Suggested tech fix would be to update MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-manage-mentors-pretext-regular to include a link to Special:ManageMentors

Thank you for filling this task, @Xaosflux. If I rephrase your request as "on pages where the list of mentors is transclused, admins don't have access to the admin buttons", am I still right?

In T321700#8346921, @Trizek-WMF wrote:

Thank you for filling this task, @Xaosflux. If I rephrase your request as "on pages where the list of mentors is transclused, admins don't have access to the admin buttons", am I still right?

Not exactly, and I'm not sure if that is the best fix - but it could be.

I also think Growthexperiments-manage-mentors-pretext-regular could otherwise be improved. Admins can remove/edit that list because they have technical access, their ability is not tied to any special "community standards or policies" that are specific to growth experiments, so I don't think that verbiage really belongs there. (Yes, admins generally make privileged edits based on such standards - but they don't normally need the software to prescribe a behavior).

See example at https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xaosflux/sandbox/2 (using a testwiki localized <MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-manage-mentors-pretext-regular>). I came across this on enwiki, and we certainly could just do such an override there, but since this is new thought it may be best to address upstream.

Thanks for the clarification @Xaosflux, I think I understand it better now.

The introduction text actually wasn't supposed to display during transclusion at all. Originally, it was intended to only appear when visiting Special:ManageMentors directly (which is why there is no link to Special:ManageMentors). For transclusions, the original idea was to only show the mentor list, expecting the page where it is transcluded in to provide a wiki-appropriate introduction (including ie. how to enroll as a mentor, what conditions need to be met to enroll or what are the expectations of the mentors). Unfortunately, I swapped the condition in the code, and it now behaves in the opposite way. This is tracked in T321773.

I believe that the current copy makes much more sense when it shows up at Special:ManageMentors itself (as that's where the admins can make use of the buttons, at least technically). If it's still not clear, we can certainly change it to make it more obvious.

Of course, that fix will not answer the question one might have when viewing a page that transcludes Special:ManageMentors (ie. how can the list be changed). Would it make sense to add a sentence like "Go to Special:ManageMentors for details" (or something similar) below the table?

If the intro text is otherwise being removed when transcluding, this feature request can be cancelled - as the page transcluding can just use it's own page-specific text (as those are always going to be set up locally and manually).