Page MenuHomePhabricator

Maintenance script to delete pages in the MediaWiki namespace created by "MediaWiki default"
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

Author: rotemliss

Description:
There are many old system messages in MediaWiki namespace (some of them were
even moved to Template namespace by the script which was running in June 2004
and December 2004), and I suggest to create a special page lists all the
messages which are not defined, neither in the local MessagesXX.php nor in
Messages.php. I suggest the name Oldmessages.

By the way, the special page will also list the old redirects to the templates
were in MediaWiki namespace and moved – but they also have to be deleted.


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
See Also:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43915

Details

Reference
bz5665

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Lowest.Nov 21 2014, 9:12 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz5665.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

robchur wrote:

While this is a simple enough request; might I caution that there are going to
be pages in the MediaWiki namespace which are in use, but won't show up when
checking Messages.php etc? Extensions and custom sidebar navigation are two
examples that spring to mind.

I'm also not too sure about making it a special page; it sounds more like the
sort of task one would use a maintenance script for.

rotemliss wrote:

(In reply to comment #1)

While this is a simple enough request; might I caution that there are going to
be pages in the MediaWiki namespace which are in use, but won't show up when
checking Messages.php etc? Extensions and custom sidebar navigation are two
examples that spring to mind.
I'm also not too sure about making it a special page; it sounds more like the
sort of task one would use a maintenance script for.

So there may be a list of redundant messages, and a list like that is better
used in a maintenance script. Changing summary.

gangleri wrote:

The 15th and 16 of March 2006 I cleaned the Esperanto Wiktionary
[[wikt:eo:Ĉefpaĝo]].
http://eo.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Speciala:Log&type=&user=Gangleri&page=&limit=500&offset=0
Because of additional decapitalization issues about 24 hours where required.

Nine months before [[ro:]] was cleaned and the deletion of old template
redirects required changing hundreds of üages where {{msg:}} syntax was used.

Deletion of obsolte MediaWiki messages which are not referenced in the wiki
would be a great help for orphaned projects. If a script is used then a log (in
English) should be added with "&action=edit&section=new" at the talk page of the
script ([[user_talk:MediaWiki_default]]).

However it might be a good ides to be able to distinguish "non system messages"
in the MediaWiki namespace via CSS. This would be another request.

best regards reinhardt [[user:gangleri]]

robchur wrote:

The improvements to localisatation will have rendered a lot of pages in the MediaWiki namespace useless, and a lot of these will have been deleted when this was introduced.

Such pages are now easier to pick out. If this isn't the case, we can run a report on the toolserver.

We've had deleteDefaultMessages.php for ages, marking WORKSFORME.

(In reply to comment #5)

We've had deleteDefaultMessages.php for ages, marking WORKSFORME.

The way that script has been implemented it only deletes pages
from the MediaWiki namespace that were created by old the MediaWiki
installer (User:MediaWiki_default).

It doesn't delete pages that are redundant but last modified by a
local user. This is very common on lang wikis created after 2006
(when we last used the "MediaWiki_default" thing in the installer)
but were not handled by translatewiki.net yet.

Those wikis have 100s of local pages with translations. Most of
which have been since imported to translatewiki and as such are
now redundant.

Keeping them local only causes translations to get outdated and/or
cause migration issues when messages change (e.g. different
parameters or whatever).

Opened bug 43915 for this.