Change #1299538 had a related patch set uploaded (by VadymTS1; author: VadymTS1):

[mediawiki/core@master] MessagesUk.php: Remove Russian aliases

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1299538

Change #1299552 had a related patch set uploaded (by VadymTS1; author: VadymTS1):

[mediawiki/extensions/FlaggedRevs@master] FlaggedRevs: Remove Russian aliases for special pages in Ukrainian

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1299552

The moment I saw the patch that @VadymTS1 uploaded, it seemed a bit strange to me. I don't recall a case where aliases of special pages/namespace pages were removed, because it breaks a lot of internal and external links.
I assume there is also an ideological aspect here (like what T39314#11960491 wrote), and I understand the feelings on the matter, but it sounds strange to me to break such a large number of links.

By the way, this is not a private configuration for Ukrainian Wikipedia, but namespace names for all wikis in the Ukrainian language, including wikis that are not part of the WMF. therefore, a community discussion on ukwiki does not justify approving the change...

I would be happy to hear additional opinions.

It's not just about Ukrainian-language Wikimedia projects. Other MediaWiki sites in Ukrainian need backwards compatibility, too.

In T428613#12006251, @Amire80 wrote:

It's not just about Ukrainian-language Wikimedia projects. Other MediaWiki sites in Ukrainian need backwards compatibility, too.

How you know that other MediaWiki sites in Ukrainian need backwards compatibility to Russian?

@Andriy.v That question also works the other way round: How would you know that removing backwards compatibility to surprise admins and users is a good idea?

I also agree with Andriy.v, for now we don't know if it will be a problem on other MediaWiki sites in Ukrainian, because we haven't analyzed them yet. I had already suggested to VadymTS1 that we have to gather statistics about the usage of Russian aliases and then decide on a solution to this ticket. We could start from this list of projects: https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%96%D1%8F:%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%B9%D1%82%D0%B8_%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%8E_%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%8E_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%96_MediaWiki. As for other MediaWiki sites I am not sure that they update their MediaWiki as often as Wikimedia projects do, therefore it also could be not a problem because they will be using an older version of MediaWiki engine. And lastly, we could just announce or warn that from a certain MediaWiki version, we will be dropping support for Russian aliases in MediaWiki for sites whose primary language is Ukrainian. We already had cases where MediaWiki engine had dropped support for whole namespaces like Gadget and Book, which could have been more impactful than dropping some aliases.

In T428613#12027774, @Aklapper wrote:

@Andriy.v That question also works the other way round: How would you know that removing backwards compatibility to surprise admins and users is a good idea?

@Aklapper when there is an important update of MediaWiki that can be destruptive for external to Wikimedia sites you stop it only because there is a risk to damage these sites? The pattern I see when a Mediawiki update is made for Wikimedia projects, is that there is a Tech news that informs communities of changes that they should made to avoid destructive effects of the update. For external projects I don't know how it works, but I really doubt that developers stops Mediawiki update only because it can be harmfull to an external Ukrainian language Mediawiki project. Let's be proactive instead of just closing the eyes on a large community request. Why we shouldn't deal with this like a common Mediawiki update and just inform these communities of the lost of backwards compatibility in Russian?

In T428613#12000877, @neriah wrote:

The moment I saw the patch that @VadymTS1 uploaded, it seemed a bit strange to me. I don't recall a case where aliases of special pages/namespace pages were removed, because it breaks a lot of internal and external links.
I assume there is also an ideological aspect here (like what T39314#11960491 wrote), and I understand the feelings on the matter, but it sounds strange to me to break such a large number of links.

By the way, this is not a private configuration for Ukrainian Wikipedia, but namespace names for all wikis in the Ukrainian language, including wikis that are not part of the WMF. therefore, a community discussion on ukwiki does not justify approving the change...

I would be happy to hear additional opinions.

We had T325910. That's prefix conflict though.

Also per T325910#8608581, usages in edit summaries would be a concern, maybe?

I understand very well how important it is that Ukraine users don't get Russian translations as a fallback or something, and I totally support this. However, this is not the case for special page aliases. All additional aliases after the first one are really only that, aliases. They are not displayed anywhere, as far as I know. Not even on http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SpecialPages?uselang=uk. They are a mostly technical detail that only exists for two reasons, as far as I'm concerned:

1. Wikitext users can use alternatives like [[Special:Stabilisation]] instead of [[Special:Stabilization]] or convenient shortcuts like [[Special:Contribs]] instead of [[Special:Contributions]] when they want. This is entirely up to the user and not enforced by the software in any way.
2. For backwards-compatibility with an old special page name.

Number 1 doesn't really apply here. But number 2 does. There are literally millions of MediaWiki wikis out there and the general philosophy is that we cannot break existing wiki pages. In a situation like this the backwards-compatibility needs to stay, basically forever. It really is nothing more than that, backwards-compatibility.

Edit: The only exception is that the aliases are considered when searching for a special page name. This can be disturbing, as explained in T39314#2822835. But this problem should be resolved one by one, only for the aliases that are proven to be disturbing. Not by mass-deleting all of them.

In T428613#12103466, @thiemowmde wrote:

They are not displayed anywhere, as far as I know.

They are displayed in the search, and a user asked about them in Discord chat. See image below. In the image below, the search is general; in other words, I am not searching specifically for Russian aliases.

I don't think that displaying some mixed (the translation of Special: is always in Ukrainian) search results outweighs breaking backwards compatibility.

Is it possible to hide the Russian results by CSS?

They are displayed in the search […]

Please help us understand this better. As far as I get it this can only happen in two situations:

• Either the user searches in Russian. Sure we show the Russian results then.
• Or there is a weird overlap between some Russian aliases and the Ukraine names of other special pages.

The screenshot shows you searching for "Журнали", the main Ukraine alias for Special:Log. But I cannot find any problematic secondary alias that would unexpectedly interfere the primary Ukraine alias.

What the screenshot shows is that the same special page is found multiple times. What's the point of that? Secondary aliases should not make the same search result being shown again. If you ask me this is a bug. I attached a patch.

Change #1309134 had a related patch set uploaded (by Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE); author: Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE)):

[mediawiki/core@master] Search: Don't find the same special page multiple times

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1309134

Change #1309143 had a related patch set uploaded (by Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE); author: Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE)):

[mediawiki/core@master] Search: Cleanup and performance optimizations in PrefixSearch

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1309143