On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Roan Kattouw
<roan.kattouw(a)home.nl> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop…
Note that namespaces with an ID of 100 or higher are specific to enwiki
and may have different names or not be used at all on other wikis. To
get an accurate list for another wiki, ask that wiki's api.php .
The same is pretty much true for all namespaces. There's no guarantee
that any namespaces other than main will have the same names on other
wikis. To ensure that, you need to use the canonical name if one
exists (it's helpfully provided in the API result . . . actually, what
does it mean that "Portal" and "Portal talk" are canonical?
shouldn't
there be no canonical attribute if the namespace is custom?).
Agree. Portal and Portal talk could still be acceptable, since the
namespace ids 100-101 are more or less reserved for portals across the
wikis.
What is scaryier is seeing <ns id="102" canonical="Cookbook">
on
enwikibooks whereas the same ns 102 mean Wikiproject on some pedias.
Since the API provides namespacealiases linked to the id, not to the
"informal canonical name" I see no reason to keep the canonical
parameter on the extra ns.