AbuseFilter allows the translation of the "Abuse filter" username using the abusefilter-blocker message. Whenever this message is translated, or the translation is updated, the AbuseFilter software creates this username and gives it administrator rights.

Making things translatable is mostly good, but in this case, it's not so necessary, and somewhat confusing. At least in the Wikimedia world, all usernames are now global. When you make them translatable, you cannot see their global contributions (although you can see their global contributions in wikis where it was not translated, which is even more confusing). It's also inconvenient when looking at wikis in other languages, for example, for people who monitor small languages and need to know which administrators are real people and which are bots like the Abuse filter user.

I spoke about this to @Dreamy_Jazz at Wikimedia Hackathon 2024, and we think that this localization can be discontinued.

Here's the suggested draft plan for doing this; feel free to fix it:

• Soft-hide the translation by making the message optional on translatewiki.
• Delete existing translations that are identical to English.
• Notify Wikimedia users that the username is going to return to English, in case the localized name is used in user scripts, help pages, bots, etc.
• Notify non-Wikimedia users that the username is going to return to English, in case the localized name is used in user scripts, help pages, bots, etc.
• Mark the message as ignored in translatewiki to prevent further translation.
• Delete all the existing translations.

If we want to keep the possibility of localizing it on non-Wikimedia sites, we can probably stop here. If we want to stop localization for all AbuseFilter, then go on:

• Delete the message entirely, and remove translatewiki "ignored" configuration.