Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-09/Technology report

Please keep in mind that features listed here may not be live on the English Wikipedia yet. Also, in general, features that do not affect the English Wikipedia, such as new extensions that are not enabled here, are not listed.

This page covers revisions up to.

New features

 * Special:Blockip now contains a dropdown menu of common block reasons, customizable with MediaWiki:Ipbreason-list. The default options, as of now, are "vandalism", "linkspam", "insults", and "sockpuppet".

Fixed bugs

 * Special:Statistics now displays an estimate as to the length of the job queue instead of an exact number for performance reasons.

Extensions
A large amount of work this week was put into three extensions, none of which are enabled on the English Wikipedia as of now: FlaggedRevs is an extension which allows "reviewers" and "editors" to rate an article's accuracy, depth, and style, and then set certain revisions as the default version which will show up on regular page views. This extension is still in early development, so expect a number of features to change, be removed, or be added. From the project page: The WikiProject "Semantic MediaWiki" provides a common platform for discussing extensions of the MediaWiki software that allow for simple, machine-based processing of Wiki content. This usually requires some form of "semantic annotation," but the special Wiki environment and the multitude of envisaged applications impose a number of additional requirements. The overall objective of the project is to develop a single solution for semantic annotation that fits the needs of most Wikimedia projects and still meets the Wiki-specific requirements of usability and performance. It is understood that ad hoc implementations (i.e. "hacks") may sometimes solve single problems, but agreeing on common editing syntax, underlying technology, exchange formats, etc. bears huge advantages for all participants. Quiz is an extension which allows for the creation of quizzes. According to the creator, Quiz aims to be
 * FlaggedRevs
 * Semantic MediaWiki
 * Quiz
 * Reliable and light.
 * Simple in its syntax and its use; powerful in its possibilities.
 * Open to suggestions and improvements (by facilitating the addition of new types of questions).

Internationalization
Internationalization help is always appreciated! See Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla.