 | This is aninformation page. It is not anencyclopedic article,nor one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines;rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels ofconsensusandvetting. |
| Namespaces | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Subject namespaces | Talk namespaces | ||
| 0 | (Main/Article) | Talk | 1 |
| 2 | User | User talk | 3 |
| 4 | Wikipedia | Wikipedia 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 | Portal | Portal talk | 101 |
| 118 | Draft | Draft talk | 119 |
| 126 | MOS | MOS talk | 127 |
| 710 | TimedText | TimedText talk | 711 |
| 828 | Module | Module talk | 829 |
| Former namespaces | |||
| 108 | Book | Book talk | 109 |
| 442 | Course | Course talk | 443 |
| 444 | Institution | Institution talk | 445 |
| 446 | Education Program | Education Program talk | 447 |
| 2300 | Gadget | Gadget talk | 2301 |
| 2302 | Gadget definition | Gadget definition talk | 2303 |
| 2600 | Topic | 2601 | |
| Virtual namespaces | |||
| -1 | Special | ||
| -2 | Media | ||
| Current list | |||
AWikipedia articleorentryis a page on this site that hasencyclopedicinformation on it. Awell-writtenencyclopedia article:
- identifies anotabletopic,
- summarizesthat topic comprehensively,
- is written in anencyclopedic style of language,
- has been wellcopyedited,
- containsreferencestoreliable sources,and
- containswikilinksto andis linked toby other articles orarticle sectionsaboutrelated topics.
Most articles consist of paragraphs and images (perhaps with other types of audiovisual media). However, articles may also be formatted asstand-alone listsor tables (not to be confused withdisambiguation pages,which are purely navigation aids). These lists or tables are also considered articles for Wikipedia's purposes and are included in theMain/Article namespace,the one without a title prefix followed by a colon (:).
The following items arenotcounted as articles (see alsoWikipedia:Administration § Data structure and development):
- disambiguation pages,
- redirect pages,
- templates,includingnavboxes (aka navigation boxes),
- user pages,
- drafts,
- portals,
- talk pages (aka discussion pages),
- file pagesfor media such as images,
- category pages,
- help pages,and
- Wikipedia policies and guidelines pages(along with everything else in the
Wikipedia:namespace).
Article titles
SeeWikipedia:Article titlesto learn how we title articles.
Article scope
Each article has a scope, which is what the article covers. The article should contain a readable summary of everything within the scope, given due weight, based on whatreliable sourcessay.
Quality of articles
Articles range greatly in quality, from as high asfeatured articlesto as low ascandidates for speedy deletion.Some articles are quite lengthy and rich incontentwhile others are shorter (possiblystubs) or of lesser quality.
Namespace
"Articles" belong to themain namespaceof Wikipedia pages (also called "article namespace"or simply"mainspace").
Themain namespace,article namespace,ormainspaceis thenamespaceof Wikipedia that contains the encyclopedia proper –that is, where "live" Wikipedia articles reside, as opposed tosandboxpages.
The main namespace is the default namespace and does not use a prefix in article page names. This is distinct from other namespaces, where page names are always prefixed by an indicator of the particular namespace in which the page resides. For example, alluser pagesare prefixed by"User:",theirtalk pagesby"User talk:",templatesby"Template:",and various types of internal administrative pages by"Wikipedia:"(such as this page). Thus, any page createdwithoutsuch a prefix will automatically be placed in the article namespace.
The main namespace does not include any pages in any of the specifiednamespacesthat are used for particular purposes, such as:
- thetalknamespaces for discussing what the content of articles in mainspace should be (for example,Talk:Mathematics)
- theWikipedianamespace, for material about meta subjects related to Wikipedia and is wherepolicies and guidelines,essays,information,and process pages reside, as well as other "meta" topics about editing Wikipedia (examples,WP:VERIFYandWikipedia:Statistics);
- theWikipedia talknamespace, for discussing what the content of pages in Wikipedia space should be, and interpretations of them (for example,Wikipedia talk:VERIFYandWikipedia talk:Statistics);
- thespecialnamespace, whose pages are created by the software on demand (seeHelp:Special page);
- theusernamespace for pages that are used by individual Wikipedia writers (example,User:Example).
- thefilenamespace which is used for describing and attributing images (example,File:Great Horned Owl.USFWS.jpg)
- theMediaWikinamespace, which is used to define shortcuts and other text strings used around Wikipedia (exampleMediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning)
But not all pages in the article namespace are considered to be articles by everyone. Pages in mainspace that are not universally considered articles-proper are:
- hundreds of thousands ofstand-alone lists(although these are usually treated as articles, and can even beassessedasfeatured lists) includingoutlines,glossariesandindices;
- hundreds of thousands ofdisambiguation pagesandset index articles,which are used to resolve naming conflicts;
- many millions ofredirectpages, includingsoft redirects,which are used to re-route one page to another page;
- and theMain Page,which is aportal– but it's still in mainspace from a time before any other namespaces existed, andit would be more trouble than it's worth to move it now.
Every page in the main namespace can have a companiontalk page,and these belong to the "Talk" namespace, i.e., the page names start with the prefix "Talk:", followed by the name of the page in the main namespace. For example, "Talk:Wikipedia"is the talk page for Wikipedia'sarticle on itself.
Lists of articles and statistics
Special:AllPageshas a list of all pages in the article namespace, andWikipedia:Statisticshas statistics on Wikipedia and its growth.
The automatic definition used by the software atSpecial:Statisticsis:any page that is in the article namespace, is not aredirect pageand contains at least one wiki link.The statistics software currently has no method of detecting disambiguation pages, however; nor does it disregardstubs(but in any case, many articles tagged as stubs are quite substantial) or stub lists (lists templates with little or no content).
See also
External links
- Special:Statistics(current article count)
- More detailed (but less current) statistics