Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-06-21/Technology report

Technology report

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Toolserver IP addresses to be softblocked

IP addresses known to belong to the Toolserver are to be softblocked (only logged-in users can edit) from the English Wikipedia after a discussion at the Bot policy talkpage. The change, to be introduced after a 14-day period of grace that started on Friday, will prevent bots and other tools running from the Toolserver from accidentally editing while logged out (a practice explicitly banned by both local-bot and Toolserver policies). Until now, bots editing while logged out were dealt with case by case; this resulted in a certain amount of controversy, given that the IPs could not be hardblocked (no edits allowed) because they are shared among many high-profile bots.

Resource loader coming soon

Developer Roan Kattouw (User:Catrope) has said on the Foundation mailing list that work on a "Resource Loader" will start this week, to ease the "page weight" (size) of Wikimedia pages.

“

[The Resource Loader] will optimize loading of resources like CSS and JavaScript [JS]. In particular, that means we'll no longer throw more than 100 KB of JS+CSS in your face then decide you're on an old unsupported browser and not use any of it.

[W]ork on this resource loader has yet to get started, so it'll take some time to be finished and used in production; I can't really say when that will be, but rest assured that an elegant permanent solution is in the works.

”

The size of a typical Wikipedia page has been increasing considerably as the site has grown more complex. In particular, developments aimed at improving the editing experience – by bringing the visual look and feel of Wikipedia into line with other, even more resource-hungry sites – have tended to boost page sizes.

While it is still well within the acceptable range for users on broadband connections (since the browser will "cache" – store – the result, meaning it only has to be loaded once), Roan's message came in response to user Yann Forget's concern that "page weight is a major hurdle for working on any Wikimedia sites affecting users who do not enjoy a broadband connection ... [For improving the reach of Wikimedia outside the Western world], improving the page weight should be a priority."

In brief

Note: not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing, or may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

A problem has been fixed in which Wikipedia's own JavaScript (including wikEd, a common gadget) interfered with browsers' ability to cache ("remember") what had been entered into forms when a user accidentally navigated away from a page and hit their back-button to return (bug #22680).
Bug #23415 has been resolved, improving the interact of pending changes and image deletions.
Bots running from the Toolserver have been exempted from the CAPTCHA requirement even where it would be triggered for other users (bug #23982).
The Foundation is planning to set up a second data center in the U.S., probably in Virginia (Foundation mailing list).
A request has been put out for anyone who might be harbouring a full-text "dump" (backup) of the Dutch Wiktionary from the latter half of 2004 (Wikimedia Tech mailing list).