Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-12-11/Technology report

Technology report

MediaWiki 1.22 released

On 6 December, the latest version of the MediaWiki software was released. In development from March through October 2013, the release featured anti-spam and counter-vandalism improvements. The patrolling interface has been overhauled, and an extension designed to thwart basic spambots, SimpleAntiSpam, is now part of the core software. Other editing improvements include showing "(no difference)" when viewing a diff with no visible changes, and a confirmation message that lets editors know that their edit was saved. The ability to install some extensions using PHP's dependency manager, Composer, was also added.

The release was delayed by a week while it was debated whether to re-add to the signup page interface messages that had previously been removed. While the messages were eventually re-added, they will be blanked on all Wikimedia wikis and possibly protected (bugzilla:56455#c44).

More information about MediaWiki 1.22 can be found in the release announcement and on MediaWiki.org.