Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-11-08/Technology report

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.8 (f08e6b3), 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.

• The apfrom parameter now works on all API queries sorted in descending order which take that parameter. (This was previously fixed for allpages, but not allcategories or allimages.) (r42142, bug 15985)
• The "email this user" link no longer displays for users who can't be emailed (due to not having a valid address, or opting out). (r42179, bug 1306)
• API queries for category members now work if there is a literal pipe character in the sort key for the last entry of a page. (r42197, bug 16017)
• The continue parameter on API queries for the contributions of more than one user now works. (r42198, bug 16018)
• Literal tabs in <pre> and <source> now work correctly. (r42257, bug 15959)
• Some special pages, such as Special:DoubleRedirects, are again updating regularly (once every 3 days, at the moment). (bug 15848http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15848)

• Large additions to pages now have a bold bytes-added amount in recent changes, the same way that large deletions have a bold bytes-removed amount. (r42110, bug 15925)
• API queries for category members can now specify start and end by category sort key, rather than timestamp. (r42169, bug 15995)
• [1] now has an RSS feed (r42220, bug 6955); so does Special:Contributions for an individual user (r42220, bug 12171).
• When someone tries to create a username that's confusingly similar to one that already exists, all the pre-existing names are now reported. (r42240, bug 12232)

• 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.