This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.5 (58d6360), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
Fixed bugs
Some minor HTML errors in the produced HTML during an edit conflict have been fixed. (
r29474,
bug 12553)
section=0 now returns just section 0 when used with action=raw, rather than the entire page. (
r29476,
bug 12505)
The definition of a category timestamp (not normally visible to users, but available via the API and used by some scripts, and on some other projects) has changed; the category timestamp for a page now never changes when the page is renamed (previously it did only if the category was included without an explicit sortkey). (
r29615,
bug 12584)
The dropdown box for selecting a namespace on
Special:Newpages now reflects the true setting of the namespace filter when the page is loaded; previously it sometimes incorrectly displayed that all namespaces were included even though the filter was set to the article namespace only. (
r29618,
bug 12588)
When a bot creates a page, that edit now again doesn't appear in Recent Changes by default. (This behaviour used to be the case, but was accidentally broken and fixed again.) (
r29699,
bug 12611)
It's now possible for a bot-flagged user to make an edit that isn't bot-flagged, by appending &bot=0 to the end of the relevant URL. (
r29539,
bug 12574)
It was also realised this week that at some point it became possible to write universal interwiki prefixes; that is, an interwiki prefix that works no matter which Wikimedia wiki the prefix is rendered on. The link should be written [[m:project:language:page name]] (e.g.
m:w:en:WP:POST); this routes the parsing of the links via Meta, thus making them universally correct. (
bug 4285)
Configuration changes
The user rights framework configuration was changed for the English Wikipedia this week, allowing administrators to cause users to become 'rollbackers' or to remove that right (see
related story). A rollbacker can perform rollback in much the same way that an administrator can, except that if the rollbacker is not also a bot the rate at which rollbacks may be done is limited (to 5 per minute, or 5 per 2 minutes if rollback is for some reason granted to a non-autoconfirmed user). (
bug 12534)
Other technology news
A report on some of this week's site operations is available; there was a performance review of the software. This made several changes, especially to the way that caching works; also, the Title Blacklist extension (controlled via
MediaWiki:Titleblacklist) was disabled pending a performance improvement, and the 'refresh' button on the browser is now similar to
action=purge in fewer situations than before. There were other related miscellaneous changes such as changing
MediaWiki:Pagecategories from the default {{PLURAL:$1|Category|Categories}} to just Categories; on a wiki as large as the English Wikipedia, and for a message that needs to appear on most pages, this actually makes a significant difference.
Four new Wikimedia wikis have been created this week:
Wikipedia locked up for about 10 minutes on 11 January due to the rename of
User:Warlordjohncarter (who has a
server edit count of over 76000) to
User:John Carter; the servers take some time to process a rename of that size.
Ongoing news
Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See
mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to
bugzilla or use
Betawiki.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.5 (58d6360), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
Fixed bugs
Some minor HTML errors in the produced HTML during an edit conflict have been fixed. (
r29474,
bug 12553)
section=0 now returns just section 0 when used with action=raw, rather than the entire page. (
r29476,
bug 12505)
The definition of a category timestamp (not normally visible to users, but available via the API and used by some scripts, and on some other projects) has changed; the category timestamp for a page now never changes when the page is renamed (previously it did only if the category was included without an explicit sortkey). (
r29615,
bug 12584)
The dropdown box for selecting a namespace on
Special:Newpages now reflects the true setting of the namespace filter when the page is loaded; previously it sometimes incorrectly displayed that all namespaces were included even though the filter was set to the article namespace only. (
r29618,
bug 12588)
When a bot creates a page, that edit now again doesn't appear in Recent Changes by default. (This behaviour used to be the case, but was accidentally broken and fixed again.) (
r29699,
bug 12611)
It's now possible for a bot-flagged user to make an edit that isn't bot-flagged, by appending &bot=0 to the end of the relevant URL. (
r29539,
bug 12574)
It was also realised this week that at some point it became possible to write universal interwiki prefixes; that is, an interwiki prefix that works no matter which Wikimedia wiki the prefix is rendered on. The link should be written [[m:project:language:page name]] (e.g.
m:w:en:WP:POST); this routes the parsing of the links via Meta, thus making them universally correct. (
bug 4285)
Configuration changes
The user rights framework configuration was changed for the English Wikipedia this week, allowing administrators to cause users to become 'rollbackers' or to remove that right (see
related story). A rollbacker can perform rollback in much the same way that an administrator can, except that if the rollbacker is not also a bot the rate at which rollbacks may be done is limited (to 5 per minute, or 5 per 2 minutes if rollback is for some reason granted to a non-autoconfirmed user). (
bug 12534)
Other technology news
A report on some of this week's site operations is available; there was a performance review of the software. This made several changes, especially to the way that caching works; also, the Title Blacklist extension (controlled via
MediaWiki:Titleblacklist) was disabled pending a performance improvement, and the 'refresh' button on the browser is now similar to
action=purge in fewer situations than before. There were other related miscellaneous changes such as changing
MediaWiki:Pagecategories from the default {{PLURAL:$1|Category|Categories}} to just Categories; on a wiki as large as the English Wikipedia, and for a message that needs to appear on most pages, this actually makes a significant difference.
Four new Wikimedia wikis have been created this week:
Wikipedia locked up for about 10 minutes on 11 January due to the rename of
User:Warlordjohncarter (who has a
server edit count of over 76000) to
User:John Carter; the servers take some time to process a rename of that size.
Ongoing news
Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See
mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to
bugzilla or use
Betawiki.
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