This is a summary of recent (as in, since the last technology report was written) 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 1.43.0-wmf.10 (093754a), 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
Some duplicate element IDs on the diff view of
Special:Undelete were changed to no longer be duplicates. (
r42277,
bug 16055)
API queries for backlinks now work under certain highly convoluted conditions in which they previously failed (Roan Kattouw describes the situation as this: assume B and C are redirects to A, D and E link to B and F links to C. Also, E's pageID is larger than D's, while F's is smaller than D's. If bllimit is set in such a way that the result is cut off after D (i.e. D is the last result), the continued query (with query-continue) will list E but not F, while F should be listed. (
r42512,
bug 16076)
It no longer causes an internal error when an edit made via the API would hit the spam blacklist. (
r43098,
bug 16120)
The continue parameter on allpages API queries now works if a page of output happens to end with a pagename with a colon in it. (
r43117,
bug 16225)
New features
It's now possible to query the API for the number of active users. (
r42335,
bug 16047)
A new type of InputBox, "commenttitle", causes the text in the box to be used as the name of a new section. (
r42703,
bug 13262)
It's now possible for administrators to modify a block without unblocking first. (
r42843,
bug 10080)
When
Special:BlockIP is visited with a user name already entered (e.g. via a "block" link), a notice is now shown if the user is already blocked (in addition to the block form). (
r42843,
bug 15820)
The "watch this" checkbox on the edit page can now be selected via the URL. (
r42899,
bug 13710)
There is a new preference to not show the diff of the rolled-back edit after doing a rollback. (
r43103,
bug 15761)
Breaking changes
Blocks via the API now prevent a user editing their own talk page by default (allowing the edit if the allowusertalk option is given); previously they allowed the user to edit their own talk page by default and crashed if there was an attempt to change this setting. (
r42611,
bug 16115)
Workarounds
The enhanced recent changes display no longer redirects users to pages with names like
RCI0 when they click on the expand tabs after disabling JavaScript in Firefox using NoScript (see
Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 October 21 for more information); this was a bug in NoScript, but the code for that enhanced display has been changed to avoid triggering it. (
r42576,
bug 16073)
Interface changes
The Nostalgia skin now has a separate "Upload file" link, in addition to Upload being in the special pages dropdown. (
r43100,
bug 15903)
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.
Discuss this story