On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 10:58:01AM +0100, Andre Engels wrote:
So we have the
following namespaces: User, User_talk, Global (or Root), Talk,
and Special? Is Wikipedia actually a separate namespace, or is it just
a prefix to some articles?
Yes, Wikipedia is a namespace, as are Wikipedia talk, Image and Image talk.
I'm not 100% sure about Special, though - there are no 'real' pages in there,
just query results.
What is the purpose of namespaces? Why not have the following tables:
current_articles
current_binaries
current_discussions
previous_articles
previous_binaries
previous_discussions
Knowing whether something is an article, binary, or a discussion seems
to cover what we need.
What other uses were envisioned for namespaces that can't be accomplished
with a "properties" field for each article, where for each possible value
of the properties field, a host of things are defined in another table,
like who exactly can edit the page, who exactly can look at it, and who
exactly can even see that it exists by the existance of links pointing to
it in other articles?
Jonathan
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