Difference between revisions of "Unreal Wiki:Namespaces"

Revision as of 23:01, 1 March 2008

Like all wikis using the MediaWiki software, the Unreal Wiki has eighteen built-in namespaces: The main namespace, where pages have no prefix and seventeen auxiliary namespaces, each with its own prefix. In addition, there are eight custom namespaces, also with own prefixes.

Basic namespaces

Main

The main article namespace containing all articles that are either not specific to a certain generation of the Unreal Engine or contain general descriptions about an Unreal Engine game. For example general map layout suggestions or a general description about the UnrealScript language would go in this namespace.

UE1, UE2 and UE3

Additional article namespaces containing articles with specific information about the corresponding generation of the Unreal Engine. These namespaces are mostly populated with game-specific tutorials and pages describing UnrealEd features or UnrealScript class descriptions.

Unreal Wiki (Project)

The project namespace (prefix "Unreal Wiki:" or "Project:") is a namespace that provides information about the Unreal Wiki itself and how to use it. For example this page explains the Unreal Wiki's policy on the use of namespaces.

Legacy

The legacy namespace contains all pages imported from the old UseModWiki-powered Unreal Wiki. The entire namespace is protected and falls under the old wiki's copyright statement.

Important: The old copyright statement is not compatible to the Creative commons Attribution-Share Alike license the new Unreal Wiki uses. Please do not copy pages from the legacy namespace to any of the other namespaces. Instead, use this opportunity to clean up the big mess the old wiki became by rewriting their content in your own words, taking advantage of all the shiny new features the MediaWiki software offers. You may copy content from this namespace if you are the original author, but please note that fact in the summary of your edit.

User

Main article: Help:User page; also see Special:Listusers

The user namespace is a namespace that provides pages for the Unreal Wiki users' personal pages. If you see a user's name as a link, this link actually goes to [[User:user name]], not to the main namespace.

Image

Main articles: Project:Uploading images and Help:Images; also see Special:Imagelist

The image namespace provides pages with information about image and sound files uploaded to Unreal Wiki. Images can be linked in three basic ways:

• [[Image:example.jpg]] inserts the image into the current page (not for sound clips)
• [[Media:example.jpg]] inserts a direct text link to the image or sound clip
• [[:Image:example.jpg]] inserts a text link to the description page of the image or sound clip

MediaWiki

also see Special:Allmessages

The MediaWiki namespace contains interface text, such as link labels and messages. This namespace is protected by default, so only administrators can edit pages there.

Template

Main article: Help:Templates

The template namespace is used to define standard texts that can conveniently be inserted into other pages.

Category

Main articles: Project:Categories and Help:Categories

The category namespace contains categories of pages. Each category page displays a list categories, pages and media contained in the category and can optionally include text describing the category.

Help

also see Help:Contents

The help namespace contains pages for users documenting technical features of the MediaWiki software the Unreal Wiki uses.

Talk namespaces

Each of the namespaces mentioned above also has a corresponding talk namespace. The prefix of each talk namespaces is derived from the prefix of their corresponding normal namespace by appending "talk" to it. The talk namespace of the main namespace is just "Talk:", the prefix of the talk namespace for e.g. user pages is "User talk:".

Most of the pages in talk namespaces are used to discuss changes to the corresponding page in the associated normal namespace. PAges in the user talk namespace are often used to leave messages for the corresponding 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 of every page 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.

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, like [[Special:Recentchanges]], except when they have parameters; then, the full URL must be given. You can use the {{fullurl:}} parser function to easily build a valid URL for special pages with parameters, e.g. [{{fullurl:Special:Recentchanges|limit=5}} last five changes] will result in last five changes, which links to recent changes and display the latest five changes on Unreal Wiki. See Meta-Wiki help on URL parser functions for more details.

The "Media:" namespace is used to create direct text links to media files, as described under the Image section above.

Interwiki linking

Main article: Help:Interwiki linking

Inter-wiki prefixes don't define a namespace, but instead link to external websites, usually other wikis. Unless you add a namespace prefix after the interwiki prefix, links to other wikis always point to their main namespace.