Help:MediaWiki namespace
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The MediaWiki namespace is a namespace containing the text to be displayed in certain places in the interface. Only administrators, can edit pages in this namespace. In addition, pages in this namespace ending with .css or .js are furthermore restricted to interface administrators and interface editors. However, all editors can propose changes on appropriate talk pages.
Overview[edit]
The MediaWiki namespace allows administrators and interface editors to customise or translate the MediaWiki web interface.
 | Some messages must have HTML links, and others must have wikilinks. To find out which is which, you must know where the message is used in the interface. |
Because the changes to these pages have a global effect, they are protected from editing, and only administrators have the ability to edit them. Non-admins who would like to request a minor or substantive changes should be discussed at BattleTechWiki:Requests for comment. MediaWiki pages can not and should not have documentation on the page itself for several reasons: among other things <noinclude> tags usually do not function in this namespace and the amount of data in MediaWiki space needs to be kept low for performance reasons. Instead, a description of the message can be put at the top of the talk page. Some messages have old documentation available by setting the 'language' to qqq. For instance, MediaWiki:Login has old, and somewhat incorrect, documentation at MediaWiki:Login/qqq. Don't update the /qqq messages, instead update the top of the talk page.
Overview of messages[edit]
The template {{MediaWiki messages}} (shown below) lists a selection of key messages. Not included are:
- Edit filter warnings, as there many of these, and they can be found here.
- Tags added automatically to edit summaries by edit filters, which are listed at Special:Tags.
- Messages describing Preferences options (Mediawiki:Tog-) – search for these.
- Messages providing tooltips (Mediawiki:Tooltip-) – search for these.
- MediaWiki:Uploadtext and related subpages (the subpages transclude pages from BattleTechWiki: space).
- CSS files, which are described at MediaWiki talk:Common.css.
A complete list of messages is available at Special:Allmessages. MediaWiki messages serving the software default are called "unmodified" and appear as red links in the Allmessages list, and do not appear in a Prefix-based search as they don't technically exist as pages. Because Special:Allmessages displays all system messages and it's contents (the page is over 1 MB) some users might prefer to view these messages alphabetically: @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
For a list of all MediaWiki pages, see Special:Prefixindex/MediaWiki:, or search the MediaWiki namespace. This includes custom titleblacklist notices, or edit filter notices and other pages that is not part of standard MediaWiki messages.
Finding system messages[edit]
You can find a message key by browsing BattleTechWiki in the special pseudo-language code qqx, which can be done by appending ?uselang=qqxto the URL, or &uselang=qqx if the URL already contains a ? character (example). All the messages will then be replaced by their message keys, so you can identify which message is responsible. Messages that are always in the content language will not be shown using qqx. Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets has the option "Add a toolbox link to reload the current page with the system message names exposed". This gadget uses the same qqx you can add manually.
When the URL includes a fragment that links to a particular point on the page such as a section or a tab like e.g. special page "Preferences" you will have to add the fragment after the uselang parameter, e.g. Special:Preferences?uselang=qqx#mw-prefsection-rendering.
Message keys which depend on data sent by the user may not be shown when qqx is used. Allmessages from the API lists around 26,000 messages. They can be searched for a string with Ctrl+F in many browsers. Note that the underlying wikitext is often shown and not only the rendered text.
A list of all messages can be seen at Special:AllMessages.
See also[edit]
- MediaWiki namespace in version 1.2.6
- BattleTechWiki:Template limits
- Tools by tags - externally hosted tools which complement the MediaWiki software