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 1.44.0-wmf.8 (f08e6b3), 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.

• Many bugs in Single User Login were fixed this week:
  • It is now impossible to create an account that has the same name as a global account (this was always meant to be impossible, but previously could happen from time to time). (r35340, bug 14248)
  • Only confirmed email addresses are now used to unify accounts into a global account. (r32091, bug 12098)
  • Account autocreations (that is, when a user with a global account visits a Wikimedia wiki they haven't formerly visited, thus causing a local account to be created for them on that wiki) now do not show in Special:Recentchanges (although they still show in Special:Log). (r35441, bug 14299)
  • When not previously logged in on any wiki, a global account can now correctly log in on a wiki which that user had never visited previously, rather than getting a bad-CAPTCHA error message. (r35506, bug 14317)
  • Logging out now logs a global user out from all the Wikimedia wikis involved in the automatic cross-wiki login. (r35533, bug 14301)
  • Accounts on deleted wikis no longer interfere with Special:MergeAccount. (bug 14300http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14300)
• The &assert= parameter now works on the API, as well as for normal edits. (r35472, bug 12038)
• A (nonfunctional) rollback link no longer appears for non-admin rollbackers on protected pages. (r35571, bug 14155)
• Special:FileDuplicateSearch now correctly links to images, rather than sometimes confusing an image on the English Wikipedia with an image with the same name on Commons. (r35576, bug 14147)
• Pressing Return on Special:Renameuser now does the rename rather than opening the user's block log. (r35625, bug 14344)
• <gallery> tags can now handle links to images containing URL-encoded special characters. (r35683, bug 11659)

• Logging in now logs a user in on all wikis (rather than all wikis on the same domain) if that user has a single-user-login global account (except non-Wikimedia wikis and some wikis on .wikimedia.org).
• 'Related changes' (since April 2008) can show either recent changes to pages linked from a given page (the default, and old behaviour) or recent changes to pages linked to a given page (i.e. across a page's what-links-here). (bug 6528http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6528)
• When rolling back an edit, the screen that appears to let a user know that the rollback has happened now shows the diff of what the rollback did. (r35688, bug 14263)

• A new extension (TorBlock) has been installed, to regulate edits of Wikipedia through Tor. Edits from unregistered users via Tor exit nodes are now blocked; and editors who are logged in via Tor do not count as autoconfirmed (allowing page moves, etc.) for 90 days and until they have at least 100 edits.

• 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.