Thread:Support/New stuff to check/reply (4)

"Missing message documentation" isn't technically correct, as many things are documented (see, for example, mw:Extension:Comments, mw:Extension:NewSignupPage, Nimbus skin...), they just aren't documented in the format preferred by TWN.

Just like in the past, I still disagree with the location and the format of message documentation; obviously having documentation is useful, and that's something I've never been denying. Internationalization files can get pretty large for an extension that has many (say, over 50) messages. I feel that we should keep only linguistic content in i18n files and not make 'em a strange mess of translations and documentation. You also can't include images on the i18n file in the same way you can include them on wiki pages. (Well, you could base64-encode them as data: URIs, like how the ResourceLoader does for images...but you get the idea. When you have something like without any more specific context in an i18n file, you don't really know what Foo.jpg is, where it is stored, etc.)

Just what do you mean by "major i18n issues" and can you provide specific links to these? I'm not aware of any such issues. In fact, I've gone to great lenghts in making these extensions translatable, at least if you compare them to their original state, in which many of them had hard-coded English and/or misleading UI messages, etc.

Also, what is the "problem" with Phalanx? Like I wrote earlier, it is already supported as a Wikia extension, so why cannot it be supported as a normal MediaWiki extension? Or are the standards different for Wikia extensions? I would like to invite you to compare the files SpecialPhalanx.body.php and SpecialPhalanxStats.php between upstream and Wikia; upstream SpecialPhalanx.body.php, Wikia SpecialPhalanx.body.php, upstream SpecialPhalanxStats.php and Wikia SpecialPhalanxStats.php. Please pay specific attention to the functions  (in SpecialPhalanx.body.php),  /  and   (in SpecialPhalanxStats.body.php).

Finally, it's worth noting that supporting an extension in TWN &mdash; whether it has the documentation or not and whether said docs are in the format preferred and accepted by TWN or not &mdash; is useful for everyone. I'm not going to lose my night's sleep over these kind of things, but it does make life harder for the average end-user who would like to have i18n available on their site. History has shown that people will find a way around this political limitation &mdash; but the question is should they focus on that or something more productive.

I don't see message documentation as a major deal-breaker, and I don't understand why it would be for someone. For years, things worked just fine without. Sure, having it is a nice additional bonus, but it shouldn't be the main focus.