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WP:mainspace

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


Wikipedia data structure
Subject namespaces Talk namespaces
0 (Main/Article) Talk 1
2 User User talk 3
4 Everybodywiki Everybodywiki 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 [[Wikipedia:Portal|]] 101
108 Concept Discussion concept 109
118 [[Wikipedia:Drafts|]] 119
446 [[Wikipedia:Course pages|]] 447
710 [[mw:Extension:TimedMediaHandler|]] 711
828 Module Module talk 829
2300 Gadget Gadget talk 2301
2302 Gadget definition Gadget definition talk 2303
-1 Special
-2 Media

A Wikipedia article or entry is a page on this site that has encyclopedic information on it. A well-written encyclopedia article:

Most articles consist of paragraphs and images (perhaps with other types of audiovisual media). However, articles may also be formatted as stand-alone lists or tables (not to be confused with disambiguation pages which are purely navigation aids). These lists or tables are also considered articles for Wikipedia's purposes and are included in the Main/Article namespace, the one without a title prefix followed by a colon (:).

The following items are not counted as articles (see also Wikipedia:Administration § Data structure and development):

Article title[edit]

See Wikipedia:Article titles to learn how we title articles.

Article scope[edit]

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 what reliable sources say.

Quality of articles[edit]

Articles range greatly in quality, from as high as featured articles to as low as candidates for speedy deletion. Some articles are quite lengthy and rich in content while others are shorter (possibly stubs) or of lesser quality.

Namespace[edit]

"Articles" belong to the main namespace of Wikipedia pages (also called "article namespace" or simply "mainspace").

The main namespace, article namespace, or mainspace is the namespace of Wikipedia that contains the encyclopedia proper—that is, where "live" Wikipedia articles reside, as opposed to Sandbox pages.

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, all user pages are prefixed by "User:", their talk pages by "User talk:" templates by "Template:" and various types of internal administrative pages by "Wikipedia:" (such as this page). Thus, any page created without such a prefix will automatically be placed in the article namespace.

The main namespace does not include any pages in any of the specified namespaces that are used for particular purposes, such as:

But not all pages in the article namespace are considered to be articles; the most notable exceptions are:

  • the Main Page;
  • thousands of disambiguation pages, which are used to resolve naming conflicts;
  • many millions of redirect pages, including soft redirects, which are used to re-route one page to another page;
  • for wiki-statistical purposes, some extremely short and simple pages are not counted as articles. The criteria have varied over time.

Every page in the main namespace can have a companion talk page, and these belong to the "Talk" namespace, i.e., the pagenames 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's article on Wikipedia itself.

Lists of articles and statistics[edit]

Special:AllPages has a list of all pages in the article namespace and Wikipedia:Statistics for statistics on Wikipedia and its growth.

The automatic definition used by the software at Special:Statistics is: any page that is in the article namespace, is not a redirect page and contains at least one wiki link. The statistics software currently has no method of detecting disambiguation pages, however; nor does it disregard stubs (but in any case, many articles tagged as stubs are quite substantial) or stublists (lists templates with little or no content).

See also[edit]

External links[edit]