Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.46.0-wmf.15 (e5563ae), 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.

This week saw amajor code update, including changes for how MediaWiki handles file uploads and new Upload API capabilities that work with theFirefogg extension forMozilla Firefox. As part of the updates, the cite features have been updated to allowlist-defined references.

The software changes resulted in a number of bugs, and caused the pywikipedia Python library used by bots to break.[1] As a result, bots stopped working for a few days.

According toKozuch[2], major bugs resulting from the updates have been:

1. Uploading new version of file fails (bugzilla:20677)
2. Commonist upload tool stopped working – errors at upload
3. AWB experiencing ongoing problems (WP:AWB/B). Due to changes in the MediaWiki Software, the current release (4.6) has been broken, and due to some other discovered bugs, a fix cannot be implemented and rolled out as of yet.ApiEdit (4.9) versions work fine.

Compatibility problems were discovered in the Usability Initiative's new edit toolbar, when it was used with Internet Explorer. Due to the bug, developers disabled the new edit toolbar for a few days while the bug was resolved.

A full list is available athttps://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=code-update-regression

Twobots were approved this week:HerculeBot 2, for the transfer ofinterwiki links from redirects to redirect targets, andYobot 8 to assist with a previously approved task. There are a number ofoutstanding requests for bots, which anyone is free to comment on.

• File renaming has been enabled for admins.[3]

• The tech team is to add fullTIFF support in the near future. This support will help MediaWiki render TIFF images (an image format widely used by museums, archives and in scientific research) so that users can view them in their browsers with a reasonable load time.[4]

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21 September 2009(all comments)

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==Technical issues and file renaming==According to theTechblog, several of the Commons issues resulting from the recent upgradehave been resolved, and there is now a call to check and make sure everything is working properly again. In addition, File renaming for admins hasbeen re enabled after being disabled for several months (there was some sort of issue with it here on en.WP after enabling, but that has been resolved). One last note, afeature and extension deployment list is now being maintained on the Wikitech wiki[5].