Last modified: 2013-03-21 14:44:43 UTC
"Message" -> "edit" must be the singler most common click-through for the mediawiki: namespace. Often a wording change has to be repeated in multiple messages. An "(edit)" link in the special page would save this repetitive action.
Done in r57053
Created attachment 6605 [details] Screenshot of special:allmessages with this extra link This looks awful; the lines frequently break and the layout is generally hideous. Reverting for now...
Reverted for now in r57121. If redone this needs to take better account of line-breaking and the overall look and feel; the links should be consistently placed and look nice.
Created attachment 8335 [details] Suggested layout Putting the links inline with the message name is asking for trouble. Try this layout instead (see attachment). If it needs to be even shorter, then abbreviate to "(t | e)". Anyone who can edit these messages will be very familiar with this style of abbreviation and wiki-shorthand since "e | v" are used as edit and view links on many navigation templates.
I don't think this is a good idea any longer, in 2013: nowadays, people mostly need to edit or comment messages on translatewiki.net. MediaWiki core doesn't have editnotices nor any other kind of aid for editing system messages, while at least the view mode has some information and directions. See also bug 41578. Moreover, if you're editing many messages for consistency reasons on your wiki, you're almost surely doing something wrong, so I think the proposed use case is not valid. Even worse, adding clutter to Special:Allmessages would further reduce its usability.
