3. Wikipedia's structure

Name spaces

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Articles are Wikipedia’s most well known and most visible aspect. However, there are many other areas, which cater for various purposes, such as: user pages, talk pages, special pages, help pages, project pages. These areas are called name spaces. So Wikipedians talk about the article name space, when referring to the articles as a whole, or about the help name space when they mean all help pages.

Screencast about Wikipedia's namespaces

Name spaces are relevant to distinguish pages with dedicated purposes from the article pages. For example, the name of the user page of a user whose name is „moon“ will be „user:moon“ and the corresponding talk page will be „user talk:moon“ – whereas the article about the astronomical body simply is „moon“. This is relevant in particular, if you are using Wikipedia’s search engine. If you are looking for a page which is not part of the article name space, use the "search in:" menu in Wikipedia's search engine to search any specific name space.

Click: in this screencast User Ichdunich will show you the different namespaces.

Revisions, talk pages and edit button

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Screencast about the revision history

Any edit to Wikipedia is saved as a separate revision in Wikipedia’s database. So everyone may easily follow up on any past contribution to any page. In order to see all past revisons, push the „view history“ button on top of the page. Click: in this screencast User Ichdunich will explain the "View History" button. I Most pages also have a “talk“ button. By pushing the talk button, you enter the corresponding talk page of the previous page. This is the place to discuss with other Wikipedians. Most important for Wikipedians, however, is the „edit page“ button: this is how you get to contribute text or other conent to pages, where you add references or insert pictures.

Click to continue with lesson #4