This task is a parent task to capture all the requirements to support sending TechNews using Special:MassMessage (alone, currently there are custom steps outside this page).
Feature development based on initially gathered requirements is complete. Initial feedback given in T270435: Tech News directly using Mass Message. Waiting for Language team to process the feedback.
Where would I put a request to support delivery of translations on a page basis, rather than "just" on a wiki one?
As in:
the system understands that if it's targeting fr.wiki*, it needs to use the French version of the text.
What I want is that it understands that if I am targeting a page like "Commons:Village pump/fr", then it also uses French there, even though the wiki itself is English by default.
FWIW, I'm aware I could "just" mass message French wikis separately and include that page among those targets, but we're aiming at reducing the complexity here.
@Elitre - We're using the target page language to determine the language in which to deliver the message. Please see the documentation here - https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Extension:MassMessage#Sending_a_translated_page_as_message
In case of https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Bistro&action=info, the page content language is French, so the "page sent as message" will be delivered in French, if available, else in fallback languages, if available, finally falling back to the source language of the page. Same will be the case for pages under fr.wiki*
Right. I'm sure Johan had explained this to me already. Will look more into it, TYVM.
That documentation mentions that Extension:Translate needs to be present on the target wiki. As Tech News is distributed to many monolingual wikis in addition to multilingual ones, most of its target pages don’t have Translate installed, but they should get translated versions as well. The distribution module takes care of monolingual wikis well; now I tweaked it to work on multilingual wikis, too.
The Translate extension need not be installed on the wiki where the target page is present.
Sorry, looks like I can’t read… That said, the delivery currently doesn’t happen with this mode AFAIK, so the module change still makes sense.
It just came up that MassMessage can’t substitute templates. Supporting substitution is a new requirement, so it’s not needed in the first iteration, but it would be necessary in the (preferably near) future to support translating the newsletter efficiently (avoid translating the same sentences again and again).
@Tacsipacsi If it is important, it should be filed as a separate task. Based on feedback we will decide if it fits under the work under this epic task or not.
Where is the template that gets substituted? If in a MassMessage message a template is used, the template that inserted is one from that local wiki where the message gets posted. In the various wikis there is not a single template that is the same with exact functionality on every wiki. (In the past this caused caused several issues!)
Also outsiders from the local community that create local templates without knowing the local policies and customs, is also not appropriate.
Of course I’d like to have the substitution happen on Meta, exactly to avoid the issues you mention.