Evan-
So, I'm trying to figure out if it'd be a good idea to use rewrite rules to make pseudo-directories for the different page namespaces. For example, rather than:
http://www.wikitravel.org/article/User:Evan http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Special:Upload http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Wikitravel:Help http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Talk:Switzerland
Instead of doing this, I'd try to get rid of the /article/, put everything in the rootdir and try to use mod_rewrite for all requests which do not contain ^/images/ or ^/cache/. Then you'd have a relatively clean access structrue. The "/" as namespace identifier has the additional problem of being easily confused with the "/" as subpage handler.
Regards,
Erik