I find that the overall extra work it creates outweighs the practical benefits.
Right now if we try to implement a namespace system, all links from ucapps, the forum, and elsewhere on the web get broken.
Right now, because there is no defined structure, pages get added and removed and info moved…so we already have that problem 
But the structure could be flat or heirachical, whatever works best. I’ll say before I go on, that I’m totally feeling where you’re coming from; but I think that you’re overestimating the health of the wiki now, and the difficulty of namespace linking.
If a person (like me) is an occasional wiki contributor, and decides that the community could be well-served by creating a new page, they will need to familiarize themself with an established namespace convention instead of just writing a document and saving it. Sometimes you see a person in a forum who posts some really great nugget of information, and so you tell them “dude, you should put that in the Wiki”. But if you want people to document stuff, you need to give them a clear path to do so, unencumbered by additional rules they must think about prior to sharing information.
That’s what the templates are for - the user doesn’t have to think about it, just go to the appropriate section and paste in a template. Finding the appropriate section is a no-brainer thanks to the namespace listing, and the rest of that section (:wiki_layout namespace) which is there specifically to tell names how to do stuff. On top of that, the template already has a space allocated for pretty much everything i could think of documenting, so the need to create new pages would be rare.
no need for a hierarchal system, from a browsing perspective.
Not from a browsing perspective, but from a filing perspective it’s heaps better. Take a look at the files on the wiki now… imagine that all those files were in a flat structure 
It also highlights the need for a naming convention for the wiki regardless of flat vs hierachical structure. What a mess…
If we must move to a hierarchal system, it should probably be hierarchal in the same way a user is likely to browse the Wiki, otherwise it doesn’t make sense.
That was the first specification we had - it had to work like how users keep requesting it, with a start-end approach (of course you can always jump to the middle via the search engine)
For example, right now I might go top>projects>user Projects>MB-6582>baseboard parts, and then that page might have a link to the MBHP Bankstick principle, which is already integrated into the board. So if we had namespaces, we would have a link like ../../../../MBHP/modules/bankstick.
That’s a great example of one of the problems with the current structure. Banksticks aren’t mb6582 specific, so info about them should not be filed under the 6582 pages. The link would be absolute, like /MBHP/modules/bankstick., no need to step back with ../../
With a flat namespace (which even works fine for a Wiki as huge as Wikipedia), I could just have just linked to “bankstick” and be done with it.
well maybe yeh. but then what if we need another page about banksticks, say, mb6582 related (seeing as it’s a different board)… Would it’s new name follow a flat naming convention or a hierarchical namespace tree? Either way, it’s something that the name has to learn. But it’s not rocket science, it’s already laid out in the wiki where it would go.
People who are contributing already have their brains full of component values, board layouts, ribbon pinouts, c and assembly code, and excuses for why they don’t have time for their girlfriends, so anything that makes this stuff faster is appreciated.
Agreed 1000%. Ease of use is really important. Hindrance to documentation would could turn the 5 volunteers we have into 2. That’s bad.
The flat Wiki we have (mostly) had so far has been slowly but steadily becoming a better resource,
Yeh but there’s three times as much work going into maintaining it, as there is adding content 
That’s a problem that requires a structure to follow, but it’s nothing to do with flat/heirarchical approaches.
and I can’t see how rearranging/renaming all the pages and imposing new rules can do anything to improve that.
Then you aren’t cleaning up as much as me I think that flat vs heirarchical is debateable, but the need for structure on that wiki is unquestionable IMO. Seen our THREE FAQs? hehehehe Sure the info is there, but it’s a mess.
Thing is, on the very rare occasion that someone needs to make a new page, they will need to spend some time to maintain a healthy wiki, and that will either mean learning a namespace (tree view, familiar to newbies) or a naming schema (:root:MBHP:modules:AIN vs root_mbhp_modules_AIN). But yeh, that’d be rare.
