2012/12/4 Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.org:
Hi all,
Recently, in order to make a rather small user interface change (see bug #42215), our team needed to replace MediaWiki:Welcomecreation with a new message, MediaWiki:Welcomecreation-msg.
The new message contains all of the things MediaWiki normally inserts in that message, and simply changes the header text. Simple enough.
My question here is... Is there a best practice for advertising changes to MediaWiki messages like these?
This message, which is given to users once after they register, is sometimes customized. We can go look and see which wikis have written custom content, and inform them they need to migrate it to the new message. But I was wondering if others have encountered this problem, and how they dealt with it.
Hi Steven,
In general, it rarely takes more than a day for a message to propagate to translatewiki.net after merging the Gerrit change that adds it. The people who frequently translate there and keep their languages' stats at 100% will see it and translate it very quickly. That's several dozens of languages. Do make sure that you explain the reasoning behind the message in the qqq documentation.
But increasing visibility and explaining the changes beyond that is a good thing, too. What you did with PostEdit was quite good - write a page about it on meta, make it translatable, use TranslationNotifications to advertise it. Remind people to translate it in translatewiki.net, too.
Also, use the wikitech-ambassadors list. My impressions is that it's gradually gaining steam after being dormant for a while. (Mention that list in the translatable page that you write, with a link to clear subscription instructions.)
Hope it helps.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore