Last modified: 2010-05-15 15:42:43 UTC

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Bug 11105 - Custom Namespace Renders Exisiting Pages Inaccessable
Custom Namespace Renders Exisiting Pages Inaccessable
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
General/Unknown (Other open bugs)
1.8.x
All All
: Lowest minor (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2007-08-29 01:37 UTC by ObsessiveMathsFreak
Modified: 2010-05-15 15:42 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description ObsessiveMathsFreak 2007-08-29 01:37:07 UTC
Creation of a new namespace can render it impossible to access inappropriately named existing pages.

==REPORT OF PROBLEM==

A user on the wiki had created a page such as "Guide:A_Page" on the wiki, but no "Guide" namespace existed. Upon creation of the "Guide" namespace "Guide:A_Page" redirected to a nonexistant page in the Guide namespace and displayed a page creation page.

The original page could not be accessed. Even using a leading colon for the default name space, e.g. "wiki/:Guide:A_Page" or variants thereof, all lead to a redirection to the Guide namespace.

However, the page still existed and could be found on wiki/index.php?title=Special:Allpages&namespace=0. In addition, if the the page(s) were part of a category, they still appeared on that Category page. However in both these cases, all links redirected to the "Guide" namespace page.

==STEPS TO REPRODUCE ERROR==

1. Create a new page with a colon, as if denoting a namespace, e.g. Problem:Trouble_Ahead
2. Once this page is created, create the appropriate namespace, e.g. 100 => "Problem"
3. Once the namespace is created the above problem should be observed.

The issue was resolved as follows

==WORKAROUD==

1. Rename the problem namespace. e.g. "Problem" is renamed to "Solution".
2. Move the now available pages with the namespace prefix to appropriate pages, e.g. "Problem:Trouble_Ahead" -> "Problem_Solved:Trouble_Ahead" or "Trouble_Ahead", etc. whichever is appropriate
3. Rename the problem namespace back to its intended name, e.g. "Solution" -> "Problem"
4. The original pages are now available and can be moved into the appropriate namespace

==ISSUE==

Mediawiki cannot unambiguously and uncategorically access a page in the default namespace if a namespace conflict exists. There is no way to explicitly visit a page in the default namespace under these conditions.
Comment 1 Rob Church 2007-08-29 01:39:43 UTC
This is quite well explained on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Using_custom_namespaces#Dealing_with_existing_pages. The solution is to run maintenance/namespaceDupes.php.

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