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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot II (talk | contribs) at 06:41, 24 August 2010 (Archiving 2 thread(s) from Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Old page header

Discussions about the MediaWiki namespace should take place mainly on this page to avoid confusion

Post a new question if you don't want to wait for the whole page to be loaded. But consider skimming to see if your concern is already being discussed. Also, do not push the "save page" button multiple times when posting this way! The server is overloaded but it will usually respond eventually and add your question to the page multiple times!

Summary of Archives

Numbered items correspond to Sections in the relevant Archive page.

  • /Archive 1
    1. Bug reports changed to Contact us and meta:MediaWiki feature requests and bug reports created (read more)
    2. ~~~~ signatures cannot be added to messages. They must be put in manually (read more)
    3. {{subst:test}} should be used when a user makes an edit while testing the wikipedia, it should be posted on a user's or anon's talk page, not on the article itself (read more)
    4. More MediaWiki custom messages can be added without slowing down the server (read more)
    5. Page protection message and link discussion: (read more)
    6. No consensus reached on whether MediaWiki messages should be protected: (read more)
    7. Discussion links were prefixed with a < symbol to improve readability: (read more)
    8. From the SUBST vs MSG discussions the consensus seems to be to use msg in most cases: (read more)
  • /Archive 2
    1. Self link issue not resolved: (read more)
    2. Discussions about focussing discussion on this page: (read more)
    3. Protecting this page -- consensus is no: (read more)
    4. MSGs will not mess up pages that use wikipedia articles: (read more)
    5. Med and legal messages no longer needed because of the disclaimer link at the top : (read more)
    6. Where does MediaWiki:Disabled go: (read more)

What does everybody think of changing:

  • "my talk" to "talk" (a bit iffy)
  • "my watchlist" to "watchlist"
  • "my contributions" to "contributions" (a bit iffy as well)

in the bar at the top (in MonoBook) as they seem redundant to me and they are taking too much space (plus I hate this MS trend). Dori | Talk 19:09, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

  • Support "my watchlist" -> "watchlist". Changing "wy watchlist" to "watchlist" is a good idea IMO, as it's similar to "preferences": you only ever deal with your own. On the other hand, "my contributions" is useful in distinction to "user contributions", and "my talk" probably helps distinguish article "discussions" for new users; your "iffys" suggest you've had similar thoughts... — Matt 22:13, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • I support the watchlist one. The other two, as you said, are a bit iffy. So it'd be best to leave them as is. blankfaze | ?? 23:21, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Change 'em all. And not just in Monobook: My Watchlist and My Contribs appear in Standard, too. Death to cutesy-poo interfacing! My opinion, –Hajor 23:45, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Just "watchlist". It may just be my own cynicism, but I imagine that the "My" helps some users distinguish between their own User talk: and that page's Talk:, and between their own contributions page and those of others. - jredmond 02:16, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Leave well alone. They shouldn't overlap anything else AFAICT: they sit above the page tabs. How narrow is your screen? --Phil | Talk 08:34, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)
  • Lose the "my" from them all. They appear in a row after your username. The fact that the row starts with my username makes it obvious that all those functions relate to my things, so I'd have thought it would be perfectly obvious without "my this" and "my that" Tjwood 13:32, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • The "my" sucks. Sucks hard. End of story. What are we trying to be? An encyclopedia? Or a cutse-pie kiddy-club? Tannin 15:54, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

From what I gather, most people wouldn't have a problem with changing "my watchlist". Yes, for the other two, there is a concern that some people may confuse it with other page's talk, and other people's contributions. However, as has been pointed out, these are on a place all by themselves. Perhaps we can convince Gwicke to put some character in there to reinforce this (something like User: or User --- ), would this be enough to alleviate those concerns? Dori | Talk 16:51, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

  • Seconded: just as WP isn't paper it isn't M$ either ... When we write/edit an article we all (should?!) choose our words carefully for meaning, so we should on links. Actually "Edit this page" could also be reduced to just "Edit page" IMHO. --VampWillow 22:56, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
OK, I've changed "My watchlist" to "watchlist]], I'm not sure there is enough support for the other two. Should we hold a vote? (p.s. sorry for the delay, I was on a wikivacation). Dori | Talk 15:31, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)

I'm using standard (damn me) but I foresee getting confused if I'm at another user's page and want to see his contributions. Also, I think it's more newbie friendly, and I like the view that WP tailor for the newbie rather than the regular attendee. --bodnotbod 00:03, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

I don't like this as it is now. I have "My talk, Preferences, Watchlist, My contributions"—it seems a little inconsistent. —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 17:35, 2004 Jun 28 (UTC)

Please keep the "my", it is important to highlight functionality that is specific to the logged in user.--Eloquence*

Most of those who commented here disagree. It's pretty obvious that those links apply to only the logged in user IMO, perhaps the design can better reflect that, but I really hate this trend MS has started. Dori | Talk 23:53, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)
I don't think it's obvious at all, even I had to adjust between "My contributions" and "User contributions" when the new skin went live, for example, and many people have asked in the past if it is possible to view other people's watchlist, so that concept is also non-obvious. Some people are guided by the user icon, but more text-centric people will rely on the actual text telling them what that function does, and "My watchlist" is simply more specific than just "Watchlist". It's not about being cute, it's about giving more information to the user to help them navigate our website. Long-time users are often the worst possible judges of usability; if you want to know if this is helpful, you have to do a usability study with first-timers and ask them if they have any idea what these links could mean.--Eloquence*
It's been said before, but all interfaces ('cept one :) have to be learned. Sticking My in front of everything doesn't do that. You still have to know what a watchlist is. And as soon as you learn that, you know that there is just one. Sure there has been talk about seeing others' watchlists, but that's such a big privacy concern that it won't happen. I wonder how many new users as you say have heard of the talk about accessing other people's watchlists. Dori | Talk 00:03, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)
You still have to know what exactly a watchlist is, and you still have to know what a contributions list is, but the "my" is additional information - it gives you a more concrete, if still vague idea: The watchlist is something that I can compile, the contributions list apparently lists everything I've done here, etc. Your argument seems to be that since the "My" doesn't precisely explain what a watchlist is, it is unnecessary. But that is not its purpose.
To polemicize, why not just call it "list" and "contris"? After all, you have to click on it to figure out what it does anyway. ;-) I object to the characterization of the my as a purely "cutesy" thing. I should point out that I first introduced these labels during a restructuring of the sidebar of the Standard skin (I also came up with the idea of having a "My contributions" link in the first place). Having these prefixes aids in the logical separation of user-specific and user-nonspecific links. That is their only purpose, but I think they serve it reasonably well.--Eloquence*
Maybe initially that My helps, but later on the brain just skips it because it's the same as in all the other links up there (well, some of them, they should either all have My or even better none of them). That My just gets in the way, as the brain will work mostly on location, with the shape of the words helping it along the way. So yes, list and contris will work just as well, but they don't look as good. Dori | Talk 01:06, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

No unprotected pages

As pointed out at Wikipedia talk:Unprotected MediaWiki messages, all pages listed there as unprotected are actually protected. Given this, there seems little point in its existence. As such I've put it on VfD. Thryduulf 21:47, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Math equations to plain english

Is there a template message to tag a page of equations to be translated from math formula to plain english?

Such as: Math2english (example template)

This article's formula needs to be translated to the English language.

A simple case would be:

1+1=2 one plus one equals two;

a more complex one would be:

the resonant frequency euqals one over the product of two pi and the square root of inducatance and capacitance.

This wouldn't replace the formula, but be in addition to it. It may be helpful to people not skilled in mathematics. Thanks. JDR 16:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

This suggestion moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) for visibility. Thryduulf 10:35, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki messages

checkY Done - But more comments are always welcome. --David Göthberg 5 Dec 2009
This discussion was moved here from Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki. --David Göthberg 29 Nov 2009

We need a single place to announce discussions about MediaWiki messages. Every now and then someone wants a change to a MediaWiki message, say MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer. Then the normal thing to do would be to discuss the suggested change on its talk page. (And perhaps add {{editprotected}} if the user is not an admin.) Problem is that there are lots of MediaWiki messages, and each of them is only watched by a few or no users at all.

It would be nice to have a central page that we who are interested could watch. But having all those discussions on a central page would probably be too crowded. So I suggest we mostly use the central page to just announce the discussions (link to them), but we keep the discussions on the talk pages of the respective MediaWiki messages. For a real world example, see the message above this one.

We have the {{interface explanation}} at the top of many MediaWiki talk pages. We can add a link to the central announce page in that template. We can also add a link in the editnotice that is shown for all "MediaWiki talk:" pages. That editnotice currently links to Wikipedia:Help desk and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), which I think are bad choices for this. The Help desk is far to general, and the Village pump is to crowded.

For the .css and .js pages in MediaWiki space we should of course recommend MediaWiki talk:Common.css and MediaWiki talk:Common.js, since they are already used as central discussion pages.

I suggest we use Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki as the central announce page for the rest of the MediaWiki messages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I have centralized cite system messages at Help talk:Cite errors and Help talk:Cite messages; see those pages for the lists of redirected talk pages. If you want centralized discussions, then it would be best to redirect the talk pages; either redirect all here or figure out related groups for several centralized pages. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:02, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that there are probably more than 1000 MediaWiki messages. (Anyone know how to see the total number?) And some of them have fairly long discussions. And every now and then the devs add new MediaWiki messages, that we don't know about. So sometimes a user finds such a new message and wants to change it, then the talk page won't even exist yet.
But sure, when messages are related then it is a good thing to redirect their talk pages to one single talk page. And we already do that in several places. But even then, those shared talk pages are usually not watched by enough users.
Oh, and what I am suggesting here is an entirely voluntary procedure. I just want to update the link and the explanation in the MediaWiki namespace editnotice, and add the same thing in the {{interface explanation}} template. So those that want to have comments on their suggestion have a decent place to go to announce their discussion. And of course link to this page from some other pages.
And I want some feedback from you guys about what page that link should go to. (My suggestion is this talk page.)
--David Göthberg (talk) 01:39, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I see your point. Browsing through Special:Allmessages, it is more like 6500 messages for each language. (And we should really fix British English, but that is a separate issue). ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 04:13, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Historically, we've used the technical village pump for these kinds of discussions. Perhaps creating a Wikipedia:Village pump (MediaWiki messages) or something would work well? I don't like "Wikipedia:MediaWiki" and it looks like a malformed page title and doesn't actually describe anything. Maybe "Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages" or something, though I'm still slightly more in favor of a village pump.

There are about 6500 MediaWiki messages, though the number can (and does) fluctuate based on which extensions are installed, which features are used, etc. I'd strongly recommend not redirecting all of the talk pages if it's avoidable. Some sort of editnotice or even JavaScript redirector would be much better in my mind. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Ouch, 6500 messages! More than I thought.
MZMcBride: Yes, a new village pump would be nice, then it would be very clear what it is for. And the name you suggest for it sounds good. It would be very low traffic compared to the other pumps, which would be good. But other people might think that a village pump would be overkill for such a low traffic page. But considering the huge amount of traffic on the other pumps, then it would be good to separate out some topics.
But your suggestion Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages also sounds good, and probably more realistic. (It is currently just an unused redirect.) Do you mean we should announce and discuss directly on that page, or on its talk page Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki messages?
--David Göthberg (talk) 05:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I was thinking about doing it on the subject-space page (Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages). That seems consistent with the village pumps and noticeboards. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/api.php?action=query&meta=allmessages (warning: large page) there are 6,412 messages currently. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
That sounds good to me. A new Village Pump would seem to be overkill. It should be linked from VPT though, somehow. Rd232 talk 12:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
6412 messages x 355 languages = 2,276,260 total messages. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:24, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
End section moved here from Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki. --David Göthberg 29 Nov 2009
Okay, so I have started out this page. I will link to it from a number of places, and update the MediaWiki namespace editnotice.
--David Göthberg (talk) 18:18, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
I just found a really old talk page used to discuss MediaWiki messages: "Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace text". But it no longer had a subject page. So I moved it and its archives to be archives 1 to 4 under this page instead.
--David Göthberg (talk) 14:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Youhavenewmessages

I would like to add a CSS id to MediaWiki:Youhavenewmessages, so we can handle it better in JavaScript. See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Youhavenewmessages#CSS id needed.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

checkY Done - And it works fine. --David Göthberg (talk) 18:18, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Script documentation

Amalthea wants to automatically add documentation on top of .js and .css pages, and I intend to implement it. See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Clearyourcache#Script documentation.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:05, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Mostly done. But we want to add one more feature to it that might be controversial, so we would like more input. We want to always show a link to the documentation of .js and .css pages, even when the documentation doesn't exist, thus it would often be a red link. See Template talk:Script doc auto.
--David Göthberg (talk) 06:49, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Brush-up of the log in page

I am planning some fixes to the log in page. See MediaWiki talk:Loginend#Brush-up of code.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

checkY Done --David Göthberg (talk) 23:02, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Search page help links

The help links on the search page got removed (without any discussion) when the new search interface was deployed some time ago. There is a discussion about adding them back. See MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-exists#Renewed request.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:26, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Secure server

Currently most links to other Wikimedia projects (like Wiktionary) point to the normal servers, even when the user is using the secure server. I am now updating the links in the MediaWiki interface and in other places such as the Main Page and the sister project templates. I make it so users on the secure server see secure links, while users on the normal servers see normal links.

This means I am editing many high-visibility places, and that I am doing a site wide change, so I am announcing this in case anyone has any comments about it. See Wikipedia talk:Secure server#Sister project links for more on this and to discuss it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:06, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Viewing protected pages

When non-admins and IP-users "view the source" of a protected page, they currently don't see the editnotice of the page. But the editnotice often contains information that is useful even when just viewing the source. So I am planning to make it so the editnotices are loaded also when just "viewing the source" of the pages. Technically I will do this by adding the editnotice loader to the MediaWiki messages that are shown when non-admins and IP-users view semi and fully protected pages. See discussion at Wikipedia talk:Editnotice#Viewing protected pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

checkY Done - I have updated the editnotice system. But there are several discussions on that page about adding other features. --David Göthberg (talk) 06:43, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Arrangement of Latin characters below edit window

Please see MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Arrangement of Latin characters below edit window.-- Wavelength (talk) 05:29, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Please do not copy and paste from copyrighted websites

Where do I find the 

Please do not copy and paste from copyrighted websites – only public domain resources can be copied without permission.

MediaWiki message that's found at the bottom of every edit page? I'd like to discuss whether it needs changing, and if so, how to best change it. --Elvey (talk) 09:21, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

FOUND: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Edittools is it, right?--Elvey (talk) 09:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, MediaWiki:Edittools is the interface message that displays most of the stuff below the edit window. And it has a reasonably active talk page so you can discuss there. I think I can guess what you want to discuss, since we are also allowed to copy stuff that has licenses that are compatible with Wikipedia's licenses.
You should perhaps announce your discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) or so to bring in more people to your discussion at MediaWiki talk:Edittools.
--David Göthberg (talk) 10:49, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Britain Loves Wikipedia - sitenotice

Hi all. I've put up a request for a sitenotice for Britain Loves Wikipedia at MediaWiki_talk:Sitenotice#Britain_Loves_Wikipedia - comments/thoughts/screams of outrage welcome. ;-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:54, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Added request to Newarticletext

I've asked that a message inviting editors to direct new articles about breaking news events to Wikinews to the New Article message template, and the system said that should also be listed here. Interested editors are invited to see it at MediaWiki_talk:Newarticletext Squidfryerchef (talk) 13:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

"templates used" message

Please see MediaWiki_talk:Templatesused#Wording_(Feb_2010). — John Cardinal (talk) 03:49, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Template Help

Hi, im trying to make templates like {{ambox}} on my own wiki site.
I asked someone who knows about templates and they say I need magic words and phaser functions.
See User:Sghfdhdfghdfgfd#Template_Help
Sghfdhdfghdfgfd (talk) 16:42, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

This page is for notifications related to MediaWiki system messages. Try the Help desk. Happy‑melon 22:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
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