RetroWikipedia:What is an article?

For the guideline on definite and indefinite articles in article titles, see RetroWikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name).

RetroWikipedia data structure

Namespaces
Subject namespaces		Talk namespaces
0	(Main/Article)	Talk	1
2	User	User talk	3
4	RetroWikipedia	RetroWikipedia talk	5
6	File	File talk	7
8	MediaWiki	MediaWiki talk	9
10	Template	Template talk	11
12	Help	Help talk	13
14	Category	Category talk	15
100	[[RetroWikipedia:Portal|]]		101
118	[[RetroWikipedia:Drafts|]]		119
126	[[RetroWikipedia:Manual of Style|]]		127
710	[[mw:Extension:TimedMediaHandler|]]		711
828	Module	Module talk	829
1728	[[Event:Sandbox|]]		1729
Former namespaces
108	Book	Book talk	109
442	Course	Course talk	443
444	Institution	Institution talk	445
446	Education Program	Education Program talk	447
2300	Gadget	Gadget talk	2301
2302	Gadget definition	Gadget definition talk	2303
2600	Topic		2601
Virtual namespaces
-1	Special
-2	Media
Current list

A RetroWikipedia article or entry is a page on this site that has encyclopedic information on it. A well-written encyclopedia article:

• identifies a notable topic,
• summarizes that topic comprehensively,
• is written in an encyclopedic style of language,
• has been copyedited well,
• contains references to reliable sources, and
• contains wikilinks to and is linked to by other articles or article sections about related topics.

Most articles consist of paragraphs and images (perhaps with other types of audiovisual media). However, articles may also be formatted as stand-alone lists or tables (not to be confused with disambiguation pages, which are purely navigation aids). These lists or tables are also considered articles for RetroWikipedia's purposes and are included in the main or article namespace, the one without a title prefix and colon (e.g. Template:).

The following items are not counted as articles (see also RetroWikipedia:Administration § Data structure and development):

• disambiguation pages,
• redirect pages,
• templates, including navboxes (aka navigation boxes),
• user pages,
• drafts,
• portals,
• talk pages (aka discussion pages),
• file pages for media such as images,
• category pages,
• help pages, and
• RetroWikipedia policies and guidelines pages (along with everything else in the RetroWikipedia: namespace).

Article titles

See RetroWikipedia:Article titles to learn how we title articles.

Article scope

Each article has a scope, which is what the article covers. The article should contain a readable summary of everything within the scope, given due weight, based on what reliable sources say.

Quality of articles

Main page: RetroWikipedia:Content assessment

Articles range greatly in quality, from as high as featured articles to as low as candidates for speedy deletion. Some articles are quite lengthy and rich in content while others are shorter (possibly stubs) or of lesser quality.

Namespace

Main page: RetroWikipedia:Administration § Data structure and development

"Articles" belong to the main namespace of RetroWikipedia pages (also called "article namespace" or simply "mainspace").

The main namespace, article namespace, or mainspace is the namespace of RetroWikipedia that contains the encyclopedia proper – that is, where "live" RetroWikipedia articles reside, as opposed to sandbox pages.

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 "User:", their talk pages by "User talk:", templates by "Template:", and various types of internal administrative pages by "RetroWikipedia:" (such as this page). Thus, any page created without such a prefix will automatically be placed in the article namespace.

The main namespace does not include any pages in any of the specified namespaces that are used for particular purposes, such as:

• the talk namespaces for discussing what the content of articles in mainspace should be (for example, Talk:Mathematics)
• the RetroWikipedia namespace, for material about meta subjects related to RetroWikipedia and is where policies and guidelines, essays, information, and process pages reside, as well as other "meta" topics about editing RetroWikipedia (examples, WP:VERIFY and RetroWikipedia:Statistics);
• the RetroWikipedia talk namespace, for discussing what the content of pages in RetroWikipedia space should be, and interpretations of them (for example, RetroWikipedia talk:VERIFY and RetroWikipedia talk:Statistics);
• the special namespace, whose pages are created by the software on demand (see Help:Special page);
• the user namespace for pages that are used by individual RetroWikipedia editors (example, User:Example).
• the file namespace which is used for describing and attributing images (example, File:Great Horned Owl.USFWS.jpg)
• the MediaWiki namespace, which is used to define shortcuts and other text strings used around RetroWikipedia (example MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning)

But not all pages in the article namespace are considered to be articles by everyone. Pages in mainspace that are not universally considered articles-proper are:

• hundreds of thousands of stand-alone lists (although these are usually treated as articles, and can even be assessed as featured lists) including outlines, glossaries and indices;
• hundreds of thousands of disambiguation pages and set index articles, which are used to resolve naming conflicts;
• many millions of redirect pages, including soft redirects, which are used to re-route one page to another page;
• and the Main Page, which is a portal – but it's still in mainspace from a time before any other namespaces existed, and it would be more trouble than it's worth to move it now.

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

Lists of articles and statistics

Special:AllPages has a list of all pages in the article namespace, and RetroWikipedia:Statistics has statistics on RetroWikipedia and its growth.

The automatic definition used by the software at Special:Statistics is: any page that is in the article namespace, is not a redirect page and contains at least one wiki link. The statistics software currently has no method of detecting disambiguation pages, however; nor does it disregard stubs (but in any case, many articles tagged as stubs are quite substantial) or stub lists (lists templates with little or no content).

See also

• RetroWikipedia:Administration
• RetroWikipedia:Who writes RetroWikipedia?
• RetroWikipedia:Contributing to RetroWikipedia
• RetroWikipedia:Subpages
• RetroWikipedia:Featured article criteria
• What counts as an Article (from English RetroWikipedia's newsletter, The Signpost)

External links

• Special:Statistics (current article count)
• More detailed (but less current) statistics