Last modified: 2013-12-29 09:26:57 UTC
If displayed file is linked from shared repository, it shows ("transcludes") the description from there. However, people get confused when they want to start a talk and they usually start it on local project instead of on repository. Setting some $wgFileTalkTabsLinkToRepositoryIfFileShared (*) boolean variable to set the "File talk" tab on shared files linking to repository instead would be reasonable because it doesn't make a sense to start local talk on shared file. Additionally, the similar complementary $wgFileTabsLinkToRepositoryIfFileShared (*) would make sense too. I'm not sure if they should be separated or one $wg... for both namespaces would work good enough. I'm in favour for one variable only, since I can not find any example where two with different setting would take a place, but maybe somebody will. ------------------------------ (*) yeah, maybe not that long ;-) just an example...
The problem with this approach, as you describe it, is that there would not be a way through the UI to create, edit or view a local file talk page if someone did want to actually do that. But maybe that is not an issue - I am really struggling to think of a valid use case for creating local file talk pages for foreign files. How would it be to change the existing UI: [File] [Discussion] to, for foreign files, [File] [Local discussion] [Shared discussion] Or, as suggested in comment 0, do without the local link altogether if the local file talk page does not already exist: [File] [Shared discussion]