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.12 (8b8c762), 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.

• Several syntax errors were corrected in Wikimedia's robots.txt file; these errors caused some search engines to ignore some of the instructions in that file (such as the instruction not to index AfD). (bug 11508; fixed with a configuration change)
• The rvendid parameter to the API (example) now works correctly. (r26315, bug 11534)
• Links in edit summaries no longer sometimes mistakenly continue outside the edit summary and into the rest of the page they're on. (r26409, bug 11560)
• The 'you have new messages' bar now appears for anonymous users when and only when they have a new message (see related story). (r26357, bug 9213)

• A new interface message MediaWiki:Loginstart has been added that displays at the start of the login screen. (r26477, bug 11574)

• The Wolof Wiktionary was reopened this week. It had previously been closed, but the information in closed (to be precise, locked in read-only mode) wikis is retained, allowing them to be reopened. (bug 11512)

• Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.

A decision on the location of Wikimania 2008, the fourth-annual international Wikimedia conference, was announced on Tuesday. Alexandria's bid was declared the winning bid by Cary Bass on behalf of the Wikimania 2008 bid jury via an email to the foundation-l mailing list. Alexandria's bid was chosen from three cities making bids, the other two being Atlanta and Cape Town.

In his announcement, Bass pointed out that Alexandria "was found to be particularly strong in the areas of reflecting the Wikimedia Foundation's roots in geo-diversity and multi-lingualism, of the very exciting nature of the proposed venue and its local facilities, and of the particularly advanced nature of the financial planning." At the same time, he extolled the Atlanta bid for its community outreach and in-facility accommodation, as well as Cape Town's cultural diversity. Bass also pointed out that Cape Town's bid is the first very strong Wikimania bid originating from the Southern Hemisphere.

Meanwhile, no new information on Wikimania 2009 has been announced; as reported last week, official bidding will begin sometime this month, with a final decision expected sometime around December 15, 2007. So far, three unofficial bids have been worked on extensively: Buenos Aires, Singapore, and Perth. An expected bid from Toronto, following the withdrawal of their 2008 bid, has not yet been developed, and other cities have discussed hosting, with no major development of their potential bids. A list of all unofficial bids is also in development.

Magnus Manske created a tool called WatchFlickr, which runs on the toolserver. It runs through a category, finds articles without images, and searches for relevant free, Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr. The tool can help with replacing non-free/fair use images, by allowing users to easily find free replacements on many related articles at once.

We reported on bug 9213 two months ago (see archived story). The bug caused problems with the 'you have new messages' bar for anonymous users; sometimes it wouldn't come up even though their talk page had been edited, and sometimes it wouldn't disappear even if they visited their talk page, bypassed their cache, or deleted their cookies; one of the implications of this was that when an anon received a warning message, they might not see it even if they had a static IP, and some anons complained about the constant new-messages bar that they had. The onwiki discussion page about the bug is Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/Bug ID 9213.

This week, User:Tim Starling wrote a code correction (r26357) designed to fix this problem (among others); this was the first real indication that the cause of the problem had been found ("Bug 9213: Fixed the plainly broken user_newtalk updating and caching scheme."). The problem appears to have been with the way that data about users' new-message status was cached by the servers.

It was not clear immediately whether this correction had worked; the correction carried warnings (WARNING! NEEDS CAREFUL DEPLOYMENT and I tried to keep my changes roughly performance-neutral, but the update on Wikimedia should be watched carefully for performance problems.), the relevant bug tracker comment was more mildly worded than normal (Hopefully fixed in r26357.), and the bug was not closed at the same time (as is usual when a fix for a problem is 'committed' so that it will be applied on Wikimedia and other MediaWiki wikis). However, the change was applied at 18:00 UTC on 3 October (brion: scapped update including r26357 which tim warns may introduce performance problems. keep an eye out). In ais523's tests, the anon new-message bar now appears to be working, and the bug tracker entry is now marked "RESOLVED FIXED", indicating that the developers do not believe the bug poses a problem anymore. If the issues caused by this bug continue, they should be reported on bugzilla.

This week, the Finnish Arbitration Committee was elected; five users were elected to a two-year term, while five more were elected to one-year terms. Interestingly, in an election where the winners were determined by the number of support votes, all five of the users elected to one year terms were tied for 6th place, with 50 votes; an 11th user finished just short, with 49 votes. Full results of the election are available.

• No new information has been publicly released regarding the expected start of the Wikimedia fundraiser; in August, Wikimedia advisor Sue Gardner suggested a tentative start date of September 23.
• A controversial RFA for former arbitrator and administrator Kelly Martin ended after nearly three days of discussion, without promotion.
• The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 30,000 total pages.
• The Kazakh Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Bengali Wikisource has reached 100 pages.
• The Dutch Wikiquote has reached 500 pages.
• The Piedmontese Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.

The Arbitration Committee accepted one new case this week, and did not close any cases.

• Ebionites: A case involving alleged POV-pushing on the Ebionites article.

• Giovanni33-John Smith's: A case regarding actions taken with respect to a block of Giovanni33 in a dispute between him and John Smith's. Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies restricting the editing of both parties for one year.

• Digwuren: A case involving alleged POV-pushing and incivility by Digwuren and alleged sockpuppets. Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies banning and restricting the editing of a number of editors.

• Liancourt Rocks: A case involving alleged WP:NPOV violations on the Liancourt Rocks article. A remedy banning Wikimachine for one year has the support of one arbitrator.

• Bharatveer: A case involving alleged edit-warring, incivility and personal attacks by Bharatveer on India-related articles. Kirill Lokshin has proposed a remedy restricting Bharatveer's editing for one year.

• SevenOfDiamonds: A case involving alleged abusive sockpuppetry and other misconduct by SevenOfDiamonds. SevenOfDiamonds vigorously denies the allegations, and alleges that MONGO has harassed him. Voting on remedies is split.

• Dalmatia: A case involving a dispute between Italian and Croatian editors on articles relating to the Dalmatia region. Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies, supported by Fred Bauder, restricting the editing of Giovanni Giove and DIREKTOR.

• DreamGuy 2: A case involving alleged persistent incivility by DreamGuy. Kirill Lokshin has proposed a remedy restricting DreamGuy's editing, which has the support of Fred Bauder and James Forrester

• The Troubles: A case involving a large number of editors on articles related to The Troubles. Some editors attempted to withdraw from the case when its scope was widened at the request of an arbitrator to cover the entire area rather than only the behaviour of Vintagekits, but in accordance with arbitration policy, these attempts, along with other changes to statements after the case opened, were reverted by the clerk. Remedies placing a group of editors on probation have the support of three arbitrators.

• Attack sites: A case involving disputes over whether the attack sites section of WP:NPA should prohibit links from articles in the mainspace to websites which include pages attacking Wikipedia editors. Voting on most remedies is split, but remedies encouraging the community to develop a policy through consensus have a majority.

• THF-DavidShankBone: A case involving alleged POV editing by THF relating to Michael Moore, and alleged harassment by DavidShankBone. Voting on remedies is split.

• Artaxerex: A case involving alleged POV-pushing, incivility and sockpuppetry by Artaxerex. Artaxerex denies the allegations, and alleges that Shervink and others are focusing on getting him blocked, and that certain editors push an Iranian nationalist POV. Remedies banning Artaxerex and reminding parties of the need to adhere closely to WP:NPOV have the support of four arbitrators.

• Allegations of apartheid: This case concerns the conduct of various editors in connection with a group of articles whose titles include the words "Allegations of apartheid". It has been alleged that these articles were created in violation of Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, after several deletion debates concerning Allegations of Israeli apartheid resulted in that article being kept. Issues have also been raised concerning comments made in deletion discussions and reviews. Several users who have created and edited the "Allegations of apartheid" articles have strongly denied any inappropriate conduct. Voting on most proposals is split, but an amnesty for past actions currently has a majority.