Language policy

Within the Help: namespace we are building a set of public domain help pages. The aim is to provide a basic set of help pages that may be imported into new wikis covering the basic editing and usage instructions. These should be translated into as many languages as possible.

• English is the main reference language, and all root pages should be named and written in English.
  
• Other languages should be placed in an appropriately named sub-page of the English version. E.g. the French version of Contents should be at Contents/fr (not Help:Sommaire, Aide:Sommaire or Help:Sommaire/fr).
  
• Language sub-pages should be named using the appropriate language code for that language (see below).
  
• Sub-pages should only be used for translations into other languages, not for English content (e.g. you shouldn't use Table editing/example - use Table editing example or Example of page editing instead).
  
• If an international version of a page exists but an English version does not, then please create a stub article for the English version as this aids navigation.
  
• All pages in the help namespace should be tagged with the Template:template languages languages template template, which automatically creates links to all available translations.
  

The English version of our front page is located at Main Page. Translated versions are located at Main Page/code, where code is the language code (e.g. Main Page/ko.
Importantly, the rules about language codes (see below) should be followed here as well.

Apart from the Main Page, no policy has yet been decided about other namespaces. For the time being, if you would like to create translations for pages in other namespaces then please do so as described for the Help: namespace, however content may be moved or deleted depending on the policy that is eventually adopted.
Note that the rule that English content should not be placed in sub-pages does not apply to other namespaces. This is one of the issues that needs resolving.

Throughout BRwiki you should use the language codes specified by the MediaWiki software when creating language-specific content (see Names.php for the full and up-to-date list).
Please also bear the following in mind:

• If the language code is not found in Names.php then we should not host help pages in that language.
  
• If you want to add a language that is not present, first get it added to the software (by making a request at Bugzilla) and only add pages here once the changes have been accepted.
  
• If MediaWiki uses the 'incorrect' code for a language then you should also (for consistency) use that incorrect code here. If you think a code is incorrect you should discuss it on Bugzilla, and if this results in it being changed we will move the pages to match.
  
• Note that some language codes in Names.php are now deprecated (e.g. zh-yue has been replaced with yue). In these cases only the most recent code should be used.