Last modified: 2006-04-18 04:32:00 UTC
It is not obvious to most people what a "Validate" link would do. It *is* obvious what a "Rate this page" link would do. We should rename the validation link that shows up on each page to "Rate this page". (Preferably before validation goes live, as it is confusing to users when a feature is renamed.) People have mentioned this idea on the various validation-related pages on Wikipedia/Meta, others have agreed, and nobody has disagreed that "Rate this page" is a better name. Why do otherwise? :-)
I would be 90% certain that this would be a system message.
Yep. [[MediaWiki:Val_tab]]. As expected, all the interface text for the validation pages is in system messages; consult [[Special:Allmessages]]. Closing as WORKSFORME.
Reopening. Changing the text of Val_tab and all the other validation-related messages would work, except that non-English language Wikipedias would say "Validate" instead of "Rate" both on the top tab bar and elsewhere. I bet this would stop a lot of our non-English-speaking users from ever using validation. Since (I hear) there are plans to distribute print copies of Wikipedia to poor countries, I'd assume there were plans to do this in other languages than just English. So, why don't we make sure validation will be a success for all languages by modifying the source code? This could make sure we get the translations changed too. (We would simply have to change all 10 instances of the word "validate" to "rate" among the English strings in Language.php. Then, and this is the key, we would have to notify all of our translators of the change. The 10 strings are: $validate, $val_tab, $val_validate_version, $val_user_validations, $val_no_anon_validation, $val_validate_article_namespace_only, $val_validated, $val_article_lists, and $val_page_validation_statistics.)
If changing the message is a problem, you're either changing the wrong message or we need to introduce more of them. I don't see that there's a big localisation issue here; people are normally pretty quick on the update front in that case. What do print copies have to do with validation in terms of how the validation feature appears?
(In reply to comment #3) > (We would simply have to change all 10 instances of the word "validate" to > "rate" among the English strings in Language.php. Then, and this is the key, we > would have to notify all of our translators of the change. The 10 strings are: > $validate, $val_tab, $val_validate_version, $val_user_validations, > $val_no_anon_validation, $val_validate_article_namespace_only, $val_validated, > $val_article_lists, and $val_page_validation_statistics.) Then submit a patch. :)
Just to verify: the patch would have to comment out remove the relevant lines from the 12 or so LanguageXX.php files with a note "Validation feature renamed Rate feature"?
Created attachment 1177 [details] patch for this issue Here is the patch. It took longer than I thought to prepare, but I hope it will pay off by encouraging people to use the page rating feature. In Language.php, the patch: - changes all instances of "validate" to "rate" - changes all instances of "validation" to (usually) "page rating" or (sometimes) "rating" as appropriate. - changes the exclamation mark in "Your ratings have been stored!" to a period. In *most* other LanguageXx.php files, it: - adds a notice about the change - prefixes "OldText: " on, and then comments out, the translated strings corresponding to the English strings I changed In *some* other LanguageXx.php files, it: - adds a notice about the change - prefixes "OldText: " on, and then comments out, the translated strings corresponding to the English strings I changed - and pastes in the new English text, uncommented, for translators' convenience, so they can see the changes made. They were only small changes, and translators may not want to go and look in Language.php to see them. In *a few* other LanguageXx.php files, it: - adds a notice about the change only. All edits were made with Vim, which supports UTF-8/multibyte text editing. The patch is about 95K, but it only makes changes to Language*.php. It is made against CVS. I have tested the patch with $wgUseValidation = true and $wgLanguageCode = "en" and "fr", and it applies fine and doesn't seem to break anything. Note that although the consensus on Wikipedia at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_feature#.22Rate_this_page.22_-_MediaZilla:4117 calls for "rate" or "rate this article", I have used the term "page ratings", not "article ratings", in many places so that the text will read OK on all MediaWikis, not just Wikipedia.
It still doesn't matter in the broad scheme of things, since the end users will customise the interface messages as they see fit.
Why is it relevant that end users can change the text of the message? This bug is about changing the default text in the distribution.
Validation removed from the software. Closing as INVALID.
