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.21 (b7b9c62), 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
- Renames made before 26 August 2007 now show correctly in the rename log. (r39840, bug 15269)
- Special:Search, when accessed via the text of a redlinked page, now no longer searches for underscores instead of spaces in the title of the redlinked page. (r40043, bug 15264)
New features
Configuration changes
- The GlobalBlocking extension has been enabled on Wikimedia wikis, allowing users to be blocked simultaneously on all wikis. Global blocks can only be added or removed by stewards; however, English Wikipedia administrators can allow users to edit on the English Wikipedia despite a global block (so the user would be blocked everywhere except the English Wikipedia) via Special:GlobalBlockWhitelist. (Administrators on other projects can similarly disable global blocks on those projects.) (r39129, bug 8707)
- The old query.php API has been disabled; api.php will have to be used instead by bots and scripts. (bug 12881http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12881)
- The write API (accessible via api.php, the same as the read API) has been enabled, giving bots and scripts an interface via which to edit Wikipedia. [1] The following write actions are now possible via the API: rollback, delete, undelete, protect, block, unblock, move, edit, emailuser, watch. Anyone can use the write API, but only if they could perform the action normally; for instance, anonymous users cannot edit semiprotected pages using the API, and only administrators can delete pages that way. (bug 14210http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14210)
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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