Last modified: 2014-09-24 16:04:13 UTC
The Translate extension has very nice info icons which bring users from the interface/feature they're seeing to the relevant (translatable) help page on mediawiki.org (all components are documented). See for instance [[m:Special:PageTranslation]]. This is a huge task, but it should be done for core as well. The problem is of course that there's no real(istic) plan to get such help pages done in the next few decades, as they continue to live either on Meta for copyright reasons or even on local wikis for the same + [[m:Not my wiki]] syndrome. This part of the problem should be discussed on wiki, probably the talk of the project.
I for one would prefer an "if the local page does not exist, then transparently deliver the central page from www.mediawiki.org" approach for help pages, mainly resembling the way, pictures are handled and included from Commons if needed. Also, when user on a wiki are about to create a new help page following a red link to the help: namespace, they should most preferrably be stirred towards the central www.mediawiki.org help page creation in their language.
(In reply to comment #1) > I for one would prefer an "if the local page does not exist, then > transparently > deliver the central page from www.mediawiki.org" approach for help pages Sure, that's a possibility too. It's a choice of implementation method, let's leave it to code review. :) (Target pages would probably be customisable in system messages anyway, so the result would be the same: wikis could have their own pages if they really wanted.)
Speaking of implementation method, the interwiki prefix mediawikiwiki can be used when necessary: "new" wikis have it by default, where "new" means after 2007-03-29 (bug 9440 / r20825 / 98333f458046102ee140f4be86fe4d2c6facae2f ).
(In reply to comment #3) > Speaking of implementation method, the interwiki prefix mediawikiwiki can be > used when necessary: "new" wikis have it by default, where "new" means after > 2007-03-29 (bug 9440 / r20825 / 98333f458046102ee140f4be86fe4d2c6facae2f ). To clarify the "when necessary": personally, for now I'm following the path of last resistance, i.e. I use wikilink where there is already a wikilink and external where there is already an external link. The separate bug 54835 addresses/proposes the standardisation.
[[mw:Category:Help]] was made almost completely translatable (and usually revamped a bit in the process). I count the following places which have a documentation page and don't link it: Special:Block, Special:MergeHistory, Special:MovePage, Special:NewPages, Special:NewImages, Special:Preferences, Special:Search, action=protect, Special:RecentChanges, action=delete, Special:AllMessages, Special:Undelete, Special:Watchlist; and in extensions, Special:MassMessage, Special:TemplateSandbox, Special:AbuseFilter. Where to start?
Change 157496 had a related patch set uploaded by Nemo bis: Function to add a top (right) icon link to help page https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/157496
Change 157497 had a related patch set uploaded by Nemo bis: Add top help link to MediaWiki.org in several pages https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/157497
The implementation proposed by Nemo looks like it would benefit from having bug 23796 solved first, so I'm marking this as such.
(In reply to Bartosz Dziewoński from comment #8) > The implementation proposed by Nemo looks like it would benefit from having > bug 23796 solved first, so I'm marking this as such. With its current summary I see no relation whatsoever.
I did that as a note-to-self to implement this later. But okay.
(In reply to Bartosz Dziewoński from comment #10) > I did that as a note-to-self to implement this later. But okay. That's appreciated, and it would be useful if bug 23796 had preserved its original bug summary (with its current summary split to some other bug), but as is it was very confusing.
