Would it not be useful to have some kind of annotated list of system messages?
eg 1. Message name 2. English contents especially important, these two: 3. When/where does the user see this? 4. Type of message (interface, explanation, warning, link text, link target, ...?) and maybe 5. How important is this to be translated?
I am sure I am not the only person who, as either a Wikimedia administrator, or person setting up my own wiki, has been baffled by some of the messages. Some seem to be equal - which is the one that I actually want to change? Does this message show up in other places that I don't realise?
(As a side note, I still think our current default messages are too Wikipedia-fied - and a 'simplfied' English set, like 'young wiki', would be cool to have as an option.)
One of the devs once mentioned that system messages should not be 'overloaded' eg not everywhere that English speakers put "OK" is equivalent in other languages. I totally agree, but it can make identifying the necessary message difficult.
(Another sidenote - it would be kind of cool if there was a way to see which messages are used in a certain page, kind of like how pages currently say which template/s they use)
Anyway. Annotated system messages. Good idea or bad? Manageable? Should be put on mediawiki.org or some other way to manage them??
cheers Brianna user:pfctdayelise