ilyanep wrote:

Yes, I agree. Perhaps even a help file within the mediawiki software might be
useful. For example, I installed mediawiki on my intranet server at home, and
was wondering for a while what the red exclaimation marks were on the RC page,
until I noticed they were watchlisted pages [and this didn't happen in
wikipedia]. I'm adding my vote for this.

wiki wrote:

I think you'll find the red exclamation marks are "unpatrolled pages".

I've found (after installing MediaWiki for myself) that it is possible to add help to at least some of these pages. See [[MediaWiki:Recentchangestext]], and its friends at
[[Special:Allmessages]].

robchur wrote:

Edit the system messages to customise interface text for each page. You can
either add a brief description there, or link to a custom page in the help
namespace.