More work on a Single User Login was done this week. Brion Vibber made some modifications to the Central Auth code and tested the cross-wiki username merging for how long it would take. See the mailing list post for more details.
A new ParserFunction, {{#rel2abs}}, was added this past week. Given a relative page name such as /Subpage, it will return a fully qualified page name such as Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2006-12-04/Subpage. This can be used as input for other functions, such as {{#ifexist}} or {{localurl}}. (Carl Fürstenberg and Tim Starling, bug 8021, r17979)
Automatically-linked ISBNs can now contain spaces. (Ilmari Karonen, bug 8110, r18074)
A few interface changes were made:
- Multiple left-aligned images placed near each other will now stack vertically, not horizontally, just as right-aligned images do. (Simetrical, bug 6016, r17986)
- The interface for the undo option, introduced last week, has been improved. An automatic summary (which can be changed) is now filled in on the edit screen, and a message has been added to the top of the undo screen to make it clearly distinct from a regular edit screen. (Andrew Garrett, r17988)
- A "next page" link was added to the bottom of Special:Allpages/ in addition to the link at the top. (Rob Church, bug 1331, r18064)
- There is a new preference to have the "E-mail me a copy of my message" set by default on the e-mail form. (Rob Church, bug 8024, r18094)
Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:
Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.
Steward elections continue
Voting in the steward elections continued this week. Voting, along with the chance to confirm the current stewards, will last until 15 December. As of press time, there remained 15 candidates in the election, unchanged from last week, with every candidate confirmed by the Foundation already.
Milestones, creations
Wikipedia became the 12th most visited site this week, according to Alexa. During the week, the French Wikiversity and the Tamil Wikinews were also created, and the French Wikiquote was reopened, with Board of Trustees approval. The French Wikiquote was temporarily closed in April of this year (see archived story) following potential legal issues.
List service begins
List Summary Service, or LSS, began in late September; its goal is to summarize threads on Wikimedia mailing lists in multiple languages. It initially only summarized the Foundation-l mailing list, but has now expanded to four languages and includes the Wikipedia-l list and the Wikien-l list, used for the English Wikipedia.
Briefly
The Arbitration Committee opened two case this week, and closed three cases.
Closed cases
- Pseudoscience: A case involving the actions of ScienceApologist, Ian Tresman and others, involving the insertion and removal of so-called "pseudoscience" on various articles. As a result of the case, Tommysun was banned from science- and pseudoscience-related articles, Elerner was banned from articles relating to his real-life work, Iantresman was placed on probation, and ScienceApologist was "cautioned".
New cases
- Seabhcan: Various parties, principally MONGO, allege that Seabhcan has engaged in repeated incivility, but he claims that the incidents occurred such a long time ago as to be moot, and that MONGO and others have acted aggressively in the course of the dispute, alleging that "what they want is blood".
Evidence phase
- RPJ: Various users allege that RPJ edits disruptively (although in good faith) on various articles related to conspiracy theories, such as John F. Kennedy Assassination. In response, he denies the allegations, and raised some "practical concerns about arbitration", which seem to regard the legitimacy of the Arbitration Committee bindingly to resolve disputes.
Voting phase
- ScienceApologist: A case brought by User:Asmodeus alleging that User:ScienceApologist and others are harassing him in regards to Asmodeus' real life identity, as well as biased editing of Christopher Michael Langan and related articles. Several editors have alleged that Asmodeus is an aggressive editor and that Asmodeus and User:DrL have conflicts of interest regarding Christopher Michael Langan and related articles. Proposed remedies, currently supported by four arbitrators, include banning Asmodeus and DrL from editing articles related to Christopher Michael Langan and his ideas and placing Asmodeus and DrL on probation, banning User:Haldane Fisher indefinitely as an attack account, and "counseling" ScienceApologist and FeloniusMonk.
- Konstable: A case involving the actions of Konstable, an administrator who left the project, but then returned and created an alternative account, which some allege was used for disruption. This was then blocked, and he used his sysop tools to unblock it, causing some to call for his desysopping. Fred Bauder has proposed remedies banning Konstable for one month, but allowing him to return under a new name if he wishes, but these have been opposed by Dmcdevit, who has proposed a conter-remedy formally desysopping Konstable. A motion has been proposed to recuse Dmcdevit, supported by Fred Bauder, but opposed by Charles Matthews, who feels that recusal should be a personal decision.
Motion to close
- Elvis: A case involving the actions of Lochdale and Onefortyone on the Elvis Presley article. If closed, Lochdale would be banned from the article indefinitely, and Onefortyone kept on probation.
- Protecting children's privacy: A case involving a policy proposal on the Wikipedia:Protecting children's privacy page. The committee was asked to determine whether the proposed policy has consensus and should be adopted, but they have declined to rule on this issue. Instead, by a 5-0 vote, they have encouraged the community to continue working on the proposal with the goal of achieving consensus, and have voted to affirm the practice of counseling children not to disclose personal information and to delete such information in appropriate cases.
