On 3/15/07, Kusma kusma.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
That wouldn't be very practical. It happens quite often that content is moved between namespaces. For example, articles about Wikipedia are sometimes moved from the main to the Wikipedia: namespace when they are seen as not notable enough for a general audience, but interesting enough for Wikipedians to keep. Users also sometimes work collaboratively on a draft in user space. All these useful cross-namespace moves become license violations when different namespaces use different licenses. Even worse, transclusion of some namespaces in others would have to be disabled, or the result will be a confusing mixed-license mess.
That's the most important reason why all content must be published under the GFDL.
I take the view that the distinction drawn between "the encyclopaedia" and "the other stuff" is really an artificial one anyway. Wikipedia is not merely a sum of the article namespace; rather, it's content plus a record of how that content was created.