MediaWiki talk:Prefs-help-userdata

With MediaWiki ver.1.4, individual users can choose his own language for interface using Special:Preferences.

When I choose Japanese, for example, even the content of Mediawiki:Copyrightwarning change. Now it becomes the text prepared at Japanese Wikipedia. This means that the people using the Japanese interface does not see that contents should be placed under public domain, but instead see the message that contributions are released under GFDL.

If we take this seriously, it is a legal complication. So I would propose to get an agreement that all the users who change interface language into other than English are still bound by the texts like Mediawiki:copyrightwarning written in English that define important agreement, user's intent, warning, and other messages regarding the user and user's contributions.

More concretely, it means to insert a message like the following in this mediawiki page:
 * Language: You can choose interface language by changing this option. However, you agree that even after the change, the interface texts such as Mediawiki:copyrightwarning that appear to the users with English language interface will remain the valid texts that define important agreements, warning, your expressed intent, and other important issues regarding you and your contributions to English Wikinews. When those texts in English are modified while you are using other interface language, they still have the validity. Texts in other languages are not valid. Please do not use this option if you cannot agree with this.

I thought about this for a while and discussed on IRC with some others who know Mediawiki's code and server administration, and this was the only quick solution that I can think of. But I admit this sounds a bit against our spirit of multilingualism. If anyone has a better solution, I'd like to know.

Tomos 04:05, 12 12月 2004 (UTC)