Help:Page name

Restrictions

Special characters

The following characters are not allowed in page titles:

" # $ * + < > = @ [ ] \ ^ ` { } | ~

The reasons include:

+ is used in web addresses to represent a space (e.g. when you type more than one word into a search engine). Using it in article names would potentially make parts of the system see their name wrong. Each + will be substituted by ' ' (space) respectively '_' (underscore) in the related page URL, see below.
@ also has a special meaning in URLs, as a way of adding a username and password, and would have even more drastic consequences.
[, ], {, }, |, and probably some of the others have special meaning within DCCWikipedia's syntax, which are processed before the pagename is determined. (e.g. [[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]] points at 2024, not a page called {{CURRENTYEAR}}.
$, \, ", ` (and some others) have special meaning in other bits of the software, and allowing them would create potential security flaws which would take a lot of effort to insure against.

Some very special characters, like two dots over the n that has been attempted for the page are not allowed either. They can only be represented using Help:Unicode, whereas the English DCCWiki just uses Help:ISO 8859-1 or similar.

Namespace prefixes

Page titles in DCCWiki are composed of two parts: an optional namespace name, and the remainder of the title. For example, this page has the title [[Help:Page name]], so it is in the Help namespace. A title without a colon, for example [[Introduction to DCC]], is in the main namespace. This is where the content of the DCCWiki with is located.

If a page title contains a colon, but the initial part of the title is not one of the pre-defined namespaces, that page is considered to be in the main namespace.

Namespaces among other things allow a separation of content from policy and discussion. They encourage separation of the pages of a wiki into a core set intended for public viewing, and private information intended for the editing community.

This core set is the main namespace. Other namespaces that are useful also for people who are just viewers are:

the image namespace (with the full-size images)
the category namespace (for navigation)
the help pages and the preferences page (as far as they concern viewing)

List of namespaces

List of predefined namespaces here:

Variables	Alternate syntax	Name, linked to list of all pages	Notes
{{ns:-2}}	{{ns:Media}}	"Media"	pseudo-namespace for images and other files themselves, as opposed to the image description pages; see also below
{{ns:-1}}	{{ns:Special}}	"Special"	pseudo-namespace for special pages (list: Special:Specialpages)
-		main	main namespace, no prefix, or optionally a colon (this is needed when using the page as template)
{{ns:1}}	{{ns:Talk}}	Talk	see Help:Talk page for this and the following odd-numbered namespaces
{{ns:2}}	{{ns:User}}	User	logged-in users (list: Special:Listusers) have a user homepage User:username (linked to by the system from user names in lists of edits, e.g. on page histories, and from signatures on talk pages); this and subpages of it can be used to present oneself, for project-related bookmarks, and for drafts, tests, and other working material. One can put here material to give oneself one-step access to it from any page in the same project, and one can put here links to give oneself two-step access to the link targets from any page in the same project as the user page. For users who do not log in, the same applies, with the IP as username. Dynamic IPs are a complication.
{{ns:3}}	{{ns:User_talk}}	User talk
{{ns:4}}	{{ns:Project}}	DCCWiki	the project namespace for matters about the project, such as guidelines and discussions; see also the Help namespace
{{ns:5}}	{{ns:Project_talk}}	DCCWiki talk
{{ns:6}}	{{ns:Image}}	File	images and other uploaded files, with image description pages (list: Special:Imagelist)
{{ns:7}}	{{ns:Image_talk}}	File talk
{{ns:8}}	{{ns:MediaWiki}}	MediaWiki	system messages (list: Special:Allmessages), editable by users, or if protected, by sysops
{{ns:9}}	{{ns:MediaWiki_talk}}	MediaWiki talk
{{ns:10}}	{{ns:Template}}	Template	the default namespace for templates: the wikitext code {{name }} refers to and includes the page Template:name
{{ns:11}}	{{ns:Template_talk}}	Template talk
{{ns:12}}	{{ns:Help}}	Help	typically used for the MediaWiki User's Guide, with the wikitext a frequently refreshed copy of the master version on Meta-Wikipedia, but with project-specific templates
{{ns:13}}	{{ns:Help_talk}}	Help talk
{{ns:14}}	{{ns:Category}}	Category	each page (list: Special:Categories) represents a category of pages, with each category page displaying a list of pages in that category and optional additional text.
{{ns:15}}	{{ns:Category_talk}}	Category talk

Note that all characters of namespace prefixes are case-insensitive, so one can write e.g "mediawiki".

Colon in page name

Adding a colon to a page name does not automatically create a new namespace. To see the namespace of a page, use {{NAMESPACE}} which returns the namespace. For this page it returns "Help". The same code would return an empty string for a page in the main namespace. Similarly, {{PAGENAME}} returns the page name without prefix. For this page it returns "Page name".

Special namespace

See Help:Special page

The namespace "Special:" consists of "special pages", which are created by the software on demand, for example Special:Recentchanges.

Prefixes referring to other projects or pseudo-namespaces

A page name can not start with a prefix that is in use to refer to another project, including language codes, e.g. "en:" (list), or one of the pseudo-namespaces "Media:" and "Special".

Spaces vs. underscores

In page names, a blank space is equivalent with an underscore. A blank space is displayed in the large font title at the top of the page, the URLs show an underscore. See also below.

Case-sensitivity

If for the first letter of a page name two cases exist, as in the case of letters of the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Armenian alphabets, the following applies.

All characters of namespace prefixes are case-insensitive. The canonical form, shown in large font as page header, and in URLs generated by the system, is with one capital. Below "page name" refers to the name without the possible namespace prefix.

Case-sensitivity of the first character

The first character of the page name may or may not be case-sensitive, depending on the project. [[Help:page name]] gives on this project: Help:page name. If the first character of the page name is case-sensitive this is a link (to a different page), otherwise it is bold (a self link to this page).

Currently in all Wikimedia projects other than the Klingon DCCWikipedia and the it is not. For these two, compare e.g. tlh:jo and tlh:Jo, and with . For Wiktionary changing this is being discussed at Wiktionary:Wiktionary:Beer parlour/case-sensitivity vote.

Case where the first character is case-insensitive

The canonical form is with a capital. A link like [[template]] works like a piped link [[Template|template]]: template; unlike a redirect, the conversion shows up already on the referring page when pointing at it: in the pop-up and in the status bar (if applicable for the browser).

Note that in the case of a prefix that is not a namespace for the software, the case-insensitivity applies to the first character of the whole name, e.g. MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables and MediaWiki User's Guide: using tables are distinguished.

Case-sensitivity of the file name extension of an image

Note that even the file name extension of an image is case-sensitive: compare image:Stop_sign_us.jpg and image:Stop_sign_us.JPG

Ignored spaces/underscores

Spaces/underscores which are ignored:

those at the start and end of a full page name
those at the end of a namespace prefix, before the colon
those after the colon of the namespace prefix
duplicate consecutive spaces

Some show up in the link label, e.g. [[___help__ :_ _template_ _]] becomes ___help__ :_ _template_ _, linking to Help:Template.

However, a space before or after a "normal" colon makes a difference, e.g. MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing overview and MediaWiki User's Guide : Editing overview, and MediaWiki User's Guide:Editing overview are all distinguished, because "MediaWiki User's Guide:" is a pseudo-namespace, not a real one.

Coding of characters

A page name can not contain e.g. %41, because that is automatically converted to the character A, for which %41 is the code. [[%41]] is rendered as A. Similarly %C3%80 is automatically converted to the character À. [[%C3%80]] is rendered as À. The URL of the page is http://meta.DCCWikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80. One can argue what is the real name of the page, %C3%80 or À (a user will say the latter), but anyway there can not be distinct pages with these names.

Alphabetical order

Alphabetical order, e.g. in Special:Allpages, is (at least for that range) according to ASCII. Note that this means that "a" comes after "Z", see e.g. [1].

Variables {{PAGENAME}} and {{PAGENAMEE}}

Variable {{PAGENAME}} gives (for this page) Page name, Variable {{PAGENAMEE}} gives Page_name.

Thus in the first case a space is used, in the second case an underscore, like in URLs. Similarly À becomes the escape code %C3%80 (see above), etc.

{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}} and {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}} give for this page Help:Page name and Help:Page_name, respectively. For a page in the main namespace the page name is prefixed with a colon.

Example:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target={{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}

gives

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Help:Page_name

{{PAGENAME}} would not work.

With a Google search there is the problem that for Google the space and the underscore are different, see w:Template talk:Google.