Using the gender of the subject user, not the viewer

Using the gender of the subject user, not the viewer

I have read some descriptions and talks and can't find out how I can use the gender of a user talked about by the message, if the user is not the viewing one.

The most prominent example is user's contributions. My language is pl – Polish.

Male case
When I look at the user page User:Nike I can see the link Wkład użytkownika in the side menu (correct).
When I click it, I get to Special:Contributions/Nike,
which has a heading of Wkład użytkownika (correct)
and an explanation below Dla użytkownika Nike (correct).
Female case
When I look at the user page User:Sumanah I can see the link Wkład użytkowniczki in the side menu (correct).
When I click it, I get to Special:Contributions/Sumanah,
which has a heading of Wkład użytkownika (WRONG, should be Wkład użytkowniczki)
and an explanation below Dla użytkowniczki Sumanah (correct).

Here are my questions.

  1. How is it done, that messages fit the gender of Nike and Sumanah, i.e. 'owners' or 'subjects' of pages, not mine? I tried to find a /pl message with the female-gender użytkowniczki to learn from, but I failed...
  2. Can it be also done in messages like 'USERNAME moved the page' (should read przeniósł for male, and przeniosła for female) or 'undid changes' (usunął or wycofał for male, and usunęła or wycofała for female) or similar in automatic edit descriptions? How can {{GENDER}} refer to proper user?
  3. Which string defines the erratic message at Sumanah's contributions listing? How should it be fixed?

CiaPan (talk) 01:14, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

01:14, 20 December 2018
  1. GENDER has two usage variants: One referring to the current user viewing the page (used only for interface messages, see e.g. Tog-watchrollback ("Add pages where I have performed a rollback to my watchlist")), written as {{GENDER:|m|f|n}} (without the username). An the other one where the user, whose gender should discriminate, is specified explicitly (e.g. savedrights ("The user groups of {{GENDER:$1|$1}} have been saved.")), written as {{GENDER:username|m|f|n}}. Obviously, the username is usually passed as a parameter to the respective message, e.g. {{GENDER:$1|m|f|n}}.
  2. Of course it can, USERNAME {{GENDER:USERNAME|przeniósł|przeniosła}} (more specifically, usually something like$1 {{GENDER:$1|przeniósł|przeniosła}}, if the $1 variable contains the username).
  3. If you want to learn which message causes something to be displayed, append ?uselang=qqx to the page URL, see the FAQ. In this case, viewing Special:Contributions/Sumanah?uselang=qqx shows the heading of the page is defined by contributions ("User contributions").
Mormegil (talk)08:41, 20 December 2018

The problem at (3) is that the message (both in Polish and English) uses the parameter $1, but it’s not passed to the message. This is a software bug, either the parameter should be passed, or—if that’s impossible for some reason—at least the parameter should be removed from the English message.

Tacsipacsi (talk)22:38, 20 December 2018