Aryeh Gregor wrote:
On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Roan Kattouw roan.kattouw@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.