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.
Fixed bugs
New features
- Moving a protected page now protects the resulting redirect the same way. (r41227, bug 10527)
- Administrators can now choose, when blocking a user, whether that user can edit their own talk page during the block. (r41248, bug 8440)
- A prop=info query on the API now allows a query for a page's URL, and whether it is readable. (Although all pages on Wikipedia are readable, the same is not true for some private wikis.) (r41261, bug 15609)
- A new API query prop=duplicates allows files (such as images) which are duplicates of a given file to be searched for. (r41306, bug 15653)
- Special:ListUsers now shows each user's server edit count. (r41350, bug 15503)
Configuration changes
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.
Arbitrator resigns
UninvitedCompany resigned from the Arbitration Committee on September 23, effective immediately. UninvitedCompany had not been active on arbitration cases since April. His position will be filled in the December 2008 election, for the remaining year left on his original term.
Military history WikiProject elects new coordinators
The sixth election for coordinators of the military history WikiProject concluded on September 30. As a result of the election, the following nine users were elected to a six-month term:
Five of the six incumbent coordinators standing for re-election (Davies, Eurocopter tigre, Dowling, TomStar81, Woody) were re-elected. The other coordinator, YellowMonkey, had enough votes to be elected, but subsequently chose not to take the position.
Also, as part of the election, the WikiProject recognized former lead coordinator Kirill Lokshin as a coordinator emeritus, a new designation recognizing him as an honorary coordinator.
Briefly
- The Italian Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles.
- The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 400,000 articles.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
- The Romanian Wiktionary has reached 20,000 articles.
- The Bavarian Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
- The Bangla Wikisource has reached 1,000 pages.
- The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached 80,000 articles.
- The Cebuano Wikipedia has reached 35,000 articles.
- The Ido Wikipedia has reached 16,000 articles.
- The Quechua Wikipedia has reached 8,000 articles.
The Arbitration Committee closed one case this week, leaving three currently open.
Closed case
- C68-FM-SV: A case, lasting over four months, involving disputes among Cla68, FeloniousMonk, SlimVirgin, JzG, and others. As a result of the case, FeloniousMonk was desysopped. Also, a number of principles and findings of fact were enacted, and the parties were instructed to review and abide by them, giving a number of prohibited courses of conduct by way of example.
Evidence phase
- Piotrus 2: A second case involving alleged edit warring and other misconduct by Piotrus and other editors. Piotrus denies the allegations against him, and has suggested that the case may be a deliberate attempt to drive him from the site.
- SlimVirgin-Lar: A case brought by Thatcher, asking the committee to review the use of checkuser by Lar, in the light of comments by SlimVirgin (here, inter alia), alleging that he misused the tool. Evidence is to be submitted privately to the committee by e-mail, and voting will presumably occur privately as well.
