I've overhauled the description above by reformatting it, and adding this major detail:

• Plus, the entire section is completely missing, if we have our language-preference set to a non-local-default, and that language-variant has not been manually created locally. (try looking at this usercontribs page with your UI language set to anything other than French.)

I also re-read this comment on the related task, which might be the solution we need? (Slightly beyond my tech level, plus I'm tired, so am not sure.)

In T140585#2469611, @Ciencia_Al_Poder wrote:

Another option may be to add another message that's the same in all languages (aka $wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg) and display it below the default message. Just like recentchangestext or the edit tools.

TLDR: We currently have hundreds of local variants, each of which have to be created, and translated, and then maintained, separately. (e.g. 18 translations at mediawikiwiki, and 4 translations at metawiki)

I think we should be putting all the best tool links into Extension:WikimediaMessages
and translating it at translatewiki.

The goal is to minimize translation requirements, minimize maintenance efforts, and to get links to the best tools into the hands of all editors in all Wikimedia wikis.

@MZMcBride wrote:

This enhancement request might ultimately be a ticket against MediaWiki extensions --> WikimediaMessages, but this needs further thought and consideration first. I think a clear problem has been identified (footers that are duplicative and difficult to maintain), I'm just not sure what the best path forward is yet. There are other options such as interwiki transclusion (hah). We need to develop a plan.

Are there any drawbacks to creating this string in Extension:WikimediaMessages and doing the translation at translatewiki?
The only major one I can think of, is individual wiki-communities who are accustomed to their unique ordering & selection of the links, being confused by a re-ordering (standardization). And thus we'd need to some research and feedback-requests and announcements.

Are there any other practical options?