Configuration of Babel extension on MW.org
Looking at instances of #babel and Template:Babel on MW.org pages, it appears the categories are not setup in MW.org's LocalSettings.php to allow for its actual use on MW.org. My guess is it was customized for displaying purposes on MW.org so they wouldn't categorize help pages, etc. Is there a no cats parameter for Babel that could be used instead, or perhaps one added. Seems like it would be good to have the categorizing of users by language being used on MW.org - but perhaps that particular feature is not really needed?
The community here never really cared about the babel templates, which is why they were never really created or cared about. The extension is really only active here because it was pushed out and onto everyone and we didn't have any pre-existing categories for the templates which is why they weren't set-up when the extension was activated. But if there anyone actually had a desire to see it up and running on here I wouldn't see that many people complaining about it.
I wouldn't mind finishing the setup if it were fully enabled.
There was some discussion about this a long while ago, where it was decided that this wasn't really necessary on MediaWiki. Due to the nature of the wiki, it's content and the way it is used, it was felt not only to be 'not useful' but also, possibly, damaging due to the extra clutter.
Unfortunately, since the crappy Liquid Threads was installed, which messed everything up, it is impossible to locate the history for any pre-LT discussions, so I can't point you to it.
I suspect this situation still applies, but if you really think it's worthwhile (rather than just doing it 'because we can') then I don't feel too strongly, personally.
"impossible to find"… Clicking archive links is hard or the search function?
Are these the discussions are you talking about? Project:Current_issues/Archive_2#Babel Project:Forum/archive/2008#Babel_equivalents.3F
Well, the archive link wasn't present on the page I was replying from, and after 5 minutes searching (and trying various namespaces, including Project:) I didn't find it. Believe me - I looked.
I read them over - my only thought would be that it's helpful for documentation development to know who has comfort working with what languages. Although I suppose we could go to their main user page (since enMW isn't it for most). I'm terrible with foreign languages so this will never apply to me I'll admit - but it does seem our non-English documentation is lacking. If this could help with that - I'm game. If the consensus is it won't make any difference (and I genuinely don't know myself either way) - any ideas what might?
