Extension:SpecialNamespaces

The SpecialNamespaces extension allows administrators to create and modify custom namespaces without directly editing the configuration files. It is based on Extension:Interwiki code, originally released under GPL by Stephanie Amanda Stevens. This extension requires memcached.

History
This code was intended to be a short-lived 'kludge', adapting or twisting an existing extension to fill a new task.

There was one branch ("wikidata") of MediaWiki 1.6 which included a partially-complete Special:Namespaces editor. Namespaces could simply be created, renamed or removed using a handy web interface. While some of the proposed capabilities (such as automatic moves of existing pages into the new namespaces) hadn't been implemented, Special:Namespaces did appear to have the makings of a useful tool.

A Special:Namespaces page was proposed for inclusion in core MediaWiki code from version 1.7 onward, but this never happened. While some of the code was used in OmegaWiki, the main MediaWiki package still lacks a built-in namespace editor.

As some wikis (including a few in the Uncyclopedia Babel series) were actively using Special:Namespaces (MW1.6-wikidata) in 2006, a need arose to preserve at least minimal namespaces functionality despite site upgrades to newer MediaWiki versions. As the original Special:Interwiki is GPL'ed, a modified version was hastily contrived to provide Special:Namespaces functions. This 'temporary solution' unfortunately still exists.

While the extension has been updated once (to incorporate changes made to the original Special:Interwiki), it is unsupported code and is neither created nor maintained by any of the authors of the original Special:Interwiki extension.