Introduction
Navigating Wikipedia
Namespaces
The different types of pages
Searching pages
Tricks to find what you want
Page histories
See past revisions
Redirects and shortcuts
Redirecting traffic
Useful links
Handy pages for editors
Summary
Review of what you've learned
Wikipedia's pages are divided into namespaces. Each namespace (except the main article space) has a prefix that is followed by a colon at the start of page names. Here are some of the namespaces you might encounter, along with an explanation and examples:
| Namespace | Purpose | Example(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Main/article no prefix |
Articles | Starfish |
| Disambiguation pages to help people find the article they're looking for | David (disambiguation) | |
| Wikipedia: a.k.a. "Project" |
Policies and guidelines | Wikipedia:Neutral point of view Wikipedia:Manual of Style |
| Process pages | Wikipedia:Articles for Creation | |
| Discussion forums and noticeboards | Wikipedia:Village pump | |
| WikiProject communities focusing on a particular topic | Wikipedia:WikiProject History | |
| User: | Personal profile pages about users | User:Jimbo Wales |
| Sandboxes and personal draft articles | User:Example/sandbox | |
| Draft: | Draft articles that are in progress | Draft:Exampledraft |
| Help: | Help pages | Help:Contents |
| Template: | Templates, which can be included or substituted on other pages | Template:Citation needed Template:Infobox album |
| Category: | Groups of pages organized by their similarities | Category:Painting Category:Wikipedia maintenance |
| File: | Images and other files, stored and described | File:Wiki.png |
| Portal: | Pages to highlight Wikipedia content in a particular topic area | Portal:Current events Portal:Solar System |
| Special: | Pages that are part of the software | Special:RecentChanges Special:Preferences |
Each page in each of these namespaces, except for Special, also has a corresponding Talk page for discussion. So, for example, you can discuss the starfish article at Talk:Starfish, or talk about Wikipedia:Neutral point of view at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view. You can switch between the normal page and the talk page by clicking the tabs at the top left.