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(In reply to comment #0)
> Please remove Russian fallback for Ukrainian language. It is not needed now.

Why is it not needed?

(In reply to comment #1)
> Why is it not needed?

I'd asked to add it years ago, where translatewiki interface was simple and many messages were not translated. It helped translate messages (it is easier to translate from Russian than from English). Now in translatewiki interface translator can choose in configuration other languages to show when translated. So the fallback is not needed.

It's hard to notice untranslated messages because of the same (cyrillic) script

Russian is the logical fallback for Ukrainian. Best translate everything if you don't want to see anything fall back. See https://translatewiki.net/wiki/special:languagestats/uk for current status.

Siebrand, maybe you want to personally warn us on e-mail about new messages BEFORE they'll be applied (if there already exist such notify mechanism please point it), and update language file more frequently so we dont need to create local patch-messages?) It will solve the problem. And please leave the decision about logical fallback to the comunity which have to use it and group of responsible translators, ok?

If you don't want to remove Russian as a fallback language, you should at least control it. We can see at WM-UA wiki that RC page is currently http://ua.wikimedia.org/wiki/Спеціальна:Свежие_правки . Спеціальна is a Special page in Ukrainian, but Свежие_правки is a Russian name for RecentChanges. Currently Ukrainian community does not want to give local names to Special pages, but we want to get English names and not Russian ones. The same is the case for all other special pages in all Ukrainian projects except Wikipedia. So please at least remove Russian fallback for special pages in Ukrainian wikis. Thanks

(In reply to comment #5)
> Siebrand, maybe you want to personally warn us on e-mail about new messages
> BEFORE they'll be applied (if there already exist such notify mechanism please
> point it), and update language file more frequently so we dont need to create
> local patch-messages?)

Unfortunately that is not possible. See the link I provided in comment 4.

> It will solve the problem. And please leave the decision
> about logical fallback to the comunity which have to use it and group of
> responsible translators, ok?

Well, that's not really a community decision, as fallbacks are set MediaWiki
wide.

(In reply to comment #7)
> fallbacks are set MediaWiki wide.
Well, but what set here 
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/languages/messages/MessagesUk.php?view=markup in row 55?

> fallbacks are set MediaWiki wide
So make an exception for WM projects at least

Now we have special pages in Russian also in UkWiki. Nice.

(In reply to comment #10)
> Now we have special pages in Russian also in UkWiki. Nice.

Glad you like it. It's all part of fallback functionality.

You can localise special pages in Ukranian here: https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:AdvancedTranslate?language=uk&module=special

(In reply to comment #7)
> fallbacks are set MediaWiki wide.

Well, but you've added it 4 years ago:
r1=31443&r2=31458">http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/languages/messages/MessagesUk.php?r1=31443&r2=31458
If you can add it, you should can remove it.


(In reply to comment #11)
> You can localise special pages in Ukranian here:
> https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:AdvancedTranslate?language=uk&module=special

But we do not want translate special page aliases. English names are good for us.

Thanks for link. I began translation, and as soon as we translate everything the issue will not be actual.

Once more question. Though the most important pagenames in Ukrainian are added, we still observe them in Russian. For example "AllPages" is already marked as "Усі_сторінки" but I still observe "http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Все_страницы". Why???

Andrij, we must wait for localisation update (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/core.git;a=history;f=languages/messages/MessagesUk.php)

Actually that's not it. Special page names are not part of daily commits, and not part of LocalisationUpdate. Expect them in 1.20wmf5.

(In reply to comment #16)
> Actually that's not it. Special page names are not part of daily commits, and
> not part of LocalisationUpdate. Expect them in 1.20wmf5.

Could you please in this case at least temporarily remove Russian fallback. This does pose a problem for Ukrainian wiki communities, as we have numerous links that will not work anymore once these pages are translated. For example, all the signature of anonymous users are now [[Спеціальна:Вклад]] (Внесок in Ukrainian). Formerly it was [[Спеціальна:Contributions]], which was considered as normal and which will be supported anyway because of compatibility issues. [[Спеціальна:Вклад]] links are not supposed to be functional, as Russian language page names are not supported in, say, German or Polish wikis.

So currently the best solution is to temporarily remove Russian fallback (it takes just a minute to remove one line of code) and let us have English special page names at least until 1.20wmf5

Support NickK in this case. At general before applying global changes it would be a good manner to discuss them with local communities if they are really needed. Otherwise, if you avoid discussing, you should at least preserve the possibility to make corrections for communities if changes are not acceptable for them. As follows, you do nor the first neither the second.

(In reply to comment #18)
> Support NickK in this case. At general before applying global changes it would
> be a good manner to discuss them with local communities if they are really
> needed. Otherwise, if you avoid discussing, you should at least preserve the
> possibility to make corrections for communities if changes are not acceptable
> for them. As follows, you do nor the first neither the second.

As we are going into full debate mode here, something that's great on wiki talk pages, but now what bug trackers are meant for, let me make one contribution.

You are making a fine effort to represent that what is bent as straight.

* The Ukranian localisation of MediaWiki falls back to Russian, and after that to English. It's been like that for multiple years as someone has pointed out in comment 2.
* MediaWiki is fully localisable, including special page URLs. If something is not localisable, we make very reasonable and timely efforts to make it so.
* Users deserve products that are fully localised; they interact better with them.
* Until recently, Russian and Ukranian both didn't have special page localisation.
* As Russian has it now, Ukranian now has localisation of special page URLs in Russian, because of fallback behaviour.

Solution? Localise everything in Ukranian and there won't be any Russian.

I'm aware of the current *political* issues involving Russian in the Ukraine. That however, does not dismiss the linguistic reasons for "ru" as fallback for "uk".

If you guys (and/or girls) get the localisation done, I'll make every effort so that it will be deployed out of schedule. Please let me know when it's done. Wile you're at it, please also have a look at magic words[1], although those seem pretty complete already.

[1] https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:AdvancedTranslate?language=uk&module=words

*The fallback to Russian and then to English, instead of the fallback directly to English, seems to be a controversial issue. The discussion in uk.wiki shows that some of us are strongly oppose, and some of us are neutral on this subject. May be an additional discussion is needed to draw a conclusion if Russian fallback is preferable or not for most of Ukrainian wikipedians. 
*In any case the best solution of the issue is a possibility to localise everything in Ukrainian that is already localised in other languages. 
*Thanks for link, I think it is already high time to apply changes for both pages, they are pretty complete.

Where was this proposal discussed with the community? Any link handy?

I asked on bug 37329 and there is no consensus for this, additionally it's probably not what actually desired but rather a wrong solution for another problem.
Closing this bug too. We're always available on translatewiki.net, #mediawiki-i18n etc. to help you translate the interface to Ukrainian as much as possible and in the easiest way possible for you needs.