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Technology report

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By ais523 and AstroHurricane001

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.2 (8fd6c9c), and changes with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.

Fixed bugs

  • Renaming a user now changes the username in all deleted edits by that user. (r23915, bug 5930)
  • Skin-dependent JavaScript is now given correct information about the skin being used in some cases where the useskin= parameter is set (the parameter overrides the skin being used, such as in the previews on Special:Preferences). (r23924, bug 10316)
  • Categorised redirects are no longer incorrectly marked with the styling used for pages below the stub threshold (which is 0 by default, but each user can set in their preferences). (r23952, bug 9903)
  • It is now possible to transclude a template called Template:R by typing {{R}} (the bug prevented this specific name from working correctly in this case). (r23964, bug 6965)
  • Timed redirects (such as the one that went back to the page you logged in from 5 seconds after logging in) have been removed for accessibility reasons; the text "Return to" and a link to where they would have gone is still present. (r23979, bug 9153)
  • When a page only has one revision, the 'rollback' link doesn't appear, not even for administrators (it would have no effect because there would be no version to rollback to). (r24033, bug 10552)
  • Linking to a section of the parent page of a subpage using the syntax [[../#section]] now works correctly. (r24046, bug 9151)

A serious bug

A MediaWiki software bug occurred on 10 July, 2007 for slightly over half an hour, causing edits and reverts to numerous unrelated pages across Wikipedia to affect Wikipedia:Wikipedians, rather than the page that the user making the edit was trying to revert to. It started with this edit by Tiago Heitor, which was to an unrelated article. Thinking it was vandalism, KnowledgeOfSelf reverted the edit, but then reverted it back. Shortly after, another completely unrelated revert occurred, to a version that was from another totally unrelated page. After many continuous edits and reverts, KnowledgeOfSelf decided to report the problem to the Admins' noticeboard. The problem persisted while three separate threads were posted to the noticeboard. After some 50 or so strange edits, W.marsh protected the page while it was still in chaos. Although the page was protected, administrators were still accidentally posting edits to the page. The error was fixed when Brion VIBBER notified the village pump that he had accidentally broken it, and that the problem was resolved. Still, users complained that talkpage reversions were taking them into Wikipedia:Wikipedians.

On a technical level, the bug was caused by a typo in r23973, which was fixed immediately afterwards in r23974; Wikipedia:Wikipedians was the page causing trouble because it contained the revision with revision number 1. (This is not Wikipedia's first edit, because other software has been used before MediaWiki in the history of Wikipedia; that page has earlier revisions with higher numbers, and the number given is likely due to the transition to new 'phase II' software during January 2002.)

New features

  • A magic word DISPLAYTITLE has been enabled; placing {{DISPLAYTITLE:correct page name}} allows for changes in how the page's title is displayed, as long as the displayed title is a valid link to that page (therefore, the magic word is mostly useful for lowercasing the first letter of a page's name). (r23393, bug 7255)
  • It's now possible to import, export, and edit watchlists as text using the 'View raw watchlist' feature (//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&action=raw); this feature was then improved several times after it was first implemented. (bug 7959; first implemented in r23693, most recent version r23895)
  • Users whose preferences specify that a preview for a page should appear when they start editing it (as opposed to once 'Show preview' is clicked) can override that for one edit by specifying preview=no in the page's URL (for instance, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit&preview=no); likewise, users with that preference turned off can turn it on for one edit with preview=yes (for instance, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit&preview=yes). (r23972, bug 9936)
  • It's now possible to style <gallery> and <math> tags using the same style= attribute as is used on HTML tags like <div> and <span>. (r24065; bugs 10508 and 1962)
  • A new interface message MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-explain has been introduced, which adds extra information to Special:Contributions. (r24091, bug 10530)
  • Previews of the licence tags available on Special:Upload are now shown when those tags are selected, to provide legal information about what the tag means before the upload. (r24095, bug 10520)
  • A link has been provided from Special:Contributions to Special:DeletedContributions (it only appears for administrators, because other users can't access Special:DeletedContributions). (r24141, bug 10535)

Configuration changes

  • An index by username was added to the table of deleted edits; this makes it possible to add new features that depend on the deleted edits made by a user (such as the installation of DeletedContributions mentioned below and the changes to renaming).
  • The DeletedContributions extension was installed on Wikimedia wikis; administrators can determine the contributions made by a user that have since been deleted by visiting Special:DeletedContributions. (bug 10464)

Other technology news

Ongoing news

  • Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla.

Also this week: From the editor — Board elections — F1 trademark — New bureaucrats — Rescue squad — Book review — WikiWorld — In the news — Features and admins — Technology — Arbitration

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