Hoi, In the past I have urged for a better support for the translators who work on the localisation of MediaWiki. I expressed that in BetaWiki we have an environment where it is much easier for translators to work. It does not require expert knowledge about thinks like Subversion and Bugzilla. One added benefit is that many people can work on the localisation of MediaWiki for the same language making it very much more a Wiki approach.

I have asked Nikerabbit, who has been hosting the BetaWiki wiki, if it were possible to make changes to the MediaWiki software available in an extension. He has done so, and Brion permitting it can be implemented elsewhere.

The reason for the extended list of recipients of this mail is, that in my opinion the best place to concentrate the "SpecialTranslate" extension is the Incubator. The reason is that when a project is being prepared for a full project status, the localisation is very much part of this preparation. With the localisation being part of the incubation, the work done will be preserved when it moves from incubation to production. Also it provides instant gratification while it is still in the incubator stage.

For the other projects, it is as good a place as any. Having it in Incubator concentrates the localisation effort and for the benefits this provides I would propose to do all the localisation using the SpecialTranslate in Incubator.

Finally I want to thank Nikerabbit both for hosting BetaWiki and for modifying the software so that we can have it as part of a WMF project.

Thanks, GerardM