DDO wiki:Project namespace

The project namespace or Wikipedia namespace is a namespace consisting of pages with information or discussion about Wikipedia. Its namespace number is four (4).

Pages in this namespace will always have the prefix Wikipedia:. They can also be reached by alias WP: or the standard (for any MediaWiki site) prefix Project:.

Terminology

 * Project pages - Project pages are pages in the project and project talk namespaces. WikiProject pages, which are included in the project namespace, are usually referred to as WikiProject pages to distinguish them from project pages as a whole.
 * Meta - Some people refer to pages in the project namespace as meta pages. However, this can be confusing, because Meta is actually the name of the site dedicated to all Wikimedia projects: meta.wikimedia.org.

Pages within project namespace
A main gateway for the project namespace is Community portal. The Community Portal includes categorized links to the more commonly used pages related to the project. A link to the Community Portal page is available in the sidebar.

Project namespace includes a variety of pages with information or discussion about Wikipedia. Project namespace includes Wikipedia policies and guidelines, which describe best practice, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable encyclopedia. Project namespace also includes process pages, information and discussion pages, and historical pages. For more complete lists of pages in the project namespace, see:
 * Utilities - index of many very useful pages (inactive since late 2005)
 * Category:Wikipedia administration - a list organized by subject
 * List of shortcuts - a collection of shortcuts to many project pages.

Policies and guidelines

 * Category:Wikipedia policies contains important rules that are widely accepted, and procedures for important processes such as deletion; there are very few of those
 * Category:Wikipedia guidelines contains consensual rules-of-thumb that are not strict, but are considered by most Wikipedians to be useful most of the time
 * Category:Wikipedia policy thinktank is used for proposing new policies, guidelines and procedures
 * Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals lists proposals that were rejected by the community

Processes
A process is a central and organized way of doing things, generally following certain policies or guidelines (e.g. the "deletion process" proceeds in accordance with the "deletion policy"). See WP:PPP for details.

Information and discussions
Many pages in Wikipedia namespace have nothing to do with rules, and thus do not belong in the above categories.

Discussion pages
Some pages are designed for discussions, such as Village pump sections.

Noticeboard pages
Some pages serve as noticeboards to draw attention to discussions taking place elsewhere, such as the centralized discussions page and various Requests for comments pages.

Wikiproject pages
Project space is not a free web host and should not be used as a long-term archive to host pages that look like articles. Pages in project space that look like articles may be subject to deletion. Short-term hosting of potentially valid articles as reasonable content under development is usually acceptable where the page is being used to collaborate on encyclopedic work and as a place to write a draft encyclopedia article directly. When a project space page reaches a point where it can be included as an article consider moving it into mainspace or using its content appropriately in other relevant articles.

Essay pages
Many pages simply provide some information about Wikipedia (like this page). Some of them reflect a particular opinion, and are marked with essay template (see WP:ESSAYS).

Historical pages
A historical page or process is one which is no longer in use, or any non-recent log of any process at all, and is kept as a record of past Wikipedia events that have a noteworthy value in being maintained as happened. A historical page can be revived to an active page by using it.

Before creating a new page
The project namespace contains many pages and a lot of information, and most Wikipedians probably have not read all of it. To make information easier to find, try to avoid creating new pages in the project namespace unnecessarily. If you want to add material, you might discover that the same thing already exists somewhere else. Before creating a new page, you should consider looking through the topical index to see if the material belongs at a page that already exists.

Deletion of project namespace pages

 * The usual deletion process is to post a request at miscellany for deletion to have a page deleted or to have a project terminated and its pages deleted.
 * For issues only affecting specific revisions on a page (where other page versions are fine) RevisionDelete is usually more appropriate.

With project namespace including pages with information or discussion about Wikipedia, the topics of these pages span various or somewhat unrelated matters. Miscellany for deletion (MfD) handles these miscellany deletion matters. Some of the more common project namespace deletion requests at MfD include Administrators' noticeboard pages, Article Incubator pages, Article Rescue Squadron pages, Articles for creation pages, Articles for deletion pages, Community Portal pages, Essays, List pages, Miscellany for deletion pages, Requested articles pages, Requests for adminship pages, Requests for comment pages, and Sandbox pages. For a complete listing of project namespace deletion requests at MfD, see all MfD pages with Wikipedia prefix.