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.12 (8b8c762), 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.

• A bug was accidentally introduced that caused 0, Template:0, and similar names to be invalid page names, breaking uses of {{0}} across the wiki; this was fixed shortly afterwards. (r27448, bug 11958)

• Using a namespace of Media: in the {{#ifexist:}} parser function now checks if a media file (usually an image) by that name is available to be included (even if the image is on the Wikimedia Commons rather than locally on the English Wikipedia); this differs from a namespace of Image: in that that checks the image/media description page, rather than the image/media file itself, for existence. (r27460, bug 7985)
• The default signature (the signature that users use if they have not customised their signature) is now customisable by administrators (r27473, bug 11913); a separate customisable default signature was added for anonymous users (r27512, bug 11315). The relevant interface messages (which administrators can edit to change the default signature) are MediaWiki:Signature and MediaWiki:Signature-anon; at the time of writing, the signatures have been customized to Ais523 (talk) and 127.0.0.1 (talk) respectively (note that the signature for anonymous users links to their contributions rather than their userpage), with no hyphens included in the signature (they were added by an administrator and then removed again). This does not affect signatures customized in Special:Preferences using the 'Use raw signature' option (this option requires any links wanted to be entered manually in the 'Nickname' box).
• Indexing and software updates done to the checkuser extension allows for faster and more complete retrieval of IPs used by a user. Range scans now check for results size before running the actual scan to avoid large filesorts that timeout. A list of IPs used in the range will appear in such cases instead. (r27262).

• The 'patrolled edits' feature was enabled on the English Wikipedia for Special:Newpages only; this feature makes it possible for new-page patrollers to better balance their work by marking pages as having been checked ('patrolled'). This newly-enabled feature, and instructions on how to use it, is explained at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages; that page currently suggests patrolling a page when it's been tagged for speedy deletion, you've checked it and seen no issues, or you've checked it and either fixed all issues with the page or placed appropriate cleanup tags on it to mention what those problems are. The action of patrolling a page is logged at Special:Logs/patrol. The way that the feature was originally configured, only administrators could patrol pages; after a discussion, this has since been changed, so that any page created by an administrator or bot will be automatically patrolled, and other pages can be marked as patrolled by any 'autoconfirmed' user (i.e. a user who has had an account for over four days), apart from the creator of the page. (bug 12007)
• The AssertEdit extension was installed on all Wikimedia wikis, although it does not yet seem to be live/working. The extension allows a user (although it is most useful for bots) to request various checks on requests they make to the wiki; for instance, it's possible to request a check that a page exists before editing it, or to request a check that the user editing is a logged-in bot (e.g. a bot can tell the servers to refuse its edits if it gets logged out accidentally or is accidentally run on the wrong account).

• 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.

Page patrolling has been enabled for Special:Newpages. The feature, active for all users registered for at least 4 days, allows users to mark new pages as patrolled, meaning that they're either appropriate pages, have been tagged with appropriate maintenance templates, or tagged for speedy deletion. A log is also available to provide oversight as to who made specific tagging decisions on any given page.

Nominations for the December 2007 Arbitration Committee Elections remained open this week. This week, Alexia Death, Danny, John Reaves, and Mercury nominated themselves for the position. Meanwhile, NHRHS2010 and Phil Sandifer withdrew from the election, and Messedrocker and Cbrown1023 were forced to withdraw due to a new age requirement for the position, bringing the number of candidates in the election back to 27.

This age requirement is the result of discussion on the private Arbitration Committee's mailing list. Candidates must be both 18 years of age, and of legal age in their jurisdiction. This requirement was added, according to arbitrator James Forrester, because:

It is the considered consensus of the Arbitration Committee that our working practices are incompatible with having a minor as a member of the Committee, and that any changes to facilitate this would be impractical and severely damage the effectiveness of the Arbitrators. Specifically, a minor could not take part in discussion of or even be shown privileged information, including that sourced from the CheckUser and OverSight tools, without violating the confines of the Foundation's privacy policy and related terms which govern our practices. This is a significant part of the work of the Committee, and would result in, at best, a two-tier Arbitration Committee with some members unable to participate in, or even be aware of, most of the activity.

Of the five current arbitrators, only Raul654 will stand for re-election. Fred Bauder, Mackensen, Neutrality and SimonP have all indicated they will not run for another term. These five seats will expire in 2007; it has not yet been noted whether any other seats will be added or replaced.

The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser continued this week. In the first four weeks of the fundraiser, about 25,200 people had donated at least US$1, and the Foundation had raised about $763,000.

The large bump realized from changing the sitenotice displayed at the top of all Wikimedia projects has since disappeared; November 19's donations reached a fundraiser-low $17,522.75.

Large donations this fundraiser include a $10,000 donation by Michael Minor, and a $3,000 donation by Andrew MacMillan.

• Steward elections are set to commence on November 26. New stewards will be up for election, and current stewards will be up for re-confirmation. Among other requirements, stewards must be at least 18 years old, of legal age in their jurisdiction at the time the elections end (December 16), and must be willing to identify themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation. Prospective candidates can apply until the elections begin.
• The Aromanian Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached 10,000 articles.
• The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.

The Arbitration Committee accepted one new case this week, and closed two cases.

• Sadi Carnot: A case involving alleged POV-pushing by Sadi Carnot, and alleged wheel-warring by Physchim62. As a result of the case, Sadi Carnot was banned for one year, and the other parties encouraged to "move forward from this unfortunate incident with a spirit of mutual understanding and forgiveness".
• Stefanomencarelli: A case involving alleged copyright violations by Stefanomencarelli, for which he was banned from the Italian Wikipedia. Problems are also caused by Stefanomencarelli's lack of fluency in English. Stefanomencarelli denies the allegations. As a result of the case, Stefanomencarelli was banned for one year.

• Macedonia: A case involving a dispute between editors from Greece and from the Republic of Macedonia over the use of "Macedonia" in Wikipedia.

• Eyrian: A case involving checkuser-confirmed sockpuppetry by admin Eyrian.
• Asgardian-Tenebrae: A case involving conflict between Asgardian and Tenebrae.

• Ferrylodge: A case involving a community ban of Ferrylodge on the now-defunct Community sanction noticeboard, but which User:B has, in accordance with Wikipedia:Community ban, stated that he is willing to overturn. Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies, generally with the support of four arbitrators, disapproving the ban, but restricting Ferrylodge's editing and instructing him not to interact with Bishonen or KillerChihuahua.

• Railpage Australia: A case involving alleged disruptive editing and sockpuppetry on Railpage Australia. If closed, Tezza1 would be banned for one year.
• Martinphi-ScienceApologist: A case involving alleged POV-pushing and incivility on pseudoscience-related articles. If closed, the editing of Martinphi and ScienceApologist would be restricted, and ScienceApologist limited to one account.