[Mediawiki-l] Subpages in main namespace?

[Brion Vibber]

Birger wrote:
> Why is the option to make subpages in the main namespaces not enabled by
> default? Is there something wrong with making subpages into the main
> namespace?

It does patently incorrect things in MediaWiki's primary target data set
(Wikipedia), such as:

* making And/or a subpage of And
* making A/UX a subpage of A
* making Face/Off a subpage of Face
* making GNU/Linux a subpage of GNU
* making OS/2 a subpage of OS

etc.

Since the "/" character is legitimately used in many titles, it can't be used
unambiguously as a separator for meta-content. Instead we have a system of
associated namespaces (primarily the Talk: namespace) which provide a
machine-readable separation with much much lower probability of ambiguity.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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