FamilySearch Wiki:Main namespace

The main namespace or article namespace is the namespace of the FamilySearch Research Wiki that contains the research articles proper—that is, where FamilySearch Wiki articles reside.

The main namespace is the default namespace and does not use a prefix in article page names. This is distinct from other namespaces where page names are always prefixed by an indicator of the particular namespace in which the page resides. For example, all user pages are prefixed by, their talk pages by   templates by   and various types of internal administrative pages by   (such as this page). Thus, any page created without such a prefix will automatically be placed in the article namespace.

Not all pages in the article namespace are considered to be articles. The most notable exceptions are:
 * the Main Page;
 * for statistical purposes, some extremely short and simple pages (the criteria have varied over time);
 * thousands of disambiguation pages which are used to resolve naming conflicts; and
 * many redirect pages which are used to re-route one page to another page;

Every page in the main namespace can have a companion talk page, and these belong to the "Talk" namespace, i.e., the pagenames start with the prefix "Talk:", followed by the name of the page in the main namespace. For example "Talk:FamilySearch Wiki" is the talk page for FamilySearch Wiki's article on FamilySearch Wiki itself.

Sandboxes do not belong in the main namespace
As pages in the main namespace are indexed and returned in search results, sandboxes should not be created in the main namespace.


 * Personal sandboxes should be created in the user namespace.
 * Sandboxes related to projects should be a subpage of the project.