Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-09-10/Technology report

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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

By ais523, 10 September 2007

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 (r36113), 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

• When a bot requests an edit token for a page via the API, the edit token returned is now correct even if the page didn't exist beforehand. (r25581, bug 10898)

New features

• Several enhancements were made to the API this week:
  • An API query for the members of a category now contains an option cmprop=timestamp to return each category member's recategorisation timestamp, and an option to sort the results by timestamp. (r25474, bug 10890)
  • It's now possible to exclude redirects or to exclude non-redirects from an API query for a page's what-links-here. (r25476, bug 10980)
  • It's also now possible to query the API to find out the SHA-1 hash of a version of an image. (r25456, bug 11115)
• When a new section of a page is created using the '+' tab, the edit summary no longer has to be identical to the section header; the exact form of the new automatic summary can be customized by admins via MediaWiki:Newsectionsummary. (r25573, bug 10836)
• The error message MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext that displays when a user tries to edit a page is now given a parameter that allows that message to distinguish whether the page was protected or semi-protected. (r25713, bug 11211)
• Two extra parameters are now passed to MediaWiki:Cantcreateaccount-text, which allow that message to display information about the block that is preventing the account being created (the block reason and blocking administrator). (r25714, bug 9611)

Configuration changes

• The mw:Extension:OggHandler extension has been enabled on the English Wikipedia; the extension allows audio and video in the Ogg Theora, Vorbis, Speex and FLAC formats to be added to articles in much the same way as images, and will try various methods of playback for such files depending on what a user's browser supports. The syntax to include audio and/or video is [[Image:filename]], the same syntax as for images, and options can be given in a similar way. Video and audio templates have been changed to the new format, so there might be some technical difficulties for the next few days. For more information, see this mailing list post.

Other technology news

• A workaround has been added to the sitewide JavaScript (MediaWiki:Common.js) that improves the display of some transparent PNG images on Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6; without the workaround, the images display with opaque backgrounds on those browsers. In order to completely resolve PNG display issues in Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer users are encouraged to upgrade to version 7 or use a different browser such as Firefox.

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 or use Betawiki.

Also this week: From the editor — Jimbo interview — WikiWorld — News and notes — In the news — Features and admins — Technology — Arbitration