Help:Project namespace
 | This guideline in a nutshell: Project pages are for information or discussion about Wikipedia. They should be used to allow Wikipedians to better participate in the community, and not used to excess for unrelated purposes nor to bring the project into disrepute. |
| Namespaces | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Subject namespaces | Talk namespaces | ||
| 0 | (Main/Article) | Talk | 1 |
| 2 | User | User talk | 3 |
| 4 | AARoads | AARoads talk | 5 |
| 6 | File | File talk | 7 |
| 8 | MediaWiki | MediaWiki talk | 9 |
| 10 | Template | Template talk | 11 |
| 12 | Help | Help talk | 13 |
| 14 | Category | Category talk | 15 |
| 100 | Annex | Annex talk | 101 |
| 828 | Module | Module talk | 829 |
| Deprecated | |||
| 2300 | Gadget | Gadget talk | 2301 |
| 2302 | Gadget definition | Gadget definition talk | 2303 |
| Virtual namespaces | |||
| -1 | Special | ||
| -2 | Media | ||
| Current list (API call) | |||
The project namespace or Wikipedia namespace is a namespace consisting of administration pages with information or discussion about [Wikipedia. Pages in this namespace will always have the prefix Wikipedia:. They can also be reached by alias AA: or the standard (for any MediaWiki site) prefix Project:. Its namespace number is four (4).
Terminology
- Project pages or Wikipedia pages are pages in the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces. WikiProject pages, which are included in the Wikipedia namespace, are usually referred to as WikiProject pages to distinguish them from project pages as a whole.
- Meta – Some people refer to pages in the project namespace as meta pages. However, this can be confusing, because Meta is actually the name of the site dedicated to all Wikimedia projects at meta.wikimedia.org.
Content
Pages within the "Project namespace" themselves are not part of the encyclopedia proper. These administrative pages are intended for use by editors or by automated tools for the organization and governance of the encyclopedia. Consequently, they do not generally need to conform to the same content protocols or style conventions as articles. Nevertheless, these pages, as with all pages, should be accessible and must comply with Wikipedia's conduct and legal policies.
The project namespace is not a free web host and should not be used as a long-term archive to host pages that look like articles. Articles in the project namespace under construction may be moved to the userspace allowing time for their development and feedback before being moved to Wikipedia's mainspace. Editors may not violate copyrights or harass anywhere on Wikipedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, these types of pages are subject to expeditious deletion. See below for more information.
Pages within project namespace
The project namespace pages are organized according to their function within the overall project schema. This includes Wikipedia official policies and guidelines, process pages, discussion pages, optional essays, maintenance pages, informative pages, and historical pages.
Policies and guidelines pages
Policies and guidelines pages describe Wikipedia's best practice and clarify principles that are widely accepted by the community and have been through the Wikipedia review process. These pages are marked with the {{policy}}, {{guideline}} or {{MoS guideline}} template.
Process pages
Process pages help facilitate application of the policies and guidelines governing all Wikipedia pages.
Information and discussions
Many pages in the Wikipedia namespace have nothing to do with rules or implementation of those rules, and thus do not belong in the above categories.
Discussion and noticeboard pages
Some pages are designed for discussions, others serve as noticeboards to draw attention to discussions taking place elsewhere, such as the centralized discussions page and various requests for comments pages. While many of these pages operate like talk pages, some of them have posting rules (at the top of the page) which may be administratively enforced, and they also have their own talk pages, usually about the management of the noticeboard or other process in question. To ask a question or make a request, see the request directory. For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the dashboard.
Maintenance pages
Maintenance pages are used to help facilitate the organization and clean-up of articles to bring them up to encyclopedic standards. These editor- and bot-generated pages typically contain articles and other pages requiring maintenance or attention.
How-to and information pages
Informative and instructional pages are typically edited by the community; while not policies or guidelines themselves, they are intended to supplement or clarify Wikipedia guidelines, policies, or other Wikipedia processes and practices that are communal norms. Where essay pages offer advice or opinions through viewpoints, information pages should supplement or clarify technical or factual information about Wikipedia impartially. In comparison to policies and guidelines, information pages, like essay pages, have a limited status, and can reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting. These pages are typically marked with the {{Information page}}, {{Wikipedia how-to}}, or {{Supplement}}[a] template.
There is a large amount of overlap between the Help namespace (which provides mainly technical information) and the Wikipedia namespace (which provides mainly procedural information and interpretation). For this reason, redirects and hatnotes are often set up between these two namespaces. See Help:About help pages for more information. For a listing of how-to and information pages, see the help directory.
- Category:Wikipedia information pages
- Category:Wikipedia how-to
- Category:Wikipedia supplemental pages
Essay pages
Essays about Wikipedia may be written by anyone; some represent widespread norms, others only represent minority viewpoints. Essays can be long monologues or short theses, serious or funny, informative or opinionated. Essays, like information pages, have no official status, and do not speak for the Wikipedia community as they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Essays are typically marked with one of the various {{essay}} templates.
WikiProject pages
Pages of a WikiProject are the central place for editor collaboration and organization on a particular topic area. Many WikiProjects compose "advice essays" about how to apply Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to their specific subject area. Pages with Wikipedia:WikiProject prefix form a WikiProject pseudo-namespace. These pages are typically marked with the {{WikiProject status}} or {{WikiProject advice}} template.
Historical pages
A historical page or process is one which is no longer in use, or is no longer relevant or consensus has changed about its content. They are kept as records of past Wikipedia processes to give context to historical discussions and to inform future discussions on similar topics. These pages are typically marked with the {{historical}}, {{superseded}} or {{dormant}} templates.
Creating new project pages
Essays and information pages may be established by writing them and adding {{Essay}}, {{Information page}}, {{Wikipedia how-to}}, or similar templates to the page. Essays and information pages in the "Wikipedia namespace" should not be used to create an alternative rule set. Creation of new guideline and policy pages require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community before publication.
Deletion of project pages
If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page. Disputes over page content are usually not dealt with by deleting the page, except in severe cases. The content issues should be discussed at the relevant talk page, and other methods of dispute resolution should be used first, such as listing on "requests for comments" for further input. If a project page clearly satisfies a "general" speedy deletion criterion, it should be tagged with the appropriate template.
The usual deletion process is to post a request at miscellany for deletion to have project pages deleted. Make sure that a notice of the request is posted to the talk page of the affected project. If the project is under a parent WikiProject, a notice should be posted there as well.
Essays, information pages, and other informal pages that are only supported by a small minority of the community may be moved to the primary author's userspace over deletion. The Wikipedia community has historically tolerated a wide range of Wikipedia related subjects and viewpoints on user pages.
It is generally preferable that inactive WikiProjects not be deleted, but instead be marked as {{WikiProject status|inactive}}, or redirected to a relevant WikiProject, or changed to a task force of a parent WikiProject, unless the WikiProject was incompletely created or is entirely undesirable.
Policies, guidelines and process pages
Policies, guidelines and process pages should not be nominated for deletion, as such nominations will probably be considered disruptive, and the ensuing discussions closed early. The {{Disputed tag}} template is typically used for claims that an essay, WikiProject advice or information page was recently assigned guideline or policy status without proper or sufficient consensus being established.
Copyright violations
If the entire project page is a copyright violation, nominate it speedy deletion with {{db-copyvio|url=link to the source text}}. For issues only affecting specific revisions on a page (where other page versions are fine), revision delete is usually more appropriate. To request revision-deletion for copyright violations, see {{Copyvio-revdel}} for details.
Project namespace search
By default, Wikipedia's search engine looks in the Article namespace. To search in the Wikipedia namespace, you would type the project page prefix Wikipedia: (Wikipedia followed by a colon) or AA: (WP followed by a colon), followed by some text identifying or relating to the search target. You can also use the Special:Search box below to locate Wikipedia/Project namespace pages. See Help:Searching for more information.
Notes
- ^ The {{Supplement}} template used for "explanatory essays" is intended as a separate "supplement" banner used for pages derived from policy improvement conversations. The template does not indicate a "higher status" within the community for an essay, but is used to denote that the essay in question has wide acceptance to be linked from said policy or guideline page. See Template:Supplement for more information.