bingle-admin wrote:

The WMF core features team tracks this bug on Mingle card https://mingle.corp.wikimedia.org/projects/flow/cards/547, but people from the community are welcome to contribute here and in Gerrit.

Oxford dictionary says

4a line or block of text appearing at the top of each page of a book or document. Compare with footer.
  the part of an email before the message, containing information such as the subject and sender:

so "header" is OK but not ideal. A board's header could contain anything, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_History . Maybe "description" or "introduction" is better.

Meanwhile the gray box at the top of each topic containing the topic title and participant count and other information is like a "topic header" in the e-mail sense. We don't currently name (I think it's been called "topic bar" internally a few times) so users fumble for their own names for it and a couple have called it "the topic header".

I commented on this a little more, at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Flow/Nomenclature#Header

aravikn wrote:

Would someone please tell me what must be done to fix this bug?

Aravind: See previous comments (or ask a more specific question). It's not clear though what a better word would be, so this is not very actionable.

@DannyH, will you be willing to reconsider this? The number of translatable messages that use "header" is growing, and I have a suspicion that translators who didn't bother to read the documentation like I did are getting it incorrectly.

I actually think 'header' is better than 'sub-heading'. A 'sub-heading' sounds like a very short amount of text (similar to a Wikipedia heading for a sub-section), like 'Middle ages' as a sub-heading in the 'History' section.

I also think our use of 'header' fits the Oxford definition S quoted well.

'Board description' would be about equivalent, but not clearly better.

However, we're considering showing the header in the right rail in some cases. I want to call this the 'cider' (side header), but I don't think the translators will like that. So maybe the fact that we're moving this is a reason to rename it to 'board description' or 'board introduction'?

In case it wasn't clear, I support "description" for what is currently called "board header". Topic headers can retain this name, because it's easy to translate (or so I think).

In T59790#1130459, @Amire80 wrote:

In case it wasn't clear, I support "description" for what is currently called "board header". Topic headers can retain this name, because it's easy to translate (or so I think).

We don't call them topic headers. We call them summaries. If anything is calling it a topic header, that's a bug.

Change 198538 had a related patch set uploaded (by Amire80):
Replace "header" with "description"

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/198538

I decided to be bold and submitted a patch: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/198538

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preamble approach?

In T59790#1161292, @Sunpriat wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preamble approach?

The word 'preamble' is pretty formal in English. It makes me think of a constitution or other legal document, not a regular page.

Amir already has a patch up, replacing "header" by "description".
Anyone willing to defend "header" or go with another word?

Yeah, I already have supported header above. I don't see any reason to change it until we move to the right rail.

Change 198538 merged by jenkins-bot:
Replace "header" with "description"

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/198538