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WT:NS

This page lists namespaces of the English Wiktionary and how they are used.

A variety of namespaces is currently set in the English Wiktionary, which is powered by the MediaWiki software. Each namespace may hold an indefinite number of pages and serves a different purpose in organizing them.

Each namespace is identified by its own name or by a number, except one which does not have a particular name, being defined as "main" or "entry" in some places. Except for "main", the namespace of a page is always present in the beginning of its title, followed by a colon. Therefore, if a page called Appendix:Example exists, it is in the Appendix namespace and may be linked as Appendix:Example.

If the title of a page contains a slash (/), it is considered a subpage of another page whose title is equal but without the slash and subsequent characters. For instance, Wiktionary:Beer parlour/header is a subpage of Wiktionary:Beer parlour. A subpage is expected to be subordinate of the other page.

The only exception are pages in the main namespace, as they are naturally considered independent. For example, "AC/DC" is not the subpage of page "AC" but rather an individual page. Note that "Talk:AC/DC" unexpectedly does not fit in this exception.

The namespaces "main", User, Wiktionary, File, MediaWiki, Template, Help and Category represent basic functions inherent to most MediaWiki sites, so similar namespaces are likely to be found in Wiktionary's sister projects such as Wikipedia.

The namespaces Appendix, Concordance, Index, Rhymes, Transwiki, Wikisaurus and Citations were introduced on 28 June 2006. Most of them have purposes more directly related to building a dictionary, so they probably would not be found in other projects, but Wiktionaries in other languages may have similar namespaces. Particularly, the Transwiki system also became common in other types of project.

Each of the fifteen namespaces explained above is counterpart to one of the talk namespaces: Talk, User talk, Wiktionary talk, File talk, MediaWiki talk, Template talk, Help talk, Category talk, Appendix talk, Concordance talk, Index talk, Rhymes talk, Transwiki talk, Wikisaurus talk and Citations talk. They serve as spaces for conversations about the current non-talk page. For instance, users may talk about Wiktionary:Namespace at Wiktionary talk:Namespace. However, there are a few generic discussion rooms which may be preferred in place of discussing on separate talk pages.

Here is a table with all current namespaces of the English Wiktionary and their descriptions. The items in the "Name" column are linked to a list of all pages in the respective namespace.

NS Name Contents
-2 Media: Customized icons, widgets and helper pages that come with the MediaWiki software and are accessible by developers but not to ordinary users neither administrators.
-1 Special: Specific functions within the MediaWiki software, such as seeing technical details, lists of pages, edits and users, deletion of pages, protection of pages and blocking users. The set of accessible Special pages changes for each user according to their place of in hierarchy, growing longer in this order: from anonymous users, logged-in users, administrators, bureaucrats, stewards to developers. Example: Special:RecentChanges.
0 (none) Entries with definitions, translations, among other information on terms of all languages. The absence of a prefix and of subpages distinguishes these pages from those in other namespaces. This is commonly known as the "main" namespace. Example: word.
1 Talk: Discussions about each entry page. Example: Talk:word.
2 User: Personal pages for Wiktionary editors, where users may create just about anything they want, using their user name as title and possibly creating subpages. They are permitted and even encouraged. When a user is not registered, his or her IP number is the title instead. Only modify other another's user pages with permission. Examples: User:Example and User:Example/my1stProject.
3 User talk: Discussions directed to specific users. They are notified whenever someone edits their talk page. Typically, subpages are used only for talk page archives. Examples: User talk:Example, User talk:Example/March 2010 and User talk:Example/Archive 5.
4 Wiktionary: Information in context of Wiktionary, including its general operation, policy pages like Wiktionary:Blocking policy, decisions on editing specific languages like Wiktionary:About Korean, organization of other namespaces (for instance, which templates or categories to be used for each situation) and also contains generic discussion pages like Wiktionary:Beer parlour and Wiktionary:Requests for deletion. Pages intended for guiding new users should be placed at the Help namespace rather than here.
5 Wiktionary talk: Discussions about each Wiktionary page. Example: Wiktionary talk:About Hebrew.
6 File: Uploaded files, potentially including images and sounds. However, only Wiktionary logos belong here. All other contents are kept at Wikimedia Commons, where they may be used by all sister projects through the usual links. Alerts regarding remote changes are posted automatically at WT:CT.
7 File talk: This namespace is no longer used due to our policy of restriction of the File namespace. Complaints about suspected copyright violations were added here. This function may be found at Wikimedia Commons.
8 MediaWiki: Text required by the MediaWiki software. All pages in this namespace are protected by default, so they can only be edited by administrators. Crucial user interface changes can inadvertently be made here. These pages often require unusual technical fluency to overcome various programming traps and challenges.
9 MediaWiki talk: Spaces for anonymous and registered users to request or propose changes to the MediaWiki pages. If technical defects are spotted on a MediaWiki: page, here the details may be spelled out, plainly enough so that sysops can follow instructions.
10 Template: Templates with blobs of text that users can define, and repeat on multiple pages by referencing the template name with squiggle brackets. They include inflection templates, cleanup templates, topic tag templates (vis. {{cattag}}), and many others.
11 Template talk: General discussions about particular templates.
12 Help: Contains a general resource of help on various subjects, particularly for new users.
13 Help talk: General discussions and proposals regarding their corresponding help pages.
14 Category: Automatized sets of pages. To know how entries are categorized and how categories are linked, see Help:Category. Example: Category:Greek nouns.
15 Category talk: Discussions about the corresponding category.
90 Thread: Stores individual threads in LiquidThreads discussion pages.
91 Thread talk: Unused.
92 Summary: Summaries of discussions in pages using LiquidThreads.
93 Summary talk: Unused.
100 Appendix: Information suitable for a dictionary but encyclopedic in nature. That includes lists of terms (for instance, surnames, given names, constellations, slang, etc.), lexical information (for instance, declensions, conjugations, word order, pronunciations, etc.) that would be suitable for various entries together, proto-language forms and certain definitions that according to Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion should be present only in appendices.

Particularly, explanations on templates, categories and other aspects of Wiktionary should not be placed in appendices.

Examples: Appendix:Female given names/R, Appendix:Hiragana script and Appendix:Ancient Greek nouns.

101 Appendix talk: Discussions on specific appendices.
102 Concordance: Listings of words from particular references, for example, the Bible. Various data-manipulation experiments are performed here, as well, with the curious side-effect of skewing the Special:Wantedpages results.
103 Concordance talk: Discussions of specific Concordance pages.
104 Index: Lists of terms of each language. Some are updated automatically based on existing entires and others are hard edited. They often contain red-links to encourage users to create new entries.

Other indices, such as words per subject, are not in the Index but in the Appendix namespace.

105 Index talk: Discussions about particular indexes and their layouts.
106 Rhymes: Lists of words that rhyme, using strict rhyming rules, the English words organized by British formal pronunciation and all languages indexed by the IPA notation.
107 Rhymes talk: Discussions about specific rhyme pages.
108 Transwiki: Pages from sister projects that are identified as dictionary definitions, so more likely to stay at Wiktionary. Particularly, Wikipedia gets a lot of entries from anonymous contributors that it doesn't know what to do with, but can clearly identify as "dicdefs". These entries end up here, prior to being deleted at Wikipedia. These should be formatted correctly, referenced properly, decapitalized if necessary, and/or merged with any relevant existing entry. Example: Transwiki:Example.
109 Transwiki talk: Does not contain discussion pages. They have a special role in preserving a record of who made the edits on the Wikipedia article before it was transwiki'd. In order to satisfy the requirements of the GFDL license, these page histories must move about with the associated content.

Sometimes these need to be cleaned up to "deactivate" template references contained in edit summaries (using <nowiki> tags). Example: Transwiki talk:Example.

110 Wikisaurus: Wiktionary's thesaurus. See Wiktionary:Wikisaurus.
111 Wikisaurus talk: Debates about the appropriateness of specific items. General discussion about the direction of the Wikisaurus project should not be placed here.
114 Citations: Quotations and references. Based on the idea of usage as criteria for inclusion, the citation pages can display durably archived usage over time. From the usage documented on these citations pages the definitions on the main entries are verified, clarified and updated, or perhaps additional definitions can be derived. See Wiktionary:Citations.
115 Citations talk: Unused.
116 Sign gloss: Experimental. See Glossing signed languages for background info.
117 Sign gloss talk:

There are four namespace aliases.

  • Image:File:
  • Image talk:File talk:
  • WT:Wiktionary:
  • WS:Wikisaurus:

Pseudo namespaces are sets of pages that use the colon to set them off from other pages but without the full namespace support of MediaWiki software. All of the current pseudo namespaces are not in the main namespace so they are effectively sub-namespaces. Current pseudo namespaces include:

Any wiki link prefaced by one of the keywords below link to external Wikimedia sites, as indicated. Each external site has its own set of namespaces which can also be included in the link. In addition, wikis in different languages exist. See below for further details.

From other Wikimedia sites link to Wiktionary by using the wikt: or wiktionary: prefix.

Project Long form Shortcut
Wikipedia [[wikipedia:]] [[w:]]
Wiktionary wiktionary: wikt:
Wikinews [[wikinews:]] [[n:]]
Wikibooks [[wikibooks:]] [[b:]]
Wikiquote [[wikiquote:]] [[q:]]
Wikisource [[wikisource:]] [[s:]]
Wikispecies [[wikispecies:]] [[species:]]
Wikiversity [[wikiversity:]] [[v:]]
Wikimedia Foundation [[wikimedia:]]
[[foundation:]]
[[wmf:]]
Wikimedia Commons [[commons:]]
Wikimedia Meta-Wiki [[metawikipedia:]]
meta:
[[m:]]
Wikimedia Incubator [[incubator:]]
MediaWiki [[mw:]]
MediaZilla / Bugzilla [[mediazilla:]]
[[bugzilla:]]
Testwiki [[testwiki:]]

* Other Wikimedia prefixes: betawikiversity:, download:, dbdump:, mail:, mailarchive:, otrs:, OTRSwiki:, quality:, spcom:, tools:, tswiki:, svn:, rev:, wmania:, wm2005:, wm2006:, wm2007:, wm2008:, wm2009:.

The long form doesn't work within the same project. The shortcut works everywhere. (That is the intention; currently, it does not work on all projects).

To get to another language, you might use nl:Overleg:Hoofdpagina. Note that this requires a preceding colon, to display as a normal link, otherwise it will appear in the left-most column under "Other languages."