<snip>
. What you can't do is force us to make changes that are
fundamentally opposed to the overall direction of the progress.
Rob Church
Just pointing out the possible change of direction of progress...
Possibly this change has been checked in error - it was from a branch. Still it begs the question: has the position on this changed, as this change is there meaning that the code would need to be reviewed to put in page protection. This really is the last thing that needs to go into the trunk. Extending MW to do pretty much anything other than protection is now possible through hooks, and the extensions can be relatively non invasive. However, as often mentioned, for security reasons extensions cannot add this completely. Trunk changes are needed. This looks like a step in that (right) direction.
As a side note what is img_auth.php for? I cannot see where it is used. Seems to be a potential access control mechanism into the image repository...