Help talk:System message

Older discussion

It seems that MediaWiki namespace on the Polish Wikipedia is not protected? Anyone can edit ? --Kpjas

How does one change the site name? I would like to change the site name of meta from "Wikipedia" to "Meta.Wikimedia." OIC, I'll have to edit meta's language.php file - where is that? --Maveric149 10:32, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That is great, but I have no idea how that works...:-( Who may I ask to ? Ant

--- Would be nice if there was some macro functionality in this, so things like copyright violation notices and others that need variable text could be constructed. Maybe something like { {SUBST name|param1|param2} } in articles and { {1} } and so on in the message definitions?

Of course, this raises the question of default values for parameters, named parameters, not to mention conditional constructs in the definitons, which would turn this whole thing into a whole templating engine, for things like country templates. I've implemented something like this once, it's not as hairy as it sounds. Zocky 18:49, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There's no need for any of that, we would just use the pre-existing message substitution code, which uses $1 style tags. The default value for $1 can be $1. It would only need a few lines of code to implement it for subst and msg. -- Tim Starling 02:13, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hello,

Some ideas: [[1]] should be automaticly generated, this will ease maintenance.

In case of special message like {{msg:Stub}} It can be usefull to get a list of article which have msg:Stub in them, a kind of automatic list of stub ! Same for {{msg:disam}} for disambiguations, the list could even be used for the special maintenance page for disambiguation. Actually the process to create a disambiguation page is:

1. Create page using the custom message
2. list the article on "link to disambiguation page"

If the page is renamed, deleted, one can forgot updating the list :(

Just my 2c of €

Hashar 02:08, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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A quick query, does the MediaWiki namespace take priority over the same strings defined in the LanguageXX.php files? -- Arwel 15:31, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

Is this feature not implemented currently in some wikis? For example ta:MediaWiki:about doesn't exist yet. -- Paddu 13:52, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Licensing issues

I think the licence situation with the text in the MediaWiki namespace needs to be clarified.

The messages were originally part of MediaWiki, so are presumably GPL. However, people are editing them on Wikipedia, and other sites, under the impression that all of their edits are GFDL.

Many of the changes are not creative enough to be copyrightable, but for some messages significant changes have occurred. Compare, for example, the current en:MediaWiki:Noarticletext and its original version.

Is it possible for a notice to be added to the entire namespace that edits should be made under the GPL? Or would it make more sense to have edits be PD so the language.php files can be updated from the MediaWiki namespace without needing to worry about the licence terms?

What should happen to the existing edits that have been made by people unaware that their edits ought to be GPL? Is there a solution other than reverting to the default text?

Angela 17:31, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Obfuscation

I think it would be a great idea to involve some non programmers in the development of documentation for MediaWiki. This page, like most, reads like a UNIX manual, which is great if you want only unix programmers to be able to use the software. Unfortunately most of those who already understand how this thing works from a development standpoint are probably the last ones who should be trying to explain it to others.

Regards,

Matt

Content for empty / new article

Hi,

in my wiki I'd like to have some content when somebody creates a new article: Signature and a catogory-link for example. Is there an entity in the MediaWiki (or elsewhere), where I can store the desired content?

Thanks in advance, Wolfgang

See Help:Inputbox for preloading content in the edit box.--Patrick 01:08, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Noinclude categories

Stupid question, is it possible to categorize system messages, and if yes, are <noinclude> etc. supposed to work as usual in included messages? See Help_talk:Inputbox#noinclude_and_includeonly for the background. -- Omniplex (w:t) 20:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

The categorization isn't really a related issue since it also causes the same issue when a template is used. If a page is preloaded, includeonly acts as it should, but noinclude does not act as it should, it leaves the < noinclude> tags and the text between them. 69.183.39.72 12:43, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Upto this section

How can I indicate to a template : include the text of this article upto the first section ?. This is interesting for a Wikipedia portal featured article (where one includes a link with "read more" to the original article and before it some text of it). --82.159.136.238 10:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Namespace names

How do you change the actual name of the namespace, like Template:, User:, Image:, etc.? --334 00:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Translations of messages

I have for some time been proposing translations of system messages on the Welsh wikipedia triggered by happening upon the messages in the normal course of using wicipedia and then finding them on Special:Allmessages using 'find text' in my browser. I would be able to translate a lot more messages if I went from the English on Special:Allmessages. I don't do this because the messages themselves don't give the context of their use, which makes translating them a bit of a lottery. (I can sometimes gain clues to context from the message title.) So my question is this: is there a way of finding out the context of any message, working from the message to its end-use instead of the other way round? Lloffiwr 15:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I second that!

Further, working with the French Wiktionary system messages, I've found the PLURAL: function doesn't seem to work. Or at least I can't figure out how it should work. For example, the system message MediaWiki:Nextn appears on category pages and on what-links-here pages. It reads "$1 suivants" in French. Obviously, the $1 is the number of pages involved. By generating a page like [2], I can force the $1 to "1"...Except it seems not be a 1?? I've tried $1 suivant{{#switch:$1|0=|1=|s}} and the text appearing on a page like the one linked above is still "1 suivants". What gives?

Urhixidur 18:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I've reached the conclusion the implementation of PLURAL: is wrong in French, and reported the bug: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9194 Urhixidur 18:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Disable languages

Is it possible to disable all or some languages all together? I need to create some special messages in my wiki and it would be nice to be able to avoid people selecting other languages than English. --194.19.86.146 13:51, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Why site language frozen into wikitext?

Why can't e.g., "Help" become non-English when viewed e.g., in Chinese? I want to say something that will appear in the user's prefered language. Jidanni 05:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

You may be interested in Meta:Language select.--Patrick (talk) 08:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't want a CSS or Javascript solution. I just want to have [[{{MediaWiki:helppage}}|{{MediaWiki:help}}]] change its rendering when uselang=zh-tw. Jidanni 09:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

You were reading an English page in the English namespace. Meta is multilingual - you may look for what you want in the namespaces in special:allpages. Hillgentleman 09:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It does not seem possible to localize the link targets of the sidebar, only the link labels. The software seems to assume that there is a specific site language, instead of the site being multilingual.--Patrick (talk) 10:27, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

We can add links for multiple languages, but the sidebar may get too large. As an example I added links to the German and French help.--Patrick (talk) 11:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Topic Drift

This article is called Help:System message. I found it while looking for help manipulating system messages. (I'm adding more sidebar-type stuff to a skin for a wiki whose sole user is me.)

It appears that most of the content on this page is miscellanea that must have come from the (fun) task of internationalizing mediawiki. While, i18n is surely the reason that System message functionality was developed, its not necessarily relevant to people who need help with System messages.

For example, I wanted a brief, correct and authoritative answer to How do I add my own System message? A thorough answer would include details like whether or not this process differs for people writing extensions vs people customizing in less formal ways. Also, are there any caveats? pitfalls? surprising ways to bork the existing stuff that relies on system messages?

It would also be great to see information like:

• Do system messages live in the db? or the filesystem? both?
• Once a new system message is added, by what process does a developer internationalize their extension?
• A Hello World example that creates, modifies, deletes a system message... maybe retrieves the message in the default lang or a specific lang... (I realize this is probably a tall order. Just trying to give examples of help info I think would be way more helpful.)

Anyway, cheers, Kiera 67.168.107.164 19:23, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Note

$skinNames IS editable from the messages, but only the names can be changed. It will not afffect the skin