Help:Namespaces

Namespaces are the types of pages that you can find on Wikipedia. These help separate the guidelines from the help documents, for example.

The most common namespace on Wikipedia is the main namespace. All pages that do not have any prefixes before their name will be part of this namespace.

Most of these pages are articles, but some of them are disambiguation pages or redirects.

Examples of pages in this namespace are the Main Page and Music.

The Talk Namespace is used for discussion about a page. A talk page is made for every page that is made.

They are always prefixed with Talk:.

Examples of pages in this namespace are Talk:Main Page and Talk:Music.

The User namespace contains pages for each user on Wikipedia. It is usually bad to change a user's page if that user isn't you. You can change your user page to say anything you want.

They are always prefixed with User:.

Examples of pages in this namespace are User:Jordanhatch and User:Archer7.

The User talk namespace contains talk pages for each user.

They are always prefixed with User talk:.

Examples of pages in this namespace are User talk:Jordanhatch and User talk:Archer7.

The Wikipedia namespace contains pages that are related to Wikipedia. These are often guidelines, project pages or community pages.

They are always prefixed with Wikipedia:.

Examples of pages in this namespace are the Wikipedia:Community Portal and Wikipedia:Vandalism.

The Wikipedia talk namespace contains pages for discussing pages in the Wikipedia namespace.

They are always prefixed with Wikipedia talk:

Examples of pages in this namespace are Wikipedia talk:Twinkle and Wikipedia talk:Bots.

The MediaWiki namespace contains interface texts, such as the links and messages that appear on automatically generated pages and JavaScript gadgets. Pages in this namespace are permanently full-protected and may only be edited by administrators. For a list of these messages, see Special:AllMessages.

The MediaWiki talk namespace contains pages for discussing pages in the MediaWiki namespace.

They are always prefixed with MediaWiki:

The Help namespace contains help pages for members of Wikipedia.

They are always prefixed with Help:. A list of all help pages can be found at Help:Contents.

Examples of pages in this namespace are Help:Minor change and Help:How to change pages.

The Help talk namespace contains pages for discussing pages in the Help namespace.

They are always prefixed with Help talk:

Examples of pages in this namespace are Help talk:Minor change and Help talk:How to change pages.

The Special namespace contains scripts of the encyclopedia.

They are always prefixed with Special:.

All special pages are non-changeable, and it is impossible to create a special page. The most common page in this namespace is Special:UserLogin.

The 18 namespaces in Wikipedia are numbered for programming purposes:

Namespace variable	Result (namespace name)	Namespace variable	Result (talk namespace name)
{{ns:-2}}	Media
{{ns:-1}}	Special
{{ns:0}}	(main namespace, returns empty string)	{{ns:1}}	Talk
{{ns:2}}	User	{{ns:3}}	User talk
{{ns:4}}	Wikipedia	{{ns:5}}	Wikipedia talk
{{ns:6}}	File	{{ns:7}}	File talk
{{ns:8}}	MediaWiki	{{ns:9}}	MediaWiki talk
{{ns:10}}	Template	{{ns:11}}	Template talk
{{ns:12}}	Help	{{ns:13}}	Help talk
{{ns:14}}	Category	{{ns:15}}	Category talk
{{ns:126}}	MOS	{{ns:127}}	MOS talk
{{ns:710}}	TimedText	{{ns:711}}	TimedText talk
{{ns:828}}	Module	{{ns:829}}	Module talk

• Help:How to change pages