Hoi, Because of some misunderstanding let me try to explain how the latest method of localisation works.
History: There used to be a situation that the localisation was done using a PHP message file. This file needed to be updated when new messages came about or when existing messages were changed. This happened because of work done on the MediaWiki software. In practice this worked not that well and there was also a need to have some messages changed to reflect a policy or whatever that was specific to a project. Because of this the messages exist. You can change and localise the messages in a project.
The challenge: The bigger projects with the exception of the en.wikipedia have a lot of messages adapted for its language. For people for whom the project language is a foreign language, the PHP messages are used because it is all the information that is available to help. When a new project starts, it does not benefit from the localisation work done elsewhere. When a message is changed, it needs to be fixed for that language in ALL projects.
The work being done: Nikerabbit and Gangleri have done absolutely great work by setting up a wiki that is there to manage the localisation of MediaWiki. The result of this project is that for many languages a proper localisation exists. In the process of getting as far as we are, many issues with right to left languages have been fixed both in the messages and in the core of the MediaWiki software.. Many messages now make use of the Plural construct; this allows for the correct phrasing of singular of plural forms of text in the messages. The messages are platform agnostic; they will however indicate the correct name of the project.
The current issue: In order to make use of the standardised messages, it is important to use the standard messages and not have project specific messages that say the same thing. Deleting /these /messages ensure that when a message is changed, it will be part of the next update of the software. For the project specific messages, it is important that someone who maintains these messages is subscribed to the mediawiki-i18n@mail.wikimedia.org mailing list. This list is used to inform about the messages/issues that are of interest with respect to internationalisation. Wikimedia uses the MediaWiki messages in all its projects and in all the languages the message Outside the WMF there are many, many more wikis that will benefit from us doing a better job localising the software.
The challenge: I have set myself the challenge to find more people to help with the localisation for more languages. MediaWiki is great software is excels because it has already been localised in so many languages. For those languages where it did not yet happen, we find that the projects are not doing that great. By finding interested people and organisations MediaWiki will become more usable. It will become not only more usable because it will become easier to start a project in languages like Akan or Xhosa it will also become more easy to read projects like the en.wikipedia as the user interface will no longer be a distraction.
The question: What if any are the practical issues with this strategy. From my perspective there are only winners. * Project specific messages are unaffected * All other messages benefit from an effort designed to provide a timely and improved service.
Thanks, GerardM