Help:Page name - Revision history

Lunaverse at 20:41, 25 May 2005

2005-05-25T20:41:01Z

Lunaverse: /* Namespace prefixes */

2005-05-25T20:39:48Z

‎Namespace prefixes

Lunaverse: /* See also */

2005-05-25T20:38:24Z

‎See also

Lunaverse: /* See also */

2005-05-25T20:38:04Z

‎See also

Lunaverse at 20:37, 25 May 2005

2005-05-25T20:37:36Z

New page

==Restrictions==

===Special characters===

The following characters are not allowed in page titles:

" # $ * + < > = @ [ ] \ ^ ` { } | ~

The reasons include:

:* '''+''' is used in web addresses to represent a space (e.g. when you type more than one word into a search engine). Using it in article names would potentially make parts of the system see their name wrong. Each '''+''' will be substituted by ' ' (space) respectively '_' (underscore) in the related page URL, see below.
:* '''@''' also has a special meaning in URLs, as a way of adding a username and password, and would have even more drastic consequences.
:* '''[''', ''']''', '''{''', '''}''', '''|''', and probably some of the others have special meaning within Wikipedia's syntax, which are processed ''before'' the pagename is determined. (e.g. <nowiki>[[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]]</nowiki> points at [[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]], not a page called ''<nowiki>{{CURRENTYEAR}}</nowiki>''.
:* '''$''', '''\''', '''"''', '''`''' (and some others) have special meaning in other bits of the software, and allowing them would create potential security flaws which would take a lot of effort to insure against.

There are some pages not satisfying the restrictions, e.g. $. They may give complications.

Some very special characters can only be represented using [[Wikipedia:Unicode|Unicode]], whereas the English Mediawiki just uses [[Wikipedia:ISO 8859-1|ISO 8859-1]] or similar.

===Namespace prefixes===

A [[Help:namespace|namespace]] is a special [[Mediawiki]] convention, such as "Help:Article name" or "Talk:Article name".

So the first part of a page name may not coincide with [[m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Namespaces#Automatic_conversions_of_page_names|a project-independent namespace prefix that is automatically converted to another one]], e.g. the name [[Project: A-Kon]] on Cacheopedia is not possible.

The first part of a page name can coincide with a namespace prefix that is not converted. For example, there might be articles in the English Cacheopedia about books called ''[[Cacheopedia: The Big Adventure]]'' and ''[[Talk: Secrets are Bad]]'' (but only without the space after the colon). However, in that case the pages are in the wrong namespace. This may be inconvenient in searching or displaying a list of pages. Also, in the second case there is no link to a Talk page about the book.

===Prefixes referring to other projects or pseudo-namespaces===

A page name can not start with a prefix that is in use to refer to another project or one of the pseudo-namespaces "Media:" and "Special".

==Spaces vs. underscores==

In '''page names''', a blank space is equivalent with an underscore. A blank space is displayed in the large font title at the top of the page, the URLs show an underscore. See also below.

==Case-sensitivity==

Article names are case-sensitive (except for the first letter of the article name), so keep this in mind. [[Geocaching on a budget]] is NOT the same as [[Geocaching on a Budget]]. There is a high risk of ambiguity on this site, so you can help by creating any [[Help:Redirects|redirects]] using any cases you believe are likely to be linked to either while you create the article, or when you notice this happening with existing articles.

===Case-sensitivity of the first character===

The first character of the page name may or may not be case-sensitive, depending on the project. <nowiki>[[Help:page name]]</nowiki> gives on this project: [[Help:page name]]. If the first character of the page name is case-sensitive this is a link (to a different page), otherwise it is bold (a [[help:self link|self link]] to this page).

====Case where the first character is case-insensitive====

The canonical form is with a capital.
A link like <nowiki>[[template]]</nowiki> works like a [[piped link]] <nowiki>[[Template|template]]</nowiki>: [[template]]; unlike a redirect, the conversion shows up already on the referring page when pointing at it: in the pop-up and in the status bar (if applicable for the browser).

Note that in the case of a prefix that is not a namespace for the software, the case-insensitivity applies to the first character of the whole name, e.g. [[m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables|MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables]] and [[m:MediaWiki User's Guide: using tables|MediaWiki User's Guide: using tables]] are distinguished.

===Case-sensitivity of the file name extension of an image===

Note that even the file name extension of an image is case-sensitive: compare [[:image:Stop_sign_us.jpg]] and [[:image:Stop_sign_us.JPG]]

==Ignored spaces/underscores==

Spaces/underscores which are ignored:
*those at the start and end of a full page name
*those at the end of a namespace prefix, before the colon
*those after the colon of the namespace prefix
*duplicate consecutive spaces

Some show up in the link label, e.g. <nowiki>[[___help__ :_ _template_ _]]</nowiki> becomes [[___help__ :_ _template_ _]], linking to [[Help:Template]].

However, a space before or after a "normal" colon makes a difference, e.g. [[MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing overview]] and [[MediaWiki User's Guide : Editing overview]], and [[MediaWiki User's Guide:Editing overview]] are all distinguished, because "MediaWiki User's Guide:" is a pseudo-namespace, not a real one.

==Coding of characters==

A page name can not contain e.g. %41, because that is automatically converted to the character A, for which %41 is the code. <nowiki>[[%41]]</nowiki> is rendered as [[%41]]. Similarly <nowiki>%C3%80</nowiki> is automatically converted to the character À. <nowiki>[[%C3%80]]</nowiki> is rendered as [[%C3%80]]. The URL of the page is http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80. One can argue what is the real name of the page, %C3%80 or À (a user will say the latter), but anyway there can not be distinct pages with these names.

==Alphabetical order==

[[w:Alphabetical order|Alphabetical order]], e.g. in [[Special:Allpages]], is (at least for that range) according to [[w:ASCII|ASCII]]. Note that this means that "a" comes after "Z", see e.g. [http://tokipona.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Allpages&from=AEI_pi_toki_pona].

==Variables <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> and <nowiki>{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki>==

[[Variable]] <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> gives for this page {{PAGENAME}}, Variable <nowiki>{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki> gives {{PAGENAMEE}}.

Thus in the first case a space is used, in the second case an underscore, like in URLs. Similarly À becomes the escape code %C3%80 (see above), etc.

<nowiki>{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> and <nowiki>{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki> give for this page {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}} and {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}, respectively. For a page in the main namespace the page name is prefixed with a colon.

Example:

<nowiki>http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}</nowiki>

gives

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}

<nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> would not work.

With a Google search there is the problem that for Google the space and the underscore are different, see [[w:Template talk:Google]].

==See also==

*[[Help:Link]] gives examples of conversions in the page name from wikitext to HTML, and from HTML to actual target page.
*[[MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports#Comments_related_to_page_title]]
*[[Help:Naming conventions]]
*[[Template:Wrongtitle]]

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 Some very special characters can only be represented using [[Wikipedia:Unicode|Unicode]], whereas the English Mediawiki just uses [[Wikipedia:ISO 8859-1|ISO 8859-1]] or similar.
 ==Spaces vs. underscores==
@@ Line 52: / Line 40: @@
 Note that even the file name extension of an image is case-sensitive: compare [[:image:Stop_sign_us.jpg]] and   [[:image:Stop_sign_us.JPG]]
 ==Ignored spaces/underscores==

@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 So the first part of a page name may not coincide with [[m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Namespaces#Automatic_conversions_of_page_names|a project-independent namespace prefix that is automatically converted to another one]], e.g. the name [[Project: A-Kon]] on Cacheopedia is not possible.
-The first part of a page name can coincide with a namespace prefix that is not converted. For example, there might be articles in the English Cacheopedia about books called ''[[Cacheopedia: The Big Adventure]]'' and ''[[Talk: Secrets are Bad]]'' (but only without the space after the colon). However, in that case the pages are in the wrong namespace.  This may be inconvenient in searching or displaying a list of pages. Also, in the second case there is no link to a Talk page about the book.
+The first part of a page name can coincide with a namespace prefix that is not converted. For example, there might be articles in the English Cacheopedia about books called ''[[Help: It's Just a Game]]'' and ''[[Talk: Secrets are Bad]]'' (but only without the space after the colon). However, in that case the pages are in the wrong namespace.  This may be inconvenient in searching or displaying a list of pages. Also, in the second case there is no link to a Talk page about the book.
 ===Prefixes referring to other projects or pseudo-namespaces===

@@ Line 96: / Line 96: @@
 *[[Help:Link]] gives examples of conversions in the page name from wikitext to HTML, and from HTML to actual target page.
-*[[Mediawiki:MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports#Comments_related_to_page_title]]
+*[[Wikipedia:MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports#Comments_related_to_page_title]]
 *[[Help:Naming conventions]]
 *[[Template:Wrongtitle]]