Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-06-08/Technology report

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Please note that some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version, 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.

String parser functions reverted
Lead developer Tim Starling has reverted several recent code changes to the parser functions, including removing the function and disabling the String Functions parser functions as the default setting. Starling referred to the string parser functions as "the ugliest, most inefficient programming language known to man," and suggests the Lua extension as a possible "alternative, saner solution for embedding complex text processing in MediaWiki templates." (r51529, r51497)

Bots approved
6 bots or bot tasks were approved for operation this week. These included: DottyQuoteBot (task request) - for importing the quote of the day from Wikiquote; PascalBot (task request) - to fix template parameter problems.

Also approved were AmphBot (task request), Rameshngbot (task request), MetaplasticityBot (task request) (though blocked from editing) and Thehelpfulbot (task request). Still in discussion are bots for italicising the titles of species and genera articles, warning editors who create unreferenced biographies of living people, and adding Unreferenced to articles meeting certain criteria, among others.

Extra input has been requested regarding the operation at least two bots this week: a request for comment is open on the use of LivingBot to alter heading levels and an ongoing request for input is open on the use of ListasBot to deal with orphaned talk pages.

New features

 * MediaWiki:Recentchangeslinked has been split into four separate messages. (r51441, bug 14866)
 * The Abuse Filter has been changed to use JSON rather than PHP serialization for data interchange. (r51341)
 * Time and dates have been separated for revision-info-current' and 'revision-info, which appear when browsing through an article revisions. (r51579) Date and time have also been separated for the "filehist-thumbtext", "history-feed-item-nocomment", "rcnotefrom", "confirmemail_body", and "revisionasof" messages. (r51305, r51307, r51308, r51309, r51311)
 * For the API, an option has been added to retrieve language properties, using siprop=languages with meta=siteinfo. (r51571, bug 18785)

Other news

 * Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are running on a version (r48811) of MediaWiki last updated on March 25. A backlog remains for the lead developers to review code changes.  Wikimedia Deputy Director Erik Moller announced on the wikitech-l mailing list that the Wikimedia Foundation is "planning to hire a full-time QA engineer in 09-10 to help with code review, bug triaging and deployment", which should help speed things up with reviewing and deploying new code.
 * The improvements to the search backend that English Wikipedia rolled out several months ago ("did you mean...", fuzzy results, prefixes for advanced search logic, and generally improved results) have been rolled out to all Wikimedia projects.
 * Developer Tim Starling announced that database schema changes are being implemented, including changes related to the AbuseFilter and FlaggedRevs extensions.
 * The Usability Initiative team has added a new extension to the svn. The extension includes a new, simplified edit toolbar.