Imperative in option messages?
If it is „Хочешь — жни, а хочешь — куй“, Russian messages should be "Хочешь — правь, а хочешь — читай". It seems you are constructing your arguments on believe "Options shouldn't be in infinitive". That's not right thing. We should respect arguments of each other.
Again. Messages like Edit... are options. You don't need them to be in imperative. Russian "Не курить" is a rule, while options in media wiki are not. You can't chose not to smoking. It's necessary. But you can chose to "edit" or not. So options like "править" and others are not orders.
BTW ossetian form of instruction "No smoking" is not imperative. It's "Naej dymaen" or "Naej gaenaen dymyn" or something else. Not "Ma dym". Ossetian imperative is just clear order for defined person(s).
Nobody borrows grammar. Don't worry.
„Næj dymæn“ would be „Курить запрещено“ (smoking forbidden), of course.
It is not that I am completely against your idea, but it's a very dramatic change — and it appears in the Wikipedia at once, perplexing users (well me at least). Since others (there are about a dozen, well half a dozen, editors at os.wiki and about a thousand at vk.com) never complained, maybe the previous way of doing things has been ok?
I mean, discussing things before changing the basic terms and grammar, seems like a very good way to proceed.
Please don't use vk.com and Wikipedia as arguments. They are really not competent here.
Nobody changes basic terms. I am correcting them. There is a mistake in translation and we should correct it. I explained why they are incorrect.
Where have you seen word "forbidden" in „Næj dymæn“?
„Næj ..æn“ is a modal construction showing objective impossibility, when something is impossible because of external reasons (like when it's forbidden).
> Messages like Edit... are options. You don't need them to be in imperative.
..but they may be, as shown on Turkish example below and on many years of interface functioning. Your logic is only one of possible ways of thinking; surely it looks like the only one to you, because that's how you think.
Still it's not the Wikipedian way of doing when you come and just change the whole interface, not the obvious errors, but some relative metaphysics like verb modality — and in a week it's being pushed to all the projects from here. But well, I don't have the needed energy or motivation to insist or to revert all your edits, that would be even more unethical.
You are not right. Næj and -æn are independent here. Нæй = Нæ ис; дымæн is possibility to дымын. Нæ ис дымæн = There is no possibility to smoke. Where is forbidden here?
Indeed the Finnish has the same. Logic is that the user commands the application/website to do something for him.