Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/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.

Bots approved
The only bots approved this week were FoxBot and TobeBot, both of which are to use the standard python framework to maintain interwiki links.

New features

 * The ability has been added for MediaWiki extensions to modify the selection criteria for Special:Random. (r55188)
 * The importDump.php maintenance script can now handle bzip2 and 7zip formats. (r54561)
 * Wikimedia developer Michael Dale is working on a new extension, Wiki at Home, which allows uploading media files in additional, non-free formats and have the server handle transcoding the files to free formats. (Message on wikitech-l)

Other news

 * IRC cloaks are now available for developers. (Announcement)