Help:MediaWiki namespace
The MediaWiki namespace is a way to change the interface - that is how the site looks and the words you see outside of the articles.
There are messages in an array called $messages in a file called MessagesXx.php, where Xx is the ISO 639 language code of the language being used. For example, the English version is MessagesEn.php. These can be overridden using the MediaWiki namespace. For example, the "From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" message which you can see at the top of each page is available at MediaWiki:Tagline.
For more help and information about it, please see m:MediaWiki namespace.
Special:AllMessages is a table showing all of the interface messages. It shows the text before it was changed and the current text, and includes edit links.
See also
- Wikipedia:Template messages -- a list of custom messages using the template mechanism