Hi,

support for subpages was not added to the new software because subpages were considered detrimental to Wikipedia's structure. I agree with this: For an encyclopedia, you want to avoid too many "hidden areas". However, users are creating pseudo-subpages on their user pages and on talk pages to archive them. In these instances, having subpage support may be useful -- it makes link creation easier and provides automatic backlinks.

DefaultSettings.php now has an array which defines namespaces that allow subpages. Subpages are pages of the form [[/bar]], which, when created on page [[foo]], lead to a page [[foo/bar]].

When creating links in a namespace that does not support subpages, the link [[/bar]] simply points to "bar". When doing so in a namespace that *does* support subpages, the link points to [[foo/bar]]. Thus, it is possible to have talk page archives, subpages in userland etc., without having subpages within Wikipedia.

On a page within a namespace that supports subpages, backlinks are shown if the page title contains the "/" character. So "User talk:Eloquence/Archive" shows a backlink to "User talk:Eloquence" at the top (using the new subpage stylesheet). Backlinks are not shown to non-existent parent pages.

Currently you have to do [[/foo]] [[/bar]] [[/baz]]

to create multiple subpages. I plan to add support for a <subpages> tag which should simplify the creation of multiple subpages (e.g. archive links):

<subpages> [[foo]] [[bar]] [[baz]] </subpages>

I have committed a modified DefaultSettings.php which allows subpages for Talk/User pages, which may be a reasonable default. I suggest that this default be used for all Wikipedias, but this is a policy matter which I will bring up on wikipedia-l. If subpages are not supposed to be supported at all, the $wgNamespacesWithSubpages array fields can simply be set to 0.

Regards,

Erik