We do not mean article. We actually probably mean "main" namespace. We should not be using "article" in the software.

Why not?

Because Wikis do not have "articles". They have "pages."

Wikipedias have "articles". And we can change the words to reflect that. . . later. For now, the software is "wiki-centric" rather than "wikipedia-centric."

That makes sense :)

The correct solution here is actually to use the 'blanknamespace' message. This message is set to '(Main)' by default, but is overridden on Wikipedia to be '(Article)'.

Fixed in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#change,6418.