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.

• Undeletion of pages now fails more gracefully during a database lock. (r26768, bug 11343)
• When an anonymous or non-autoconfirmed user views a move action in a log, they no longer get the (revert) link that allows the move to be quickly undone (it previously appeared, but was nonfunctional). (r26804, bug 11690)

• An API 'allpages' query now allows sorting in reverse alphabetical order, and allows more than one page protection condition to be given at once. (r26725, bug 11634)
• The administrator-only page Special:DeletedContributions now displays (diff) links. (r26711, bug 11606)
• Special:Whatlinkshere now prompts for a page to check links to rather than showing an error if no page is given. Consequently, it now appears on Special:Specialpages. (r26820, bug 11649)

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

Robert Braunwart (Rbraunwa) died on Oct. 14 of melanoma, based on a comment on Rbraunwa's user page. Robert was born in Richland, Washington in 1948 and grew up in Moses Lake, Washington. He lived for many years in Oaxaca, México and Los Angeles, California. He attended Reed College as a National Merit Scholar before transferring to the University of Washington. Robert contributed almost 12,000 edits and hundreds of articles to Wikipedia, primarily on the viceroys of New Spain. Of these new articles, at least 15 were honored as Did you know selections.

Two Associated Press journalists sued officials of the U.S. state of Arkansas, in response to the denial of a Freedom of Information Act request to determine which state computers had been used in various Wikipedia edits. According to the article, one edit removed controversial information about former Governor and current Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, while another reverted vandalism in current governor Mike Beebe's article.

The Free Image Search Tool (FIST) is the successor to both WatchFlickr and MissingImages. The new tool will look for free images for articles (manual list, categories) or to replace non-free/placeholder images. It currently uses

• Flickr (what WatchFlickr did)
• For a given article, it follows language links to find images (what MissingImages did)
• Direct Wikimedia Commons search
• The GIMP-SAVVY archive (PD images from USGov)
• EveryStockPhoto.com (Creative Commons BY and BY-SA images)

More image sources will be added in time. There is also a JavaScript tool that adds FIST links to the toolbox for articles (find images for this article), images (replace this image with a free one), and categories (find images for the articles in this category).

WatchFlickr and MissingImages have been turned off and redirected to FIST.

Private Eye magazine has spun off its one-time article "Wikipedia Whispers" into a regular column. The column generally covers violations of the autobiography guidelines by politicians (this week it mentions Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley claiming falsely that the Guardian had libeled him on Wikipedia), corporations and journalists, although other Wikipedia-related news is also covered sometimes (such as inaccuracies in obituaries of Ronnie Hazlehurst sourced from a vandalised Wikipedia article).

A very small statistical analysis performed by checkuser Raul654 showed that very few new users had previously edited an article from the same IP address. In response to a question on Slashdot, Raul654 sampled ten recent users from the new user log. Of these ten, only one had edited prior to registering. No data was released on whether the users made any edits after registering. The study draws from a small sample, making its margin of error relatively high.

• Discussion is ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007 regarding the upcoming Arbitration Committee Elections. Current plans are for the elections to start on Monday, December 3, with candidates being accepted starting on November 1.
• John Broughton is writing a book called Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly), due out in Dec '07. John said, "The book is based on the index I've been working on for a while."
• A collaboration called "Gnome Week" is ongoing through Sunday; this collaboration aims to clear various backlogs, and clean up articles in need of help.
• The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.
• The Polish Wikinews has reached 6,000 articles.
• The Luxembourgish Wikipedia has reached 18,000 articles.
• The Tagalog Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
• The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 90,000 articles.
• The Wikipedia of Ripuarian languages has reached 500,000 edits.

The Arbitration Committee accepted two new cases this week, and closed six cases.

• Bharatveer: A case involving alleged edit-warring, incivility and personal attacks by Bharatveer on India-related articles. As a result of the case, Bharatveer's editing was restricted for one year.

• Digwuren: A case involving alleged POV-pushing and incivility by Digwuren and alleged sockpuppets. As a result of the case, Digwuren and Petri Krohn were banned for one year, and a general restriction imposed on editors working on Eastern European topics.

• Liancourt Rocks: A case involving alleged WP:NPOV violations on the Liancourt Rocks article. As a result of the case, Wikimachine was banned for one year.

• 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. As a result of the case, both parties' editing was restricted for one year.

• Alkivar: A case involving alleged misuse of administrative tools by Alkivar, including protection of a page in a dispute in which he was allegedly involved, an indefinite block of Equazcion, and a banner on his userpage stating that "comments left by anonymous editors may be removed without warning".

• Ferrylodge: A case involving a community ban of Ferrylodge on the now-defunct Community sanction noticeboard, but which User:B has, in accordance with Wikipedia:Community ban, stated that he is willing to overturn.

• Martinphi-ScienceApologist: A case involving alleged POV-pushing and incivility on pseudoscience-related articles.

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

• Commodore Sloat-Biophys: A case wherein Biophys alleges that Commodore Sloat has been incivil and has edit-warred, while Sloat denies the allegations and alleges that Biophys has not been co-operative in the dispute. Kirill Lokshin has proposed a remedy instructing the parties to refrain from interacting with or commenting about each other in any way.

• 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. If closed, any editors joining in the edit-warring on the articles in question would be liable to be placed on probation, and the indefinite ban of Vintagekits would be lifted.

• THF-DavidShankBone: A case involving alleged POV editing by THF relating to Michael Moore, and alleged harassment by DavidShankBone. Voting on remedies is split, but a motion dismissing the case because one of the parties has left Wikipedia stands at 4-1.

• 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, and a motion to dismiss the case has the support of five arbitrators.