Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-04/Technology report

Technology report

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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.4 (a8dd895), 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 interface bugs were fixed in the new 'Modern' skin, where certain elements (such as the new-messages bar and footer) were incorrectly styled, meaning that they were either the wrong colour or in the wrong position. (bugs 12876, 12863 and 12894; r30455 and r30490)
Some invalid HTML in the deletion-confirm screen has been fixed. (r30458, bug 12887)

New features

There is a new magic word {{ROOTPAGENAME}} (and an escaped version {{ROOTPAGENAMEE}}) that returns the name of the non-subpage page that the current page is a subpage (directly or indirectly) of; for instance, the ROOTPAGENAME of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-04/Technology report is Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost. (r30413, bug 12872, later reverted in r30547)
A prop=imageinfo query in the API now returns a query-continue the same way that other API queries do. (r30483, bug 12875)

Other technology news

The removal of the query.php API is being considered; it is recommended that bots and scripts that use it switch to the newer api.php API.
It has now been made technically impossible for administrators to delete or move the Main Page. (Note that the technical block prevents the deletion-confirmation screen appearing; if the confirmation screen does appear for a deletion, then it means that the deletion is possible and should therefore probably not be attempted.) This follows on from two recent deletions of the Main Page; the first was as a result of an administrator having been told that the deletion was impossible and trying it for himself (ANI report), and the second to history-merge a lot of dummy revisions onto the Main Page in an attempt to push it over the large-history deletion limit (AN report); note that developers have since requested that this not be done on any page. The history of the Main Page has since been restored.

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.


Also this week: 2007 in review Newsroom use WikiWorld News and notes In the news Tutorial Dispatches Features and admins Technology report Arbitration report

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