It doesn't link if "babel-footer" is empty. I made it more strict in r102912 by requiring that it links to a page (i.e. that "babel-footer-url" is not empty).

I suppose you mean if $wgBabelMainCategory and/or $wgBabelCategoryNames is not configured? I see the logic, but I'm not sure it is 100% needed.

(In reply to comment #1)

It doesn't link if "babel-footer" is empty.

That might be a "bug" due to how WMF does it localisation messages. because it doesn't exist at mw wiki[1] but the message is linked in my sandbox[2]. But lets see how the new code works when it gets rolled out.

[1]. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Babel-footer
[2]. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Peachey88/Sandbox/Babel

It doesn't link if "babel-footer" is *empty*. That message does not exist locally on mw-wiki, but it is taken from the i18n files, so it is not empty. If you created that page on mw-wiki, and emptied it, the link would no longer appear.

I can confirm that settings the message content to - hides the link. It is a bit weird that it links by default to a category that needs to be populated manually.

Also one can't actually make a blank page normally, So that would confuse users unless they knew to create the page with something then blank it. Also most people would think to change it to "-" (Like I had to on MW Wiki for it to take effect).

Defiantly recommend removing it from the default messages.

Update assignee and CCs

There are actually two tasks here:

1. Document or change how the header and footer are hidden. It's not really obvious, and a separate task is needed.
2. Do not display or modify the block if categorization is disabled, all category settings are set to "false". It seems to me that this is a waste of too many resources for a small result (and I'm still not sure if it's the right thing to do).

In T33115#8566265, @Iniquity wrote:

There are actually two tasks here:

1. Document or change how the header and footer are hidden. It's not really obvious, and a separate task is needed.
2. Do not display or modify the block if categorization is disabled, all category settings are set to "false". It seems to me that this is a waste of too many resources for a small result (and I'm still not sure if it's the right thing to do).

@Pppery what do you think about this? :)

In T33115#8566301, @Iniquity wrote:

In T33115#8566265, @Iniquity wrote:

There are actually two tasks here:

1. Document or change how the header and footer are hidden. It's not really obvious, and a separate task is needed.

Is https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:Babel&diff=prev&oldid=5740973 sufficient for this, or is something else needed?

2. Do not display or modify the block if categorization is disabled, all category settings are set to "false". It seems to me that this is a waste of too many resources for a small result (and I'm still not sure if it's the right thing to do).

I'd recommend rethinking whether this still sense once my other patches are merged.

@Pppery what do you think about this? :)

In T33115#8566316, @Pppery wrote:

Is https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:Babel&diff=prev&oldid=5740973 sufficient for this, or is something else needed?

Yes, as a minimal fix - it's great :) Thank you! And in the future, I thought that we could make a setting in Community Configuratuion: show/hide footer/header T328171.