robchur wrote:

I would be 90% certain that this would be a system message.

robchur wrote:

Yep. [[MediaWiki:Val_tab]]. As expected, all the interface text for the
validation pages is in system messages; consult [[Special:Allmessages]].

Closing as WORKSFORME.

jasonspiro4 wrote:

Reopening.

Changing the text of Val_tab and all the other validation-related messages would
work, except that non-English language Wikipedias would say "Validate" instead
of "Rate" both on the top tab bar and elsewhere. I bet this would stop a lot of
our non-English-speaking users from ever using validation.

Since (I hear) there are plans to distribute print copies of Wikipedia to poor
countries, I'd assume there were plans to do this in other languages than just
English. So, why don't we make sure validation will be a success for all
languages by modifying the source code? This could make sure we get the
translations changed too.

(We would simply have to change all 10 instances of the word "validate" to
"rate" among the English strings in Language.php. Then, and this is the key, we
would have to notify all of our translators of the change. The 10 strings are:
$validate, $val_tab, $val_validate_version, $val_user_validations,
$val_no_anon_validation, $val_validate_article_namespace_only, $val_validated,
$val_article_lists, and $val_page_validation_statistics.)

robchur wrote:

If changing the message is a problem, you're either changing the wrong message
or we need to introduce more of them. I don't see that there's a big
localisation issue here; people are normally pretty quick on the update front in
that case.

What do print copies have to do with validation in terms of how the validation
feature appears?

robchur wrote:

(In reply to comment #3)

(We would simply have to change all 10 instances of the word "validate" to
"rate" among the English strings in Language.php. Then, and this is the key, we
would have to notify all of our translators of the change. The 10 strings are:
$validate, $val_tab, $val_validate_version, $val_user_validations,
$val_no_anon_validation, $val_validate_article_namespace_only, $val_validated,
$val_article_lists, and $val_page_validation_statistics.)

Then submit a patch. :)

jasonspiro4 wrote:

Just to verify: the patch would have to comment out remove the relevant lines
from the 12 or so LanguageXX.php files with a note "Validation feature renamed
Rate feature"?

jasonspiro4 wrote:

patch for this issue

Here is the patch. It took longer than I thought to prepare, but I hope it will
pay off by encouraging people to use the page rating feature.

In Language.php, the patch:

• changes all instances of "validate" to "rate"
• changes all instances of "validation" to (usually) "page rating" or

(sometimes) "rating" as appropriate.

• changes the exclamation mark in "Your ratings have been stored!" to a period.

In *most* other LanguageXx.php files, it:

• adds a notice about the change
• prefixes "OldText: " on, and then comments out, the translated strings

corresponding to the English strings I changed

In *some* other LanguageXx.php files, it:

• adds a notice about the change
• prefixes "OldText: " on, and then comments out, the translated strings

corresponding to the English strings I changed

• and pastes in the new English text, uncommented, for translators'

convenience, so they can see the changes made. They were only small changes,
and translators may not want to go and look in Language.php to see them.

In *a few* other LanguageXx.php files, it:

• adds a notice about the change only.

All edits were made with Vim, which supports UTF-8/multibyte text editing.

The patch is about 95K, but it only makes changes to Language*.php. It is made
against CVS. I have tested the patch with $wgUseValidation = true and
$wgLanguageCode = "en" and "fr", and it applies fine and doesn't seem to break
anything.

Note that although the consensus on Wikipedia at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_feature#.22Rate_this_page.22_-_MediaZilla:4117
calls for "rate" or "rate this article", I have used the term "page ratings",
not "article ratings", in many places so that the text will read OK on all
MediaWikis, not just Wikipedia.

Attached:

robchur wrote:

It still doesn't matter in the broad scheme of things, since the end users will
customise the interface messages as they see fit.

avarab wrote:

Why is it relevant that end users can change the text of the message? This bug
is about changing the default text in the distribution.

robchur wrote:

Validation removed from the software. Closing as INVALID.