• Set Vary: Cookie on action=raw generated CSS and JS, to ensure that user preferences don't get stuck in proxy caches for other people
• Add page_no_title_convert field to support language variant conversion for page titles which shouldn't be converted on display/linking
• Lazy extraction of text chunks in Revision objects, may reduce hits to external storage when actual text content is not used
• Added experimental $wgRevisionCacheExpiry to cache extracted revision text in $wgMemc, to further reduce hits to external storage.
  • Set to 0 (disabled) by default.
• Minor changes to the installer.
• Remove ":" for 'youremail' and 'yourrealname' in includes/templates/Userlogin.php so that ":" could be used in i18n for Special:Preferences (like 'username' and 'uid').

• Normalize username filter on Special:Newpages (Brion Vibber)
• RTL text in an LTR wiki breaks appearance of Special:Recentchanges (Rotem Liss)
• Don't emit SET NAMES utf8 if connection failed (Brion Vibber)
• Proper compare for bot check on RC notify, should fix overrides that force edits by non-bot users to bot mode (Brion Vibber)
• Fix error message for failure of Database::sourceFile() (Jimmy Collins)
• Plurals: use singular form for zero in French and Brazilian Portuguese (Brion Vibber)

• Fix grammatical errors in Danish naming of talk namespaces. (Brion Vibber)

Voting for the elections for the Board of Trustees will end this week at 23:59, Thursday, 21 September. As of press time, over 2,000 Wikimedians had voted already to determine which one of the 17 candidates will fulfill the rest of current Board member Angela Beesley's term. The results of the election will be announced in the weeks following the election.

Bidding for Wikimania 2007 advanced this week as the jury, comprised primarily of the Board of Trustees and members of Wikimania 2006's organization team, selected four cities for the "shortlist" of candidate cities. The cities - Alexandria, Taipei, London, and Torino - advanced from an initial stage of eight cities bidding. After a general meeting Saturday, September 23 in #wikimania, the winning city will be announced the following day.

Tim Starling, a Wikimedia system administrator and developer, was hospitalized in St. Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne after undergoing surgery to clear a bowel obstruction (first misdiagnosed as gastroenteritis). Angela reports that Tim is expected to stay for another week, and might take up to six weeks before he's 100%. A get well card is available for those wishing to send a personal message to Tim.

The Polish Wikipedia, which is the fourth largest language version, was created on September 26, 2001. It has always been in the lead of numerous language versions and now it boasts 300,000 articles. A DVD release is in the works and soon to be revealed are plans of enhanced credibility.

To mark the fifth anniversary Wikimedia Polska in cooperation with Creative Commons Poland are organizing an open event that will take place in Warsaw on September 23, 2006. Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales will be among the invited guests. After the main part of the event that will include a Creative Commons discussion panel the participants will celebrate the anniversary at the Wikipedia Birthday Party. Contact: Wikimedia Polska and PR/spokesman.

This week, developer and Chief Technical Officer Brion Vibber locked the September 11 Wiki, a project designed to memorialize the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, to prevent editing. The move follows months of discussion, with most people urging that the site either be closed or locked due to inactivity and the potential for vandals and spammers.

A request for squatted Wikimedia domains continued this week. Cybersquatting is a practice of registering website domain names similar to exisiting sites for the purpose of profiteering with bad faith. It is unclear what actions, if any, the Wikimedia Foundation will take regarding those domains.

• The Telugu Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.
• The Vietnamese Wiktionary has reached 250,000 edits.
• The Ilokano Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Amharic Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
• The Welsh Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Slovenian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 registered users.
• The Swahili Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Sindhi Wikinews has been created.
• The Ladino Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.
• The Occitan Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
• The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 50,000 pages.
• The Banyumasan Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.

The Arbitration Committee opened two new cases this week, and closed four cases.

• Warren Kinsella: Closed today after six weeks, a case involving the actions of Arthur Ellis, Pete Peters and others on the Warren Kinsella article. Both users accuse the other of disruptive edits on the page, and Peters and others accuse Ellis of sockpuppetry using anon accounts, while Ellis alleges that administrators dealt inequitably with him and Peters. Ellis was banned from the article indefinitely, and limited to one account.

• Kehrli: Closed on Sunday after one month, a case involving the actions of Nick Y and Kherli on Mass-to-charge ratio and related articles. Both protagonists accuse each other of POV pushing, adding unsourced information, and adding dispute tags without reason. Kehrli was banned from articles relating to M/z for one year, and prohibited from changing from m/z to any other notation, for a period of two years.

• St Christopher: Closed on Sunday after one month, a case involving St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine, a school whose accreditation status is in dispute, and in particular the behaviour of ParalelUni on the page. ParalelUni's community ban was endorsed, and all single-purpose accounts were banned from editing the article disruptively.

• Intangible: Closed last Tuesday after six weeks, a case involving the actions of Intangible. Cberlet alleges that Intangible has used an "aggressive and confrontational" editing style to push his POV (partly through the wholesale deletion of the term "far right" from numerous pages), making sweeping edits and reverts with little or no discussion, and being "contentious and confrontational" in talk page discussions. Intangible vigorously denies the allegations. Intangible and AaronS were placed on probation.

• Vivaldi: A case involving the actions of Vivaldi on Jack Hyles and related articles. Arbustoo alleges that Vivaldi has removed "cited criticism" from the article, as well as harassment, incivility and edit warring. However, an anon IP, 205.157.110.11 accuses Arbustoo of removing comments from AfDs.

• Kven: A case involving the actions of Art Dominique and alleged sockpuppets on the Kven article.

• Honda S2000: A case involving the actions of SpinyNorman on List of fastest cars by acceleration.

• Kosovo: A case involving the actions of editors on Kosovo, particularly the political status of Kosovo. A temporary injunction has been passed allowing any uninvolved administrator to ban any of the named users from the page. Various remedies have been proposed, applying various bans, warnings, limits and paroles to a number of users.

• Ackoz: A case involving the actions and community ban of Ackoz, and his later account, Azmoc. The user previously contributed to Wikipedia under the name Ackoz. He admits to "some trolling" after a three-day block, which led to his ban. However, he has stated that were he unbanned, he would cease his disruptive behaviour, and would be prepared to undergo mentorship. Fred Bauder has introduced remedies, which have not yet been voted on, to unblock Ackoz and place him on probation for one year, leaving open the possibility for a renewed community ban should Ackoz "revert to his previous pattern of sustained trolling", which have been supported by Dmcdevit.

• Marudubshinki: A case involving the actions of Marudubshinki. Snottygobble, I@n and others allege that Marudubshinki has operated an unauthorised bot, and misused his sysop powers by unblocking himself and allowing his bot to delete pages. A remedy to desysop Marudubshinki has the support of two arbitrators.

• MONGO: A case involving the actions of MONGO, rootology, and others. The case centers around Encyclopædia damatica, and an article posted on the site portraying MONGO in a negative light. Remedies proposed by Fred Bauder include indefinitely banning PrivateEditor, as well as other remedies that have not yet been voted on by other arbitrators.

• Ed Poor 2: A case involving Ed Poor. JoshuaZ and Consumed Crustacean have accused Poor of POV pushing and disruption; Poor has not introduced evidence in the case. Ed Poor was party to two prior cases; the first was closed after Poor resigned his status as a bureaucrat, and the second resulted in his desysopping. Fred Bauder has proposed a remedy placing him on probation, a modified version of which has attracted the support of three arbitrators.

• Pat8722: A case involving the actions of Pat8722. BorgHunter has accused Pat8722 of edit-warring. Pat8722 has requested that the ArbCom stay the case while he pursues 6 pro se cases in the American courts, and has agreed not to edit Wikipedia in the interim. A motion establishing the principle of a "continuance", and a remedy extending this to Pat8722, are supported by two arbitrators; a separate motion to place Pat8722 on probation has also been raised.

• Israel-Lebanon: A case involving the actions of AdamKesher, Tasc and others on 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. AdamKesher accuses Tasc of removing relevant external links which satisfy WP:EL, and he denies the allegation. In response, Denis Diderot accuses Kesher of "using Wikipedia as a tool to promote his POV". Proposed remedies to affirm the possibility of using blogs containing "contemporary opinion and observations" about current events, cautioning editors involved and santioning bans for users who edit war on the article have the support of three to four arbitrators.

• Deir Yassin massacre: A case involving the actions of KimvdLinde and Guy Montag on Deir Yassin massacre. KimvdLinde alleges that Montag has violated his probation by rewriting the article, unilaterally moving it to "Battle of Deir Yassin", violating copyright and votestacking. In return, Montag refuses "to participate in any of these proceedings", and alleges that KimvdLinde has abused her admin tools by exercising them in a dispute in which she is involved. Proposed remedies banning Guy Montag from articles relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, extending his probation for another year, and encouraging users to enforce Montag's probation have the support of five to six arbitrators.

• Zer0faults: A case involving the actions of Zer0faults and Nescio on Template:War on Terrorism, War on Terror and related arguments. Nescio alleges that Zer0faults has engaged in violation of WP:POINT, disruptive editing, and "uncivil remarks". In return, Zer0faults alleges that Nescio has failed to assume good faith, violated WP:POINT and WP:RS, and failed to provide explanations for his reverts. If closed, Zer0faults would be placed on probation.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-18/Humour