I propose that we change the installer to make Project:, rather than the
wiki name, the default option for meta namespace
<Manual:$wgMetaNamespace>name (i.e. namespace
4 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Namespace#Built-in_namespaces>).
See bug 60168 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60168>. Here
is an image of what I have in mind that the installer should show:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/b/b9/ProjectDefaultNamespa…
Rationales:
1) Standardizing the name makes life easier when people copy content from
one wiki to another. E.g., if you import a template that links to
Project:Policy rather than BarWiki:Policy, you don't need to edit the
imported template, because it already links where it should.
2) Having the meta namespace name be the same as the wiki name causes
collisions with interwiki prefixes when content is copied from one wiki to
another. E.g., suppose FooWiki has an interwiki prefix linking to BarWiki
(barwiki:) and then a user imports a template from BarWiki that links to
BarWiki:Policy. That will now link interwiki to BarWiki's mainspace page
"Policy" rather than to Project:Policy. It is not even possible to import
BarWiki:Policy until the interwiki barwiki: prefix is first removed; the
importer will say "Page 'BarWiki:Policy' is not imported because its name
is reserved for external linking (interwiki)."
3) If you ever change the name of the wiki, you then have to change all the
wikilinks to FooWiki: namespace; if it were Project:, they would stay the
same. True, you can use namespace
aliases<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgNamespaceAliases>es>,
but that could defeat part of the point of rebranding, which is to
deprecate use of the old wiki name.
4) We don't have any other namespace names (User, Template, etc.) that are,
by default, different from one wiki to the next; what is the logic for
making an exception for the meta namespace?
--
Nathan Larson <https://mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Leucosticte>