So I noticed I can create a page name ending with a colon (e.g. "Page:", "Article:", and "Discussion:"), unless the name (sans the colon) is a registered namespace prefix (e.g. "Help:", "Category:", and "Talk:"). So what happens if the admin registers the namespace "Discussion" when the page Discussion: exists? —Sledged (talk) 18:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever a developer makes new namespace or interwiki prefixes, nasty things happen to existing links and pages. There is a maintenance script that runs through the raw database tables and fixes things like that, moving pages and changing links, to make sure that there are no invalid links (that point somewhere other than where the software think they do). Happy‑melon21:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Subpages are still enabled in the talk namespace as they are widely used for archiving old discussion. Therefore if an article has a forward slash in its name, its corresponding talk page may display a redundant subpage level-up link at the top (for example Talk:R/2004 S 1 has a link to Talk:R at the top).
It seems no longer true as of MediaWiki 1.16. I created some test pages in a namespace that has no subpages, while its talk namespace does, and no bogus parent links showed up. Djbwiki (talk) 19:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, like with some of the other restricted characters, their special uses aren't exclusive to wikitext; but it's the specific fact that they're used that way in wikitext that prevents their being used in Wikipedia article titles. --Kotniski (talk) 15:48, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Kotniski. # has a special meaning in url's but it would have been possible for MediaWiki to allow it in article titles and wikitext if MediaWiki automatically changed it to something else in URLs. It would be an unnecessary complication to get into this instead of simply saying that it cannot be used in page titles, as we do now. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:06, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
video or audio that has no permussio
Yes I dont understand how something ca/ be video or audio and reproduced or sold with permussion or even knowledge just because someine diesnt understand stupid computers dies that give simeone the right to take advantage — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.54.39.168 (talk) 08:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The article ¡Uno!does exist, and is a redirect to Uno!. Also, neither '¡' nor '!' are mentioned as forbidden characters. What is this example meant to show? —[AlanM1 (talk)]—05:55, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If I'm looking for information on C# and type that into the search field, what will come up is C. Fortunately, C# is a popular topic, so the C article has a note at the top that anticipates this problem and tells me where to find C#, but this solution isn't universally applicable.
If I search for What the #$*! Do We Know!?, I get the totally unrelated article What The--?!. The actual article I'm looking for in this case is What the Bleep Do We Know!?. There is no way to create a redirect to help users who know only the stylized version of the title. (That's not particularly unlikely; the "Bleep" version of the title was completely absent from publicity when the film was first released in theaters.) That's really annoying behavior. I think it's fair to call it a bug.
Am I wrong? Am I misunderstanding how users are supposed to look for something like What the #$*! Do We Know!?, or is there just no way to find such subjects? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.98.2.5 (talk) 18:31, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I was actually trying out #willpower, since that is a given example here. If I go first to Special:Search then the expected result comes up first (and with C# but nothing for What the #$*! Do We Know!?) but if using the search box that the general public would use then you get the front page! Don sure where (else) to report this to get attention of the right people. Thought of asking on the front pages' talk page but decided not to. comp.arch (talk) 15:06, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Forbidden char list doesn't include underscore (_)
The Armenian eternity sign will be included in the next version of unicode and will then no longer be approporiate as an example of a non-unicode character. An alternative must be found.[1]
Among other problems, the Unicode ratio character '∶' instead of a colon ':' would confuse people who have seen the title and try to link or search it by typing a colon. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:36, 7 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Because half those example links redirect to titles with the correct case and that don't demonstrate the limitation.
Lower case first letter - Extent of limitation?
The article says that this limitation exists because the MediaWiki software is configured that way. The MediaWiki software is used by entities outside of the Wikimedia Foundation (kb.mozillazine.org is an example) and they also suffer from the limitation, which essentially confirms that it is not restricted to Wikipedia. Yet, the Wiktionary does not suffer from it, despite not having {{lowercase title}} tags in its pages. Are we to understand that the Wiktionary does not use the "MediaWiki software"? 66.130.179.8 (talk) 16:34, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's a guideline page for the English Wikipedia so it means MediaWiki is configured like that here at Wikipedia. It's the default configuration and probably used by the large majority of the thousands of wikis powered by MediaWiki, but Wiktionary has chosen another configuration. It's the setting at mw:Manual:$wgCapitalLinks. http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php has many configuration settings for wikis run by the Wikimedia Foundation. This includes Wikipedia and Wiktionary. The file contains this:
jbowiki is the Lojban Wikipedia. Lojban says: "Lojban is written almost entirely with lower-case letters; upper-case letters are used to mark stress in words that do not fit the normal rules of stress assignment, or when whitespace is omitted." PrimeHunter (talk) 17:08, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Question about the lowercase first letter
I understand people have touched on the lowercase first letter before, and that this article explains it's due to a technical restriction caused by the configuration, but I'm curious — what is the actual reason behind the MediaWiki software being configured in such a way? That particular setting has been in place for as long as I can remember, but I've never bothered to inquire about it before. Can anyone with more technical familiarity of the backend explain? ☉ nbmatt05:26, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Omitting semicolons does not correct HTML entities
From the article:
Similarly a title cannot contain HTML character entities such as / and –, even if the character they represent is allowed. In the unlikely event of such sequences appearing in a desired title, an alternative title must be constructed (for example by inserting a space after the %, or omitting a semicolon).
Hello, the article says [1] "[A Username] may not be more than 85 bytes long." I think I came across names longer than 85 characters, but then, how many characters does 85 bytes equal? Thanks, 79.241.199.66 (talk) 13:03, 17 February 2016 (UTC).[reply]
Dear IP address (it's too long, no way I'm writing that), I realize you've posted this eight months ago, but I will reply anyway. I believe that a byte is equivalent to the number of characters (letters, spaces, etc.,) Hope that helped! UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 15:13, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The software limit on username lengths cannot be changed locally and it always counts in bytes. One byte is only two hexadecimal digits like 00-ff. Four hexadecimal digits use two bytes. There are other software features which count Unicode characters and not bytes, for example {{Str len}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:07, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PrimeHunter: I noticed that it links to MediaWiki:Title-invalid-utf8 and I don't know why. It's a perfectly valid UTF-8 encoding for the Unicode Replacement character. I think it should be mentioned, and I did see it mentioned somewhere else but I can't find it now. Thank you for suggesting me to update my signature; I have updated it. --GerritCUTEDH17:19, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Gerrit: Thanks for making your signature compliant with WP:SIGLINK. The replacement character is used to replace invalid UTF characters (I don't know whether MediaWiki does this itself), so it makes sense to me that MediaWiki says "The requested page title contains an invalid UTF-8 sequence." It doesn't know you deliberately entered the character directly. Apart from the single case of redirecting the character alone, I see no reason for editors to use it in page names. It seems too obscure to increase the complexity of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) which is a guideline for editors of the English Wikipedia and not a technical specification of MediaWiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:26, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I like this notice; I think it is useful for users to understand that this is a known issue of MediaWIki, so that they will not come discussing this as a new bug. Maybe it is worthwhile to have a template called {{Slash in title}}? In addition, if this issue is solved in future, we will be able to track those pages. --Franklin Yu (talk) 19:30, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Semi-protected edit request on 14 April 2018
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I have written an article called Aṅgulimāla, with diacritics. I have found that these diacritics cause problems with certain templates, such as the text "A C-class article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Currently a good article nominee" at the top of the article. The part on "good article nominee" currently links to [2], which renders an error. Also, recently, the Legobot had a bug, which was corrected by the reviewer straight away.
Article titles with diacritics are very common, and aren't normally a problem. It sounds like you've found a bug, and you might consider reporting it, but I don't think it merits a mention on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions), since it's not a technical restriction - there's no problem linking to Talk:Aṅgulimāla/GA1.
I suspect the bug depends on a preference setting, since I'm unable to reproduce it: for me, the text at the top of the article just says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" (which is the same as for any other article). --Zundark (talk) 08:34, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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I want to add the "Wolfram|Alpha is located at Wolfram Alpha" text into the forbidden characters section. This is because "Wolfram Alpha" is sometimes called "Wolfram|Alpha" (with a vbar). That name is technically restricted.
Is an asterisk at the end of the subject, as with NM5* okay to use or should that be added to the technical restrictions in some way? Using it in search will not bring up the create an article option. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 20:17, 19 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Search treats * as a wildcard, which is why it doesn’t suggest creating articles containing this character. But there’s no problem using * (in any position) in article names, as far as I can see. --Zundark (talk) 07:00, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Must # redirect to the top?
I look at cat and I see at the top of the page: "For technical reasons, "Cat #1" redirects here. For the album, see Cat 1 (album)." This is a lot of clutter for an album that doesn't look all that notable. How would it be if it redirected to a section at the bottom of the page instead? I'm sure you can do that with #'s and anchors. The Language Learner (talk) 15:28, 5 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Semi-protected edit request on 19 November 2019
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# < > [ ] | { }
The vertical bar appears between brackets, but the character name list (immediately afterward) has it last. Please change the order of the characters to # < > [ ] { } |
Also, could you revisit the Wolfram|Alpha request, a few sections higher on this page? Someone asked to have Wolfram Alpha added to the list of examples of how restricted-character titles are handled, but it was rejected because the requester didn't provide reliable sources. Since this isn't an article, it doesn't need reliable sources; it only shows how Wikipedia pages are titled. 208.95.51.53 (talk) 13:42, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not done. Does it really matter if the pipe is listed between the brackets and braces or last? You're right that the Wolfram|Alpha example doesn't need sources, but there are plenty of examples already. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 16:19, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for giving a much better reason not to do Wolfram|Alpha. Since you asked a question about the pipe, I reopened the request. The reason for asking about the pipe is that the order of the characters should match the order in the description. Take this:
Vienna Paris Berlin Moscow Madrid Rome
These cities are the capitals of Austria, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Spain.
Technically that's correct (we named six cities and six countries, and each city is a capital of one of the countries), but the lists ought to be in the same order. Same here. The page says "For articles about these characters, see number sign, less-than sign, greater-than sign, bracket (covers several characters), and vertical bar." It appears sixth in the list of characters, but it's at the end of the list of articles about these characters. 208.95.51.53 (talk) 16:46, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Do not use Unicode characters which look similar to a wanted character, for example Chinese colon characters instead of a normal colon. Such titles would be difficult to type in links and could confuse searches, screen readers and other features.
As I was adding to the Magic Hat Brewing Company article recently, I thought of adding a redirect article for their flagship beer, known simply as "#9". Of course, if you're reading this talk page, you probably know that isn't possible, as there's no # allowed in article titles (as I just learned). It's no big deal, as there's no way that the #9 beer is notable enough to justify its own article. But, it got me to thinking - what if there was something whose name started with # that deserved an article? I have to think that this has happened before. What does Wikipedia do in this case? JimKaatFan (talk) 21:44, 2 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter: Yeah I added it at Number nine, since that's the name of the beer. I don't think adding it at 9 (disambiguation) is appropriate, since the beer isn't known as "9", it's actually known as "#9". I was just curious. Sounds like there's no place that I could put a useful redirect. Thanks for the info! JimKaatFan (talk) 00:13, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I decided to change the sections in alphabetical order to make the sections easier to find. I looked at the section titles correctly to arrange them. Seventyfiveyears (talk)14:54, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Removing "for technical reasons" when there's a dab
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Please remove this sentence:
In other cases (such as names containing restricted characters) it is necessary to adopt and display a different title.
and add this:
In other cases (such as names containing restricted characters) it is necessary to adopt and display a different title. Furthermore, certain characters can be used in titles only under certain conditions.
Why? The content's already on the page; how could it be contentious to summarise this content? Would you revert such a change if someone else made it? Before today, this page has had just seven discussions in the last two years; it's highly unlikely that someone will reply.
Hyphenation Expert seemed to discover a work around for titles that would otherwise be in the wrong namespace. While this page states that Except in the case of initial colons and the w: and en: prefixes, DISPLAYTITLE will not work in the above situations, Hyphenation Expert placed {{DISPLAYTITLE:''Help<span style="position:absolute; top:-9999px;">!</span>: A Day in the Life''}} on the page Help!: A Day in the Life, which seems to render the title correctly.
