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.

The introduction of the new preprocessor (see related story), which is a configuration change, fixed many bugs, mostly to do with section editing.

• Section edit links are now linked to edit the correct section, or alternatively removed, in all the following cases where they previously were incorrect in some way:
  • The section header uses == signs and is inside the parameter of an unclosed template (this markup is incorrect anyway, but it made it difficult to section-edit the article to correct the situation previously). (bug 2375)
  • Section headers made with <h2>, etc., tags, now do not produce an edit link at all; previously they were incorrect when inside templates. (This makes it possible to create a section with no edit link, for instance in a template, without affecting other section edit links on the page.) (bug 4034)
  • A template contains section headers inside <noinclude> or <includeonly>. (bug 6563)
  • A template contains section headers and is transcluded on the same page more than once. (bug 7083)
  • A page contains a <h2>-style heading after a ==-style heading. (bug 7713)
  • There is other markup on the same line as the heading. (Note that although the section edit link will now be correct if it appears, such constructs may not necessarily create a section edit link at all.) (bug 9156)
  • A section with ==-style markup is passed as a parameter to a template. (bug 11911)
• Parser functions are no longer double-parsed. This caused several unexpected errors; some relating to template parameters (like {{{1}}}) inside parser functions are documented at m:ParserFunctions/5678, and also allowed {{!}} to sometimes separate template parameters (that template now never separates template parameters, although it can still be used in the other contexts in which it was used). (bug 5678)
• References in a branch of a #if: or similar parser function no longer appear on the page if that branch is not selected. (bug 9083)

• Emails sent via Special:Emailuser are no longer malformed if the user who sends the email has a comma in their username. (r30045, bug 12327)
• Special:Expandtemplates now correctly handles includeonly/noinclude, nested templates, and template parameters. (r30052 and r30064, bugs bug 12726 and bug 12737)
• There is now a log entry created when an administrator protects a page against edits but not moves. (r30158, bug 12790)
• Non-administrators can now use Special:Export to get a machine-readable version of the history of a page in the MediaWiki: namespace. (r30160, bug 12793)
• External links in <imagemap> tags are no longer double-escaped. (r30178, bug 12806)

• It's now possible to protect nonexistent pages in the Image: namespace to prevent an image with that name being uploaded. (r30031, bug 12727)
• The error messages shown when Special:Import fails can now be customised (via MediaWiki:Import-parse-failure, MediaWiki:Import-noarticle, MediaWiki:Import-nonewrevisions, and MediaWiki:Xml-error-string). (r30053, bug 6436)
• There were several changes to the API:
  • It's now possible to query the API to determine whether API modules exist and what parameters they take. (r30062, bug 12718)
  • It's now possible to request a random page in a namespace from the API. (r30217, bug 12816)
  • The meta=userinfo query now allows a user information query for other users (via the uiuser parameter), and/or to query a user's server edit count (uiprop=editcount). Note that the output format has changed. (r30080 and r30128)
  • The prop=imageinfo query now uses the iilimit, iistart, and iiend parameters, rather than iihistory. It also now accepts the iiurlwidth and iiurlheight parameters. (r29981 and r30066)
• The 'Modern' skin is now available via Special:Preferences. (r30063, bug 12740)
• Special:Mypage and Special:Mytalk now accept the 'section' parameter. (r30068, bug 12506)
• Special:CreateAccount and Special:Userlogin/signup now exist as internal links to the special page that allows creation of a new username. (r30070, bug 11897)
• There is now a drop-down list of deletion reasons for images as well as articles (controlled by MediaWiki:Filedelete-reason-dropdown). (r30122, bug 12214)

• 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.

Recently, Estonian Wikipedians celebrated their 45,000th article and 6,500th user (27, or 0.41% of them have administrator tools). The Estonian Wikipedia also had their 4,700th media file uploaded this week.

The Estonian Wikipedia still has no approved administrator election policy; this lack of definitive policy could be one of the reasons why only one administrator was proposed in 2007. The first administrator candidate in 2008 had the most "for" votes in the history of the Estonian Wikipedia, and was made an administrator, regardless of the lack of approved election rules.

In April and May 2007, the Estonian Wikipedia received a wave of vandalism caused by the Bronze Night. In the English Wikipedia, the Estonian flag was briefly replaced by the Nazi flag; the Estonian Wikipedia had attacks like this for almost a week in the wake of the unrest.

Media in Estonia has quoted the Estonian Wikipedia more and more every month. Its editors had their first meetup in December 2007, something that was reflected in the media.

This month, there has been a media debate on two big paper encyclopedias along with their on-line versions about to be published, and as a result, Vikipeedia has had more attention from media than usual.

The 2007 Commons Picture of the Year contest has concluded, with Broadway Tower taking 1st place, with 84 votes. The top 3 finalists are below:

• 
  1st: Broadway Tower, 84 votes
• 
  2nd: New York City, 67 votes
• 
  3rd: Red squirrel, 66 votes

The Arbitration Committee has created a working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars. In the words of arbitrator FT2,

As part of the recent arbitration case on Palestine-Israel articles, a working group is being appointed to look freshly and with a completely open and wide remit at the kinds of nationalistic, ethnic or cultural based editorial conflicts which came to the fore in 2007, which often reflect deep feelings, advocacy, and unreconciled viewpoints in the real world. The aim of the group is to:

# Gain a detailed understanding how such conflicts occur, and the structures and approaches administrators and experienced users face in trying to obtain stability, appropriate conduct, and a neutral point of view.

1. Generate ideas to cover different aspects of these.
2. Report their findings and conclusions within 6 months of appointment.

Parties interested in joining the working group should read the working group guidelines first, and then email any arbcom member or the Arbitration Committee's private mailing list, arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org. Application is open to any editor in good standing, meeting the tentative criteria (broadly interpreted and subject to improvement). Applications are due 29 January; the group's membership will be announced by 2 February.

The death of the last German surviving veteran of World War I on January 1 went unnoticed, until an anonymous editor changed the article, linking to the death notice on the talk page. The edit was made on January 5, and the death was not noted in the press until last week. "Der Spiegel magazine noted that 'the German public was within a hair's breadth of never learning of the end of an era' until someone who had read Kaestner's death notice in a newspaper figured out who he was and updated a Wikipedia entry on the Internet." [1]

It turns out that it was a confusion in names: Erich Kästner died, but Franz Künstler seems to live on. A possible reason of misunterstanding is that while Künstler lives in Germany (and has German citizenship), he was born Hungarian German in Austria-Hungary, while Kästner was Germany-born German.

• Wikimedia Chair Florence Devouard announced that the Foundation's FY2007 audit should be released following a board meeting on Thursday.
• A job opening has been added for a junior-level software developer/IT support staff member, at the Foundation's offices in San Francisco. Interested parties meeting the qualifications listed should forward a CV and cover letter to "brion AT wikimedia DOT org" by 15 February.
• The Lithuanian Wikipedia reaches 60,000 articles.
• The Ukrainian Wikipedia reaches 90,000 articles.
• The Italian Wikipedia reaches 400,000 articles.
• The Croatian Wikipedia reaches 40,000 articles.

NB: I apologise for not having written a report last Monday - I was having a particularly hectic week.

The Arbitration Committee opened two new cases this fortnight (one of which was later dismissed), and closed two additional cases, leaving six currently open.

• Kingofmann: A case involving a dispute involving Kingofmann on the (now redirected) David Howe (claimant to King of Mann) article. The case was dismissed after the editor left Wikipedia and the article was deleted.

• Palestine-Israel articles: Yet another case relating to alleged disruption on Israel- and Palestine-related articles. As a result of the case, remedies were passed allowing discretionary sanctions to be imposed, setting up a working group to address the issues, reminding editors that "Wikipedia cannot solve the dispute between the Israeli and Palestinian people", and counselling to them to consider editing articles relating to the history and cultural heritage of the two sides.

• R. fiend: A case involving a controversial block of Ed Poor by R. fiend. As a result of the case, R. fiend was found to have resigned adminship under controversial circumstances (meaning that he must undergo a full RfA to regain the tools), and a note was to be made in Ed Poor's block log that the committee had found the block to be unjustified.

• Episodes and characters 2: A case involving alleged continuing disruption of articles concerning television series episodes and characters, following on from a prior case.

• Waterboarding: A case involving a dispute between a large number of editors on Waterboarding, relating to the question as to whether the technique should be described as torture.

• Highways 2: A case involving editing by NE2 on articles relating to WikiProject U.S. Roads, allegedly against consensus of other editors involved with that wikiproject. A finding of fact has been proposed stating that "In their content contributions, all parties concerned have edited industriously and earnestly, with the intention of improving the encyclopaedia".

• Bluemarine: A case involving alleged civility and COI violations by User:Bluemarine on Matt Sanchez, the article on himself, which has also been edited tendentiously (from a hostile point of view) by a number of other editors, many of whom have been blocked. Remedies banning Bluemarine for one year and placing the article on article probation have the support of seven arbitrators.

• IRC: A case involving an alleged personal attack by Tony Sidaway on Bishonen on #wikipedia-en-admins, which led to an edit war on WP:WEA, involving page protection and unprotection by David Gerard, Geogre and others, and a block of Giano II, which was quickly undone. Voting on remedies relating to Giano is split (although an editing restriction remedy is at 3-1), but a remedy subjecting Tony Sidaway to an editing restriction for one year has the support of three arbitrators, and a proposal stating that the committee will determine "Policy and procedure changes regarding Wikipedia IRC channels" separately to the case. A motion to dismiss the case is also pending, but is opposed by several arbitrators.

• Matthew Hoffman: A case involving controversial blocks of MatthewHoffman by a vanished user If closed he would be "provisionally" desysopped for six months, and Matthew Hoffman's block log annotated to reflect the arbitrators' view that the blocks were unjustified.