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 1.44.0-wmf.12 (8b8c762), and changes with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.
Fixed bugs
- Some mixes of <pre> tags and section headers no longer cause section editing to duplicate part of the page. (r23101, bug 10309)
- Protecting a redirect now returns to the redirect itself, not to its target. (r23304, bug 10344)
New features
Other technology news
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.
New York Times notes errors in Wikipedia logo
Noam Cohen of The New York Times noted errors in typography on the Wikipedia globe logo, and the difficulty in correcting these errors. The article includes quotes from Jimbo Wales, Paul Stansifer, the creator of the original logo, David Friedland (Nohat), who refined the image and introduced the errors noted, and Kizu Naoko (Aphaia).
In an announcement on Sunday, Jon Harald Søby announced that Wikimedia Norge was officially founded. Bylaws were approved, and will be submitted to the Chapters committee for approval.
Briefly
- The Galician Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles.
- The Welsh Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles with Celtiberiaid.
- The Macedonian Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Greek Wiktionary has reached 125,000 entries.
- The French Wikinews has reached 2,000 articles.
- The Czech Wikipedia has reached 70,000 articles.
- The German Wikipedia has reached 600,000 articles.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
- The Volapük Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 23,000 pages.
- The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
- The Nepal Bhasa Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
- The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 62,000 articles.
The Arbitration Committee opened one new case this week, and closed one case.
Closed case
- TingMing: A case involving the actions of TingMing (talk · contribs). Ideogram (talk · contribs) alleged that he had engaged in "controversial edits", edit warring, incivility, and possibly sockpuppetry. As a result of the case, TingMing, who was already blocked while the case was ongoing, was banned for one year.
New case
- Zacheus-jkb: A case involving the actions of -jkb- and Zacheus. Jkb alleges that Zacheus has published personal data on him, and has made legal threats. Zacheus denies the allegations, and Thatcher131 alleges on the talkpage that jkb has himself revealed personal information on Zacheus.
Evidence phase
- Abu badali: A case alleging that Abu badali (talk · contribs) has disruptively tagged non-free images for deletion, even when a valid fair-use justification exists, and has harassed editors who have complained about this behavior. Abu badali denies the allegations.
Voting phase
- Badlydrawnjeff: A highly controversial case involving the actions of Badlydrawnjeff, Doc glasgow, Tony Sidaway and JzG in relation inter alia to the article known as QZ, which underwent an AfD which was closed as delete by Drini, but overturned on DRV by Xoloz. The resulting AfD was then speedily closed by thebainer. Badlydrawnjeff then filed for a deletion review, which was speedily closed or removed by a number of administrators and others consecutively, including JzG, Doc Glasgow and Tony Sidaway, and the closures often reverted or new DRVs opened. There is dispute as to whether the actions of all parties were within process, and whether, as some believe, WP:BLP takes priority over DRV. A peripheral issue to the case is a 60-hour block of Badlydrawnjeff by Zsinj, apparently after discussions on the admin IRC channel, although some have stated that the consensus on the channel did not favour the block. The block was quickly undone by Gaillimh. Additionally, some allege that violetriga acted improperly in undeleting some articles deleted under BLP. Kirill Lokshin has proposed principles to the effect that the overriding principle with respect to BLPs should be "do no harm", and that suspected violations may be speedy deleted, but that these may be contested through the normal channels, although they must not be restored until consensus has formed to do so, and remedies cautioning or admonishing Violetriga and Night Gyr to avoid undeleting content deleted under BLP, all of which have the support of nine to ten arbitrators. Various remedies relating to Badlydrawnjeff have been proposed, but none has so far achieved a majority, except for one cautioning him "to adhere to the letter and the spirit of the Biographies of Living Persons policy", which stands at six to two.
- Paranormal: A case involving the actions of various users, especially as regards bias and attribution, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon. Proposals placing paranormal-related articles on article probation, limiting editors on them to one revert per week, and cautioning Dradin and Kazuba have the support of two arbitrators; voting on other remedies is split.
- Hkelkar 2: A case involving the actions of Rama's Arrow (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), Bakasuprman (talk · contribs), Dangerous-Boy (talk · contribs) and Sbhushan (talk · contribs), Rama's Arrow alleges that the others acted as meatpuppets of banned user Hkelkar, and blocked them for six months. They deny the allegations, and allege that Rama's Arrow acted improperly in blocking them, and in posting private e-mails to the incidents noticeboard. Various remedies have been proposed including an early proposal to impose no sanctions on any of the parties but calling on the parties to enter into mediation, based on a finding of fact noting a lack of reliable evidence in the case, but a proposal to prohibit administrator actions between the parties has the support of six arbitrators, and a recent proposal to desysop Rama's Arrow (who recently resigned adminship) stands at five-to-two. Voting on principles regarding the posting of private e-mails is split but it appears that a majority of arbitrators will support the principle that private e-mails may not be posted on-wiki without the consent of the sender.
Motion to close
- E104421-Tajik: A case involving the actions of E104421 and Tajik. The case had been suspended to allow a referral to Community enforceable mediation, but the mediation broke down after Tajik was alleged to have edited through sockpuppets while claiming to be away and unavailable for the mediation. If closed, Tajik would be banned for one year, and his community ban would be endorsed, and AzaToth would be reminded that Wikipedia operates by consensus.
Under review