Woo!  Bike sheds.  So.  

There is no namespace table, and so the namespace is not an id.

So, I'm not sure that is necessary for the term "identifier" which I assume that "id" abbreviates.  Regardless it seems clear that these numbers are thought of as primary identifiers of a namespace that can otherwise have many names.  For example, see this snippet from the result of this query: http://es.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=namespaces|namespacealiases&format=jsonfm

"1": {
                "id": 1,
                "case": "first-letter",
                "*": "Discusi\u00f3n",
                "subpages": "",
                "canonical": "Talk"

},

Yay more names!

Veteran researchers can rid themselves of the pain of old names, but new researchers shouldn't have to deal with legacy naming.

I don't see us getting rid of legacy naming right now.  I don't see how adding a new name helps anyone -- veteran or newbie.  

However, if we were to develop a mapping of canonical names and pursue that from here forward, we might be able to move beyond the old names for the most important data sources in a few of years.   However, I'm skeptical that we'll ever be able to change any production DB field names. 

-Aaron

On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 1:37 PM, Andrew Otto <aotto@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Oh I would never imply TOO verbose.  I am a verbose kinda guy!


On Dec 10, 2014, at 16:20, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Are you suggesting we buck any ugliness of the xml field names and choose the most consistent and elegant ones we can think of?!  :D :D

Are you implying I'm too verbose?  If so - you're right.  And I like how you put it.  Yes.  Just because many people have tried it different ways doesn't mean they had the liberty to think of good, clear names that make researchers happy.  But that's exactly what our mission is here - so let's make researchers happy. 
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