Jonathan Walther wrote:
Could you tell
me, how are Wikipedia namespace articles different from regular
articles? Are they special in that only sysops can edit them? Are they
special in that what is in them results in changes being made to the
database and the behavior of the Wikipedia?
They are special in that they are one of several categories of "stuff
that isn't articles". When we want to count or show *encyclopedia
articles*, it's very convenient to strip out such things with "WHERE
cur_namespace=0" rather than a whole series of string comparisons.
And, of course, there's the issue of keeping talk page namespaces
assigned in a consistent way. If we treated Wikipedia: pages as regular
articles, we'd get Talk:Wikipedia:Foobar in Engish, and similar
monstrosities in other languages.
Also note that image: pages are _descriptions_ of uploaded files (not
necessarily images; it's a misnomer and I would very much prefer to
change the namespace to file: or somesuch, particularly since image: is
overloaded in links to show the image inline).
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)