[[‎MediaWiki:Wikieditor-toolbar-dialogs-preference/en]]

Altered messages need to be deployed into the distributed software files. This is not possible for English as a matter of workflow:

1. Programmers create english messages while they are updating programs in the software repository.
2. The English messages get copied from there and are kept here at twn.
3. Translators read English messages, and translate them.
4. Translations get copied from twn back to the software repository.

Both copy operations are unidirectional so as to not run into problems with duplicate or inconsistent parallel changes.

Think over it, it makes sense as it is set up.

You can alter English messages. Either do it in the source code if yo've got access rights, or file a bug asking developers to do it.

Then block all the English messages in the translatewiki! What's the problem with that?

If you think it's worth your while, provide a patch. I think that the warnings & hints or whatever you get, when you try to alter English source message, suffice for the time being - while/because there are things of higher priority on which to spent scarce developer time.

Why "developer" time? Set the protection level of these pages. Done.

Sorry, I was assuming you wanted to inhibit editing automatically.

Surely protecting thousands of pages manually is not good use of time (and we need to make sure bots and special cases still work).

It's also no good use of time to let people edit pages that should not be edited and revert every useful edit they did. This wastes the time of at least two people every time it happens.

Besides, what should I do to change the bad message I was talking about in my first post?

What bad message? This thread went on a tangent and I no longer know what we're talking about. At this point if we have a clear idea of what needs doing just file a bug to change the message.

I'm sorry? Read the first post please. Everything except for the "Side note".