Last modified: 2014-03-19 09:54:05 UTC
It's intentionally difficult to create a blank page in MediaWiki, but it be done using "{{subst:ns:0}}" and similar tricks. Given that the default behavior of MediaWiki messages has changed, blanking the messages (in order to disable their output) is now more difficult. Basically, for default MediaWiki message, in order to blank it, you have to trick the site into accepting the edit, as it generally wants to reject such edits.
Blanking messages is not basically useless, it no longer restores the default. It has less use cases than before, which reduces priority.
(In reply to comment #1) > Blanking messages is not basically useless, it no longer restores the > default. It has less use cases than before, which reduces priority. I'm not sure what you're saying here. If you have any default MediaWiki message and you try to edit the page, blank its contents, and save the page, it won't work.
That is right, because mediawiki rejects creation of empty pages. For system messages with a default value, this should be allowed, because the edit page already preloaded that text.
I don't have time to fix this atm, but for the record the code for stopping blank pages from being saved is in EditPage.php:1498.
Change 71332 had a related patch set uploaded by Matmarex: Allow creation of empty MediaWiki: pages https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/71332
Thanks Tyler, surgical strike change applied in the change above.
Change 71332 merged by Brion VIBBER: Allow creation of empty MediaWiki: pages https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/71332
That should make it fixed.
