On 09/09/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/8/07, Armed Blowfish diodontida.armata@googlemail.com wrote:
Many people go on and on about how Wikipaedia is an encyclopaedia and not a tabloid. However, the encyclopaedia is contained within the article namespace. Is there any reason for namespaces other than the main (article) namespace and the image namespace to be indexed
The Wikipedia namespace should be indexed, so you can search for terms like "neutral point of view". It also contains pointers to tools. MediaWiki should probably be indexed. User talk is probably the only strong candidate for non indexing. The other talks are probably ok...there are times when you want to search them. User is probably ok.
Steve
Erm, not indexing on Google doesn't mean no searching - MediaWiki does have it's own search capacity. However, things in the Wikipedia: namespace, and indeed every namespace besides main and image, are generally not of interest to non-Wikipaedians - no need to take up retail space on other search engines.
Wikipaedia namespace also includes areas in which particularly rude discussion often occurs (and, occasionally, libellous as well). For example - all the noticeboards, Requests for comment, Requests for arbitration. Talk pages can get fairly ugly too.
The User namespace is at best a collection of personal blogs, and at worst rude or even libellous, depending on the page in question. Same for User talk.