Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org writes:
Yes, I think a special page listing the namespace contents would be a good idea. I'm not sure why I didn't do that to start with. But please note: soon, all custom messages will be moved to a different namespace (probably Template:) and only the internal messages will be in MediaWiki:.
By making All_messages a special page, you can hide it to all but
sysops,
developers and/or bureaucrats, who are probably the ones who should see and maintain these variables.
I just wrote and uploaded a "SpecialAllmessages.php" page. It is slow to generate, but I do not know if it is significantly better or worse than loading "MediaWiki:All_messages".
Rows, where the current text is different than the default text, are shown with a different background color.
If this flies, 'InitialiseMessages.inc' should be modified not to generate "MediaWiki:All_messages" and perhaps should delete it out of existing databases.
I just noticed "MediaWiki" is a constant in the PHP file. This should be generalized.
No, all users should be able to view, comment on, and ideally edit the MediaWiki namespace. Some messages cannot be edited by all users because either they are written in unfiltered HTML, or because changing them could make reversion difficult. Many non-sysops have made useful contributions to the MediaWiki namespaces, usually asking a sysop to make a given change for them.
I require that a user must be a Sysop because it is so slow to generate this page. Someone may want to move it to more general access. It may be possible to speed up generation of this page, though not without making it more difficult to maintain.
Nick Pisarro