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.

For a general review of developer activity over the past year, Midom has put together a report on the state of technology at the Wikimedia Foundation.

• The title blacklist (MediaWiki:Titleblacklist) now correctly handles underscore characters. (r29200, bug 12483)
• Special:Userrights is now listed correctly on Special:Specialpages. (r29245, bug 12489)

• Administrators are now given a warning when creating a page whose title has been protected (by the new feature that allows nonexistent pages to be protected). (r29187, bug 12486)
• The cursor is now focused in the search box by default on Special:Search. (It isn't focused on other pages, because that would make it impossible to use the up and down arrow keys to scroll the page.) (r29202, bug 9939)
• The #titleparts: parser function now allows a greater range of syntax, including negative numbers and numbers greater than the expected range; for instance, "{{#titleparts:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-01-07/Technology report|1|-2}}" returns "2008-01-07", because a negative number now counts from the right. (r28708, bug 12356)

• Although it does not affect the English Wikipedia, there was a major project-wide change this week, which limited page moves to autoconfirmed users on all public Wikimedia wikis. (The change does not affect the English Wikipedia because this limit was already in place.) The change was an attempt to combat page-move vandalism that was affecting many of the smaller wikis; see meta:Metapub/Archives/2007-11#set pagemoves to autoconfirmed - please read and comment for more information about how the decision was made. (bug 12071)

• 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.

The Arbitration Committee opened five new cases this week, and did not close any cases, leaving eight currently open.

• John Gohde 2: A case involving alleged misconduct by John Gohde, which he denies. Kirill Lokshin has proposed a remedy, with the support of two other arbitrators, banning Gohde for one year.

• Jim62sch: A case involving alleged off-wiki harrasment by Jim62sch, possibly involving reporting of potential on-wiki violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A remedy instructing Jim62sch to "refrain from making any comments to another user that could reasonably be construed as harassing, threatening, or bullying" has the support of seven arbitrators.

• Highways 2: A case involving alleged contravention of consensus on WikiProject U.S. Roads by NE2.

• Zeraeph: A case involving alleged misconduct by Zeraeph, in response to what she sees as harrasment by SandyGeorgia. A remedy banning Zeraeph for one year has the support of three arbitrators.

• IRC: A case involving an alleged personal attack by Tony Sidaway on Bishonen on #wikipedia-en-admins, which led to an edit war on WP:WEA, involving page protection and unprotection by David Gerard, Geogre and others, and a block of Giano II, which was quickly undone. Various findings of fact have been proposed relating to the editors in dispute, but no remedies have yet been proposed by arbitrators.

• John Buscema: A case involving editing of the John Buscema article by editors including Tenebrae and Skyelarke. A variety of proposals restricting both parties' editing of the article have the support of one to seven arbitrators.

• Dbachmann: A case involving alleged misconduct on the part of administrator Dbachmann and editing by other users on several race-related articles. Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies banning Bakasuprman and Deeceevoice, admonishing Dbachmann not to use administrator tools in editing disputes, and placing Afrocentrism on article probation. These remedies have the support of four to eight arbitrators.

• Matthew Hoffman: A case involving controversial blocks of MatthewHoffman by a vanished user. Various remedies were proposed including either desysopping or admonishing the vanished user and annotating Matthew Hoffman's block log to reflect the arbitrators' view that the blocks were unjustified. A motion has been passed suspending the case for 30 days (until approximately 20 January , 2008) to allow for community input at a request for comment.