Topic on Project:Village Pump

Currently, we have pages of both these types, for example MediaWiki 1.27 and Release notes/1.27. This has the upsides that there is

• a quick overview of the changes done
• not so much content to translate on MediaWiki X.XX
• Release notes/X.XX can basically be pasted from the source file

However, MediaWiki 1.31 choses a different approach: It copies the content of Release notes, restructures it, adds links and further documentation at some places (Database for example). This has these upsides:

• It finally feels like a proper documentation about a MediaWiki release.
• More of the documentation is translated
• The Release notes have helpful phabricator links

However, you invest much more work in translating the stuff in section Upgrade notices for MediaWiki developers, which I don't think is useful to anyone. Everyone who wants to develop in MediaWiki must be able to contribute some basic English to understand the documentation, and it's so much to translate as well, that I don't think it's worth the effort.

That's why I think we should do a compromise:

• We keep the Release notes page, but add links there to Phabricator in the future.
• We keep creating more verbose MediaWiki X.XX, except for the Upgrade notices for MediaWiki developers section. However, I think the Action API changes are quite important for bot developers and should stay.

P.S.: Today is the day I learned about Wikitext editing in StructuredDiscussions. I'm really happy.

I don't think I understand your proposal, so I can't comment usefully on it (even though you've already rushed to enact it, it seems). When you say

We keep the Release notes page, but add links there to Phabricator in the future.

… do you mean

1. We should have a release notes page with a nicely-written semi-prose detailed page (like 1.31 is going for);
2. We should have a release notes page which is just a basic copy-paste of the version in git with some find/replaces (like 1.27 etc. had); or
3. We should have a release notes page which is just a link to the "real" version in Phabricator/git?

I'm not sure I like any of these proposals, really. A more detailed set of highlights on the main page might be better, with links to the real release notes (in git) sprinkled liberally through it?

However, you invest much more work in translating the stuff in section Upgrade notices for MediaWiki developers, which I don't think is useful to anyone. Everyone who wants to develop in MediaWiki must be able to contribute some basic English to understand the documentation, and it's so much to translate as well, that I don't think it's worth the effort.

Translation memory means that that's not too much work over time.

I didn't really "rush" this, I think, I acted according to the feedback I recieved here, at the central coordination page about the work in this project. Moreover, it's easily reversible and a "wiki" is fast by definition.

I mean: We should habe a release notes page (Which isn't MediaWiki 1.31, but Release notes/1.31!) that's just a basic copy-paste version of the version in git (like Release notes/1.27 and Release notes/1.31), but links the task references as actual working links to Phabricator.

The result is what you see at Release notes/1.31, which is linked from MediaWiki 1.31, and is basically identical with the removed section. They nearly were duplicates before, and are now entirely. That's why I removed the duplicate content from MediaWiki 1.31, trying to create a "more detailed set of highlights on the main page". I really didn't change that much, just deduplicating the Release notes.

Translation memory means that that's not too much work over time.

I don't understand what this means. However I don't think every page here has to be translated, and this is quite much semi-English content (coding jargon, which suffers from translation in most cases anyway) with variable and function names. Furthermore, this is no one-time job, but something you have to do twice a year. I just don't think it's worth it at all.

I didn't really "rush" this, I think, I acted according to the feedback I recieved here, at the central coordination page about the work in this project. Moreover, it's easily reversible and a "wiki" is fast by definition.

Breaking translations are not undoable.

This is a reasonable venue for wider discussion about how well we serve potential MediaWiki sysadmins with content that is half in English-ish code, half in their own language, and I agree it's not great, but one person replying to one specific "let's revert this" isn't great. :-)

Breaking translations are not undoable.

Just reverting should do the job, I see no reason why this shouldn't work. Both the translations and the translation markers in the old revision aren't deleted.

I think we have to make a distinction here: There are three kinds of information requiring different levels of MediaWiki software knoeledge:

• New features concern everyone.
• Compatibility and upgrade notices concern sysadmins and developers
• Detailed information about programming interface changes and deprecations concern only MediaWiki developers

I think there is no need to localize the last points, but this actually doesn't concern sysadmins.

I would love to hear other opinions as well, however, I can't create them from thin air ;)

Your suggestions make sense. Would you like to help to implement them for 1.32 or even 1.31?

Let's leave this open for feedback a few days, but than I would like to move forward with this for MediaWiki 1.31 (won't be much work to do.) French is the only language that did some translations of the part I would like to remove by now.

I would like to help implement this for 1.32, once the release branch is created and we have got a ~final feature set.

Release branches are forked about six weeks before the release is made and this is the point that you would have what is considered to be a final feature set.

Since 1.32 is set for release sometime in November, that means that it will be forked around October 15th. At that point, we should have a clear idea of what the "final" feature set is.

I'd be happy to help you with this if you want to start on it then.

I just implemented the changes we discussed here for MediaWiki 1.31 and Release notes/1.31.

Given previous releases, maxbe the release branch will even be created a little earlier, I guess 2-5 weeks from now. I guess Multi-Content Revisions will be one big thing included in this release, even if it will take until 1.33 until we have a real, full release here.

I do not think blanking https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki_1.31&diff=0&oldid=2839842&diffmode=source is at all appropriate for pages that are already translated. Please revert yourself.

I agree blanking translated sections of pages should be avioded, however I disagree that it should block restructuring pages to a unified concept, especially since translations of this parts of the page aren't that helpful in principle. I wouldn't like people speaking other langiages putting any more effort in translating this.

Futhermore, it didn't undo that many translation work, the only language that hat large parts of this section translated was Japanese. I think a good compromise to make here would be to leave the MediaWiki 1.31 page as is, while moving the Japanese Release notes to Release notes/1.31/ja (because that's what it actually is), using old-school translation.