Ilmari Karonen schrieb:
I see Tim has already reverted the change. I can see your point here, but I still feel that this is, in principle, the wrong way to present this information: those pages _do_ conceptually exist, even if they're not stored in the database.
In theory you are right but we need a function to distinct on [[Special:Allmessages]] between messages coming directly from MessagesXx.php and from the local MediaWiki namespace. Maybe a separate icon or text?
Perhaps maintenance/deleteDefaultMessages.php could be modified to delete all messages that are identical to their defaults, or at least to have an option to do so? It seems to me that would eliminate the need for doing what you're currently using those link colors for.
A maintenance script cannot be run by local admins to clean up the MediaWiki namespace.
A solution would be a cron job for this script running once per week over all projects. This would unburden the local admins from stupid work.
BTW: Another bug should be fixed former. A couple of extension messages are shown in [[Special:Allmessages]] but not in view/edit mode even if they exists, e.g. [[MediaWiki:Syntaxhighlight-supported]]. I remember there is an open bug but I cannot find it *grmbl*
Raymond.