Birger wrote:
Why is the option to make subpages in the main namespaces not enabled by default? Is there something wrong with making subpages into the main namespace?
It does patently incorrect things in MediaWiki's primary target data set (Wikipedia), such as:
* making And/or a subpage of And * making A/UX a subpage of A * making Face/Off a subpage of Face * making GNU/Linux a subpage of GNU * making OS/2 a subpage of OS
etc.
Since the "/" character is legitimately used in many titles, it can't be used unambiguously as a separator for meta-content. Instead we have a system of associated namespaces (primarily the Talk: namespace) which provide a machine-readable separation with much much lower probability of ambiguity.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)