Last modified: 2011-01-29 00:46:41 UTC
Gentlemen, I have completely analyzed the "poweredby icon" issue. Bear with me: (I was going to title this "Move the words "powered by" into the HTML, thus allowing the icon to respect the current language" until I saw how good the text versions look.) Though one could workaround the problem via $wgFooterIcons, it still doesn't make sense that <li id="footer-poweredbyico"> <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/"><img src="/skins/common/images/poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png" alt="Powered by MediaWiki" width="88" height="31" /></a> isn't translated -- just as one wouldn't want MediaWiki always displaying "some Hindi/Arabic/Korean... thing that nobody can read" there at the bottom, whist the rest of the page in in English. If the icon must be always in English for some international legal reason, then at least have an additional tooltip in the current language saying what the icon is all about. Another idea might be removing the words "powered by" from the icon, but leaving them (translated) in the ALT/tooltip. Ah ha®, put the "Powered by" (translated according to the current language, of course) into the Rendered HTML (leaving the word "Mediawiki" in the icon), thus removing the need for hundreds of different icons. I am so smart! Make it even more ugly like: [Powered by <ICON>]. Note the stylish [ and ] so the user's eye is sure to know what we are talking about. Not my fault that the icon stays the same size while the text size around it might change. Ah ha™ #2: Or reduce your carbon footprint by ****chucking the icon (so 1990s) all together****, and just using some bold font at bottom. I see perfectly good text "Powered by"s on the bottom of http://ragii.com/ and http://smcj.net/ -- ADMIT IT. No need for that OldsMobile of a goofy icon. >Well then turn it off on you own wiki. Case CLOSED. OK, sorry I brought it up ☻, just trying to help. Anyway, with text versions, with one fell swoop, one can get rid of *Needing to translate into PNGs ("MediaWiki" itself might be wanted in a different alphabet, like Coca Cola does, etc.0 *Older users increase text size but the tiny Mediawiki stays stuck etc. *Goofy icon☻ wasting thousands of bytes of bandwith vs. a mere handful of characters.
Ok I see two issues here: *Alt text of powered by icon is not translated. That is a legitimate issue and should be fixed. Especially on the Modern skin where it is text instead of an icon. *Powered by Icon should not be a png for various reasons mentioned above. I don't find your arguments particularly compelling. The best one you have is that its not easily translated. At the end of the day i don't really think too many people care, so if it was up to me I'd wontfix that part
The alt text should be translated. Adding Siebrand to CC in the hope that he has some ideas or input on the rest of this. I note that http://he.wikipedia.org/ does not have translated alt text and a similar problem exists there with the "A Wikimedia Project" icon.
