Help talk:Namespaces

Typo?

The main article states this:

When creating links to pages in a different namespace, there are additional shortcuts you can use. Note that these should only be necessary when linking outside of the current namespace. The format is slightly different, in that it uses {{}}s instead of [[]]s. The way to use these is to choose the appropriate two-letter abbreviation, AR, DF, BS, RG, MW, TR, BM, OB, or SI, and format the link like so:

[[Oblivion:High Elf|Altmer]]

This will automatically create a link to Oblivion:Altmer from anywhere on the site which looks like Altmer.

Shouldn't it state this:

When creating links to pages in a different namespace, there are additional shortcuts you can use. Note that these should only be necessary when linking outside of the current namespace. The format is slightly different, in that it uses {{}}s instead of [[]]s. The way to use these is to choose the appropriate two-letter abbreviation, AR, DF, BS, RG, MW, TR, BM, OB, or SI, and format the link like so:

{{OB|Altmer}}

This will automatically create a link to Oblivion:Altmer from anywhere on the site, but will look like this: Altmer

? --GuildKnight^Talk2me 15:56, 9 July 2008 (EDT)

Well, something needs to be done; the question is what. It's not a typo, but rather a bot "correcting" a template that it thinks needs to be replaced. The whole reason the bot goes through and changes those templates is because we don't really want to be maintaining such templates on the site long-term: they add unnecessary server processing and introduce various minor complications, without providing any real benefit other than saving editors from typing a few keystrokes.

Given that we don't really want these templates being used, do we want a section on this help page advertising them? Even if we do want to keep the section, it should be changed to more accurately reflect site practices (for example, state that the templates are always bot-replaced, so you won't ever see them being used on articles). --Nephele^Talk 18:39, 9 July 2008 (EDT)

Which is why I thought I'd ask instead of just changing it; I figured it was something like that.  ;) Whatever is decided, that's fine by me, I had just noticed that it doesn't really make sense as-is. More discussion, I suppose, would be needed to determine if we would rather remove the section describing the namespace shortcut templates, or add a note clarifying that they are not encouraged and will always be bot-replaced. --GuildKnight^Talk2me 19:53, 9 July 2008 (EDT)

Oops. Well for the moment I've changed it back. As far as the future is concerned, I think it's fair enough that the templates exist as they do make it a little easier for users making large numbers of edits, and it's not a problem for RoBoT to go through and expand them every so often (I'll exclude this page from now on!) –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 01:27, 10 July 2008 (EDT)