Wikipedia:Portal namespace (setting-up debate)

A namespace is a type of page in a wiki project. Page names with prefixes are probably associated with a category. Each wiki using the MediaWiki software has 16+2 namespaces: the main namespace, where page names have no prefix, 15 auxiliary types, each with its own prefix, and two pseudo-namespaces.

For more information on what a namespace is see: Wikipedia:Namespace and Help:Namespace.

Recently the English Wikipedia has imported the idea of Portals from the Polish and German Wikipedias. The idea of a Portal is to help readers and/or editors to manoeuvre their way through Wikipedia. These range from Portal:Cricket (which is designed just with readers in mind) to Wikiportals such as Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Art or Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Archaeology (see Wikipedia:Wikiportal for a full list).

Because of their reader element, they need to be accessible to readers - which suggests they should be in the main articlespace. However, they are not articles. The editor-related element of some of the Portals suggest they could go in Wikipediaspace, but no reader should ever have to go to Wikipediaspace.

The easy solution would be to have a separate Portal namespace, which could develop its own customs, and could be linked to from the article namespace. A pseudo-Portal namespace has already developed on the German and Polish Wikipedias, and the Portal:Cricket page is already in a pseudo-Portal namespace. However, by formalising the concept of a Portal namespace we could make sure that Portals do not go in the article count, and that, by having talk pages of the form Portal talk:Cricket rather than [[Talk:Portal:Cricket]] they are clearly distinguished from the article namespace.

I understand from the developers that creating a new formal Portal namespace is easy (we just need to move any articles beginning with "Portal:" whilst it is being done - and so far there is only one such page) (that no longer needs to be done). However, they would like to know if there is consensus for such a new Portal namespace before proceeding. So this page has been developed to see if such a consensus can be formed.

Note that there is also a similar discussion to this on Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal. This page, however, is a formal proposal, jguk 17:28, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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Please add your comments on the proposal that we have a formal Portalspace below

  • I give my full support. – ABCD 17:34, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Support) Approve. --Just my 2 cents -- Hemanshu 17:38, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Support) Approve, not sure if I'd use the portals, but I can see their use --SPUI (talk) 18:14, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Support) Wholly approve. The namespace must receive the same colour background as the main namespace. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 20:56, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Support) It's clear many would apply the article standards to portals if they were simply put in the main namespace, and reject them on those grounds. A new namespace would allow for new rules. JRM · Talk 21:40, 2005 May 7 (UTC)
  • (Support) Approve. Ausir 00:19, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Support) DO IT. Nickptar 01:15, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Support) Good idea, but don't move the Main Page. — Dan | Talk 01:19, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Support) This would be a valuable feature to have in Wikipedia. тəті 01:21, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • (Oppose) Objection - useless namespace cruft. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 02:41, 2005 May 8 (UTC)
    (Support) Why? For every other page, "X:Y" turns into "X talk:Y". For portals, "X:Y" is turning into "Talk:X:Y". This is completely illogical. Support for custom namespaces is already in the code and it works perfectly. r3m0t talk 09:24, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
    Because you can't have a vote where everyone's in agreement, you groupthinking zombie you! —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 01:55, 2005 May 10 (UTC)
  • (Support) It doesn't hurt anyone and makes things less cluttered. Sounds fine by me BrokenSegue 03:57, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wholeheartedly support. This is my favoured approach to pages that are neither articles nor pure process support. --Theo (Talk) 10:11, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support or Approve or whatever. Jon the Geek 17:34, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
    With so many words for "Support" being used I've added a standard pair (Support/Oppose) to each comment for clarity. ed g2stalk 18:37, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. ed g2stalk 18:37, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Support). Namespacecruft could be a problem and creation of new namespaces should not be taken lightly, but this is one instance where a seperate namespace is helpful. I'd even go so far as to suggest moving the Main Page into portalspace (Portal:Main Page) for consistency. -- grm_wnr Esc 11:38, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral. I definitely think we need reader portals, and they can certainly be good in "Portal:" I think there's also a need for other kind of encyclopedic "Meta-matter" that is related to articles and article content but not the project or site itself. We have Wikipedia: for our project and site issues, but things like topic guides, smartly-written (not auto-generated) article directories, these reader portals, even study questions and guides (which other encyclopedias definitely include) could live in this meta-space. I'm not supporting "Portal:" at this time because I'd prefer not to end up with "Portal:", "Topic:", "Directory:", "Study:" etc. Demi T/C 19:26, 2005 May 9 (UTC) ((I should clarify that what I'm saying is, there is a need for a "portalspace" but I think the name "Portal:" is too specific to the WikiPortal application proposed Demi T/C 03:34, 2005 May 10 (UTC)))
    • Note: Topic:, Directory:, Study: are not being proposed here. I don't understand what they would be used for. Portal: is for a very specific purpose: avoiding self-references while increasing functionality for readers. From what I can divine, Topic: is basically a category, and I cannot imagine that either of the other two would fit in with WP:WIN. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 19:38, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • A topic guide is a hand-written guide to learning about a piece of material that incorporates, summarizes and references other material in the same volume. There's certainly nothing in WP:WIN that says that Wikipedia can't be a study guide--certainly other encyclopedias contain both topic guides and study questions. A directory is a hand-written (and therefore informative) directory to articles of particular interest: we use Wikipedia: pages, categories and "List of" articles for this currently, depending on the application, but they all have their weaknesses (Wikipedia: articles can't be linked from the main namespace; "List of" articles should really be lists of the items themselves, not the articles, and Category: pages are inflexible (they always have the autogenerated list; indeed that's their purpose). Category:Spoken articles is, for example, the kind of the thing that would go into a hand-constructed directory. These all need a place to go where they "avoid self-reference" yet "increase functionality for users." Demi T/C 03:31, 2005 May 10 (UTC)
        • Then a topic guide is a wikibook. I don't see that any of the other points are applicable, personally. The spoken articles category is only applicable with reference to Wikipedia, and I don't see any of the other points applying in this discussion. What you're saying sounds like the slippery slope fallacy to me. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 22:13, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
          • I understand that you believe none of this information belongs in Wikipedia, yet "reader portals" do. That's fine. I'm sorry to say, however, I don't understand what you mean by a "slippery slope," as all I'm saying is that I think "WikiPortals" only is too tight a restriction on article-related metaspace. Demi T/C 22:28, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
  • Support. Would definitely help readers and would also help editors find Wikiprojects and related topics. Wikiacc 21:39, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm.. Kind of similar functionality to Categories. Maybe those could just be expanded instead? - Omegatron 23:09, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. How soon can we do it? ;) -- ALoan (Talk) 20:29, 12 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Also move Main Page to Portal:main. -MarSch 16:04, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Neutralitytalk 16:28, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
    • Might I ask why?
  • Support on the conditionthat you stop making up compoundwords where a perfectlygood alternative exists. We're not speaking German here you know. What's wrong with "portal namespace"? -- Tim Starling 09:14, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support I think it's a great idea. Tuf-Kat 22:12, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - I think its a brilliant idea. BTW, when I first tryed to add this comment, I was told it redirected to Wikipedia:Portal namepace. I went there and only then could I edit. Could someone verify that it's not just me? --Celestianpower hab 22:58, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support --Sasa Stefanovic 23:57, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support strongly. We need something like that. --Dungo (talk) 00:10, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support or approve, whichever is "yes". It's the cleanest solution. Awk 01:33, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Sounds like a good idea...I just wonder if we'll end up with a bunch of un-maintained portals? raylu 02:14, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. I see no downside to this. Technically it's just a matter of putting an entry into a database table. If the portal builders run out of steam we've lost nothing. If they produce something exciting and useful for readers (Portal:Cricket is already close to that in my opinion) then we have a new approach to Wikipedia. Also by having the namespace and encouraging people to use it we empower them to produce new approaches to our content that we would never dream of. Which is what Wikipedia is all about. --Tony SidawayTalk 03:17, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Make a Project: namespace too while your at it. -St|eve 03:54, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object, we have too many namespaces as it is. Radiant_>|< 12:15, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. the wub "?/!" 13:10, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I can already think of one page that should definitely be in Portal. That's List of people by name. I'm sure there are others that fit as well. Superm401 | Talk 18:02, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. It seems that it will be a very small namespace, but a useful one. And anyway, all this discussion gives me an excuse not to get round to implementing Portal Chemistry ;P Physchim62 20:57, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It's a great idea. ral315 22:08, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. I think this could be quite useful, as it opens up Wikipedia a bit to people with diverse interests.--Pharos 04:43, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose - This duplicates the conceptual scope of the category pages. You were aware you could put complex wiki-markup on these pages? - Aya 42 T C 17:41, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. For subjects with portals, related categories should be removed as redundant. Categories should be limited to "needy" topics that need expansion, clarification, coherence, etc. --Merovingian (t) (c) 23:31, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Andre (talk) 21:15, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. CG 08:41, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Comments on Main Page in portal namespace

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