Hey,
I'm sorry to hear about such an issue. I can only assume it means massive trouble for your team, Greg.
Unfortunately for me being one of the receivers of this message I must say it does not make the slightest sense.
What happened? Is there a Phabricator ticket I can read up?
What is the issue with making further changes to any en.json file? What trouble can a new entry in one of these files cause that you ask everybody to stop editing them, instead of – let's say – stop the bot that creates the corresponding entries on translatewiki.net? The request effectively means everybody needs to stop working on UI features. How do you plan to make sure such changes to the multiple hundred en.json files we maintain are indeed not done any more? What will happen if a patch gets merged by a team that relies on translatewiki.net translations, but did not got your message, or did not understood it? Nothing? If so, why can't we continue editing our very own localization files, and solve the issue your team is working on – whatever it is – independent from that?
TL;DR: What is going on?
Best Thiemo