[Mediawiki-l] Noobie Namespace help

[briefer at cox.net]

Hey all.  I've been a subscriber for a few months and have been trying to learn about Wikis.  One catch I have is that I simply have not gotten the concept of "namespace" drummed into my head.  I know you can create them, and I've generally read the "help" on MediaWiki regarding namespaces, but I guess I'm just not cluing in on why they are useful and why I might want to create different ones (other than the defaults) on a wiki.  Why are we separating different wiki pages out into different namespaces??

I'm not asking for anyone here to write me a big treatise on them; but if anyone can refer me to some online source that might have a good explanation, I'd appreciate it.

Sorry the question is so general.  Maybe it's too general to answer.  I just think that this is just one of those basic concepts I've got to get a handle on before I can understand mediawiki.

Thanks