help fixing hardcoded links in message files - Mediawiki-i18n

6 Feb 2007


      Hi list,
Most of you did probably read that thread (embedded links in UI messages 
(splitted from "Major flaws...")):
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-January/thread.html#292...
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-February/thread.html#29...
(Please read it in order to understand the following)
I now have fixed the internal links in MessagesEn.php and all Message files 
from A to C (except MessagesAr.php which will follow later).
So my work resulted in these style guidelines for translations:
1) Do not use local namespace names in standard message strings. The same 
applies for localised wiki markup (like translations of "thumb" and such). 
Especially something like "Benutzerseite von [[Benutzer:$1|$1]]" 
(German "user page of ...") instead of "Benutzerseite von [[User:$1|$1]]" is 
dangerous as the link does not work in wikis with a different name for user 
namespace (basically all wikis with a default language other than German, 
canonical namespace links get translated to localised, use {{ns:user}} and 
such when not using alternative link text or text outside links).
2) Do not link article namespace images or or other local content. Something 
like "Your [[IP adress]] has been blocked..." is wrong. It has to be "Your IP 
adress has been blocked...". No other wiki than Wikipedia or a wiki on 
networking will usually have an article about IP adresses.
3) No Cross-wiki/interwiki links. Especially links like "[[w:en:IP adress]]" 
are not allowed as well as interwiki link definitions into Wikimedia wikis 
are removed in default MediaWiki.
4) Do not directly link any project pages in messages. Use only the link 
definitions such as {{MediaWiki:helppage}}. Do not create new link 
definitions in your local MessagesXX.php file.
As you probably can imagin fixing all 151 message files takes quite a while 
and thatfor I call for your help. As well I wasn't able to fix every link 
(tagged with '# problem with link' in message files). So please retranslate 
them now.
The broken strings in desparate need for translation are so far (just the 
Message files from A to C):
MessagesBe.php
* 'blockiptext'
* 'copyrightwarning'
* 'protectedpagewarning'
* 'uploadtext'
MessagesBg.php
* 'protectedtext'
* 'newarticletext'
* 'protectedpagewarning'
* 'protectlogtext'
MessagesBpy.php
* 'blockedtext'
MessagesBr.php
* 'protectedpagewarning'
* 'recentchangestext'
* 'uploadtext'
* 'confirmdeletetext'
* 'protectlogtext'
* 'blockiptext'
MessagesBs.php
* 'blockiptext'
* 'confirmdeletetext'
* 'newarticletext'
* 'noarticletext'
* 'noexactmatch'
* 'protect-text'
* 'protectedtext'
* 'protectlogtext'
MessagesCa.php
* 'protectedtext'
* 'uploadtext'
MessagesCs.php
* 'uploadtext'
* 'blockiptext'
MessagesCsb.php 
* 'recentchangestext'
* 'uploadtext'
MessagesCy.php
* "protectedtext"
* "protectedpagewarning"
* "uploadtext"
* "protectlogtext"
That's all for now.
Have fun,
Arnomane