Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-07-09/Technology report
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.13alpha (r36195), and changes with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.
Fixed bugs
- Formulae entered with the <math> tag now no longer have a chance of line-breaking when rendered as HTML. (r23649, bug 10438)
- An API query for a page's protection status now no longer has a chance of causing a database error and thus producing no useful output. (r23636, bug 10439)
- Parameters 3 and 4 to MediaWiki:Movepage-moved can now be used inside wikilinks without problems. (r23604, bug 10455)
- Watching pages no longer fails in Gecko-based browsers when the page's title contains a zero-width non-joiner character in the page's title. (Previously the watch appeared successful but failed anyway.) The same fix fixed the same error when using the CategoryTree feature. (r23834, bug 10477)
New features
- An (undo) link is now available for each edit on page histories, without going via the (diff) link first. (r23771, bug 1783)
- A new API query prop=imageinfo has been implemented, to query for details about an image. (r23819, bug 9142)
- It's now possible to query the size of the database server replication lag, using an API query for meta=siteinfo. (r23823, bug 10211)
- A local page MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist was added for blacklisting spam links from just one Wikimedia project. (Adding spam links to the Meta blacklist, m:Spam blacklist, will blacklist spam links from all Wikimedia projects.) (r23849, bug 8492)
Configuration changes
- Adding an external link to http://en.wikiversity.org (or any other language-version of Wikiversity) no longer triggers a CAPTCHA for new and unregistered users. (bug 10440)
Other technology news
- The Choctaw Wikipedia (http://cho.wikipedia.org) has been closed. (bug 10443, proposal on Meta)
- Wikipedia was uneditable for about an hour from 14:54 to 15:54 UTC on July 3; the developers' log gives some possible reasons as to why ('brion' is User:Brion VIBBER):[1]
- 15:53 brion: lag problems on enwiki -- all slaves lagged (approx 3547 sec), but no apparent reason why
- 15:56 brion: lag problem resolved. stop/start slave got them running again; presumably the connections broke due to the net problems but it thought they were still alive, so didn't reconnect
Ongoing news
- Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla.
Also this week: Bureaucrat nominations — Board elections — New hires — Japanese plagiarism — WikiWorld — News and notes — Features and admins — Technology — Arbitration
