Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Contents/Archive 4

message: I have added the Outline of Knowledge (Propædia) of Encyclopedia Britannica to the Categorical Indices. The Outline is the result of the collaboration of many eminent academics and specialists, and is an excellent compendium of all human knowledge. I believe it merits inclusion in the "content listings" box.
Palaeovia 03:52, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ps: The Outline of Knowledge can be found at  for the curious. Palaeovia 02:39, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outline of Knowledge from Britannica 

message: I noticed that most contributors are happy to show off what they know, but are less up-front about what they don't know.  Especially in science, only a few are willing to admit ignorance. As Wiki is for everybody, I would suggest to frame content more in terms of what we know and what we don't know. This might help avoid intimidation of simple minds like mine, and help knowledge seekers get a better picture of the limits of knowledge and the challenges ahead.--Robert van der Hoff 01:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We have some lists of unsolved problems in various fields; this sounds like the the sort of thing you're looking for – Gurch 15:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Limits of Knowledge 

message: Reading this page for the first time and clicking the links left me confused.
Is there something  anywhere that explains the structure of the wiki database and how pages, articles, lists, topics, portals relate to each other?
76.80.92.186 06:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The structure of the wiki database itself is quite complex, and it's not necessary to understand it in order to contribute. Wikipedia uses MediaWiki, open-source wiki software; documentation for that can be found at http://www.mediawiki.org. Wikipedia is split into various namespaces, which separate pages that are actually part of the encyclopedia from pages that are used for maintenance, administration and so forth. All articles are in the "main" namespace, which simply means there is no prefix before their title. So Cheese, Bear and Pokemon are all articles. Other pages have a prefix – for example the contents page is Wikipedia:Contents; the prefix "Wikipedia:" identifies it as a project page, rather than an article. Similarly, the "About Wikipedia" page (Wikipedia:About) and the Featured Content page (Wikipedia:Featured content) are both project pages. "Lists" are just a particular kind of article, there's nothing special about them, except that they're usually called "List of ..." something. "Topics" don't really exist outside of the Wikipedia:Featured topics page; they're just collections of related articles that are particularly good. "Portals" are part of another namespace, so they all start with "Portal:"; they provide an overview of particular topics within the encyclopedia (for example, Portal:Fish links to all kinds of stuff about fish). There are other namespaces too; for example, the "User:" namespace, which allows registered users to provide some information about themselves if they so wish, without interfering with the enyclopedia itself; and the "Special:" namespace, which contains 'special' report pages that can't be edited, for example the page which shows how many articles we have. Each namespace also has a corresponding "Talk:" namespace where that page can be discussed. For example, you can discuss the article Earth at Talk:Earth, and the page Wikipedia:Contents at Wikipedia talk:Contents (which is where we are now) – Gurch 10:51, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question re Further Explanation of page 

message: I've boldly reverted some of the changes Moe Epsilon made. To hopefully rectify the problems he saw (see this thread for details), I've placed the  in a selfref div, instead of just removing it. I've also refilled that template with the contents it had before, which better mirror this page's listing. Hopefully that works for everyone. --Quiddity 17:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The self-ref divs works too. — Moe ε 20:28, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Namespace and selfref 

message: Please see a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Contents pages, and lists of lists on the Wikipedia:Contents pages, and specifically on the namespace they belong in. Thanks. --Quiddity 17:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: RfC on Lists and Contents pages