I am trying to make a sense out of this. The whole point of LocalRatings being local is that the mod user is the only one who can see ratings and that ratings are calculated based on the user data. Why would one tweak a rating being the only one seeing it... self-motivation?
PS: the fact that a user can edit a free-and-open-source project and its files (including replays) should not come as a surprise. Welcome to foss!
Here's my suggestion: Let's finish the basic encyclopedia first (write one text for each unit or building), yes we might have to comprise on some topics and leave out some cool information for the sake of keeping the texts simple and for anyone to read. And once we're done with the basic encyclopedia, we can always still develop it further as you suggested.
Please use SI. That is already in some descriptions and we use it as the system in the game itself. Also, since you're writing history strings, you could be meaning the "foot" from that age. (We might want to add something about that to the https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide.)
I was also seeing some "programmer's quotes" as opposed to “real quotes” when I skimmed through some changes.
Thank you for all the hard work in getting the history back! I'm very grateful that it is finally happening. I'm also willing to help review the whole thing when it is nigh compleat.
I noticed you use non SI units for lengths, don't think this is a good idea. Many play the game in English that don't live in the US, the default should be English international. Foot has maybe 30 definitions and a mile ranges between ~500m and ~1850m.
Isn't the history element a scroll-pane? Anyway it's not like the UI can't be tweaked and I think @wowgetoffyourcellphone even made a proposal in some other thread which I overall like.
Also, mixins can have subfolders, so instead of encyclopedia_towers.xml, you can have encyclopedia/towers.xml, which keeps the root folder a little cleaner.
Fun factoid from the past. The old website was attempting to collect articles that would later be used for in game historical articles: Factions :: 0 A.D. :: Wildfire Games (archive.org)
History Articles :: 0 A.D. :: Wildfire Games (archive.org)