Hi, sorry for creating another thread on this topic, but I think this is something that we should finally solve, so creating a new thread seemed the best option to me. To me it seems there is a lot of confusion about the purpose of namespaces, so let me first try to shine a little light on this (please read!): ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Purpose of namespaces: --------------------- Namespaces allow to _separate_ between content for the _editing community_ (like howtos on writing articles, guidelines, etc) and _readers_ "Namespaces allow, among other things, a separation of content from policy and discussion. They encourage separation of the pages of a wiki into a core set intended for public viewing, and private information intended for the editing community." [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Namespace] How are pages outside the main namespace handled? ---------------------------------------------------- Basically pages not from the main namespace are handled just as any other page, the only difference that is visible firsthand is the name prefix <NAMESPACE>:<PAGE TITLE>. However, there are two other main differences: * a regular search will _not_ find any pages outside of the main namespace, because the default search is limited to the main namespace * Special:AllPages by default only displays pages from the main namespace. You can select other namespaces to display, but only one at a time. Displaying pages from all namespaces is not possible Which namespaces exist by default? ---------------------------------- see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Namespace#List_of_namespaces IMPORTANT NOTE: Because MediaWiki relies on the presence of system namespaces (the ones listed above) throughout the code, these cannot be deleted. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Namespace_manager#Deleting_namespace... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now my 2 cents: * Having read the above, it IMHO should be clear that it does not make sense, to divide the content into different namespaces such as developer, news, etc. Nor does it make sense to use the existing SDB namespace in teh future. * Since the default namespaces cannot be deleted we should utilize them before introducing new namespaces - e.g. "Help" for editing instructions, describing extensions, or openSUSE (aka Meta) for guidelines, etc. * We do not want people searching for an article to be pointed to a portal page rather than to the article itself. Therefore I would suggest to put them into a to be created namespace Portal * Apart from "Portal" I would not add any other namespaces, but rather delete the custom ones we now have /howtos, faqs, SDB, SDB talk -- Regards Frank Frank Sundermeyer, Technical Writer, Documentation SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg Tel: +49-911-74053-0, Fax: +49-911-7417755; http://www.opensuse.org/ SUSE Linux Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) "Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane" Dogbert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+help@opensuse.org