with the user namespace has the prefix User 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 (if logged-in) will see a box saying "You have new messages" on the top every page that they view until they visit their talk page.

Virtual namespaces
There are two virtual namespaces that do not relate to pages stored in the database:

Special
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 Special:RecentChanges, except when they have parameters, when the full URL must be given like an external link. For example, /index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&days=3&limit=10, which returns the last ten changes.

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
The Media: namespace can be used to link directly to a file, rather than to the file description page. It does not work on redirects: the link must be to the file's true name. See information above on the namespace.

Aliases
There are a number of aliases defined for namespaces, all of which are case-insensitive:

If a link is made to a page title beginning with one of these strings, or if such a title is entered in the search box or used in a URL, the alias is automatically replaced by the true namespace prefix. Hence entering Project:Copyrights is equivalent to entering Bogleheads:Copyrights.