As the site grows, the numbers of users and articles also grow. The necessity of organized content arises because:
MediaWiki can help us in this regard. MediaWiki has some built-in features that can make our task very easy and simple. These software features are very important components of MediaWiki since organizing in a collaborative community is not that easy. We will now focus on a few MediaWiki features that can be used for better content organization.
MediaWiki handles these major issues without any problem or complexity whatsoever. The concept and the application of organizing content in MediaWiki are easy to grasp and apply. MediaWiki has the following software features to strengthen its organizing ability.
We will now explore some of the features in detail with examples.
Namespaces are used to group together similar type of contents. Namespaces divide a wiki into different areas so that each functional area is clearly defined. Namespaces can segregate different types of content that may exist under the same title. Generally, namespaces should not be used to categorize content of the same type as we can use categories for that.
The namespaces that come with MediaWiki illustrate this “content type” distinction:
Namespaces allow separation of content for better management. One thing about a namespace is that it is not created by the users themselves. MediaWiki has some pre-defined namespaces and administration can add new namespaces if required. The namespaces that are added by the administrator are known as custom namespaces. It is always important to let users know about the custom namespaces available in the site.
Like the Image namespace, there are 17 other namespaces available in MediaWiki for special purposes. So when should one create a custom namespace? Essentially, if you have some type of content that you feel is substantially different from the content in the existing namespaces, you may want to consider creating a new namespace. For our Haunted site, we can have a movie namespace, so as to accommodate movie descriptions and trailers. Now let us focus on how we can use namespaces.
A page title in MediaWiki consists of two parts separated by a colon (:). The part before the colon is the (optional) namespace, and the part after the colon is the required page title. An example page title with a namespace is Help:Namespace, which will take us to the Namespace page under the Help namespace.
A page title without a colon belongs to the Main namespace. There are as many as 18 namespaces in MediaWiki, among which two are used as pseudo namespace, and 16 separate namespaces are defined by MediaWiki. Although there are 16 defined namespaces in MediaWiki, eight of them are talk pages of remaining eight namespaces.
A talk page is a special type of page used for discussions. On a talk page, users can communicate as in a forum. They can write their views or share their ideas on certain topics. Every page and namespace has an associated talk page (except for the Special namespace).
Here is a list of 18 namespaces in MediaWiki and a summary of their functionalities:
Namespace | Functionality |
Media | This is the first pseudo namespace in MediaWiki. It is used for uploaded files. |
Special | This is the second and last pseudo namespace in MediaWiki. It is used for listing all special pages. |
Main | This is the core namespace that holds all the pages without specifying any namespace in front of the title. Pages under this namespace are also known as normal pages. The content we have added so far to our Haunted site is inside the Main namespace. |
Talk | The Talk namespace holds talk pages for the Main namespace. Talk pages are used for discussion. The Talk namespace is used for all the discussion pages under the Main namespace. |
User | This namespace is used for every registered user in MediaWiki. Every registered user has a homepage, and all homepages are stored under the User namespace and can be accessed by a User:username link. Users can use this page as their profile page. |
User_talk | User talk pages are used for discussions on user pages. |
Project | This namespace provides information about the current project or wiki, such as guidelines, ideas, future plans, etc. |
Project_talk | This talk page is used for the Project namespace. |
Image | Used for images and other uploaded file information. Description of the file such as file size, version, etc., can be found here. |
Image_talk | This is the talk page for the Image namespace. |
MediaWiki | This namespace is used for system messages defined for the current wiki or project. These messages are either editable by a registered user, or sysops can turn off editing for security reasons. |
MediaWiki_talk | This is the talk page for the MediaWiki namespace. |
Template | This is used as the default namespace for templates, another feature that is used for integrating a page into another page. We will learn about templates later in this chapter. |
Template_talk | This is the talk page for the Template namespace. |
Help
| This is typically used for building help content for wiki users. All the help-related information is stored here. |
Help_talk
| This is the talk page for the Help namespace. |
Category
| Pages can be put into categories. The Category namespace shows a list of categories inside the wiki, and upon clicking a category, a list of pages under the category along with additional text is also shown. |
Category_talk
| This is the talk page for the Category namespace. |
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