I have in my working copy a set of changes introducing a comprehensive
template expansion size limit. The limit is configurable (by
$wgMaxArticleSize), and will probably be set to 1 MB on Wikimedia. This
prevents a number of DoS vulnerabilities, such as the exponential argument
substitution attack that we've known about for some time.
The output size of template expansion has long been limited to 1MB, limiting
several attacks. But it was possible to evade this limit by forcing the
parser to parse a large chunk of text, and then throwing away the result,
say by putting it into an unused template parameter. The new behaviour is to
limit both the pre-expansion size and the post-expansion size.
This may break some articles, that's why I'm posting this to wikipedia-l. In
particular, it will break articles which use {{#switch}} or similar
constructs to extract many small fragments of text from large
pseudo-databases. This practice is extremely inefficient, and I'd very much
like to see it discontinued on the editorial level. This feature will
probably only break the most flagrant cases, where article parse times were
in the tens of seconds. I'm sure the other developers would agree -- we
would be very grateful if the remaining cases could be dealt with by policy,
as much as possible. I've been having a discussion with some Wikipedians
along these lines at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TransLink_(South_East_Queensland)_services
When the limit is hit, there will be HTML comments in the parser output
indicating the problem. For all articles which use more than 1KB of
templates, there will be an HTML comment at the bottom of the parser output
showing how close the article is to the size limit. This allows technically
capable users to monitor and optimise the expansion size of their templates.
At this stage I would like to invite comments. The we can move forward to a
trial, perhaps in a few days, if there are no objections.
-- Tim Starling
After a report from Xinjingbao(The Beijing News,
http://www.thebeijingnews.com/ ) on Wikipedia, yesterday afternoon the Great
firewall of Chinese government upgrades its block level for Wikipedia. Today
many Wikipedia users in China report that they can not access Wikipedia via
the official proxy provides by MediaWiki Fundation.
This is a another bad news for Mainland Chinese Wikipedians again. Seems
hopeless for them.
Before I say anything else, is there a specific place where people can
submit proposals/suggestions? If not, one should be set up. And if so, the
navigational structure should be improved because it's hard to find!
Upgrade to MediaWiki: "Save Draft" button beneath the edit box that saves
the box's contents to a logged-in user's subpage: "User:Example/Article
title". Far too many times I'm halfway through a massive edit and I have to
go - there needs to be an easier and/or integrated way to save half-done
work between sessions.
This automation of "in-progress" subpages will neatly streamline copyediting
and extended work too.
New language is Meghwarki. It is written in Urdu format. It is spoken by
almost 0.5 million Meghwars living in Tharparkar and Rajistan.
--
Gordhan Das Valasai,
Ph D Scholar,
MUET, Jamshoro, Sindh.
03332743180
Hallo zusammen!
Zahlreiche Artikel in der Wikipedia haben einen Raumbezug aber noch
keine Koordinate. Andererseits kennen sich viele Benutzer in bestimmten
Landstrichen besonders gut aus und wissen aber nicht, dass dort ein
Artikel existiert oder die Koordinate fehlt.
Deshalb hab ich mal eine Liste für jedes Land erstellt, die alle derzeit
noch nicht georeferenzierten Artikel (z.B. Berge, Museen, Orte) enthält.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Georeferenzierung/Artike…
Vielen Dank für eure Mithilfe beim Abarbeiten der Liste.
Stefan
Dear all,
Due to Angela Beeslay's resignation from the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation, the Board issued a new election to fill at least
one position for the following year.
>From today, we're accepting candidates to the Board of Trustees. If
you're interested, you must make a candidate statement and list
yourself on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En
We also need the help or translators for the elections, so if you're
fluent in any language apart from English, please list yourself here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_translations_2006
If you have any questions, please leave them in the FAQ:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Election_FAQ_2006
The official announcement is available on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_W…
We hope the elections will go underway without any problems and wish
any potential candidates the best of luck.
Regards,
Datrio, Essjay, & Aphaia
Election Officials, Wikimedia Election Committee 2006
The Wikipedia Signpost has a report this week from the Polish Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-31/Interw…),
following last week's report from the German Wikipedia. Thanks to Kpjas
for putting it together. It's nice to get more cross-project news.
To keep this feature going, we would welcome anyone from another
language who wants to step up. Italian next, or French? Maybe Chinese or
Arabic? You get to decide, all you have to do is write it.
--Michael Snow