User blog:DaNASCAT/Technical Update: September 20, 2011

Here are the latest technical updates at Wikia. Keep in mind that our system updates happen every Wednesday, so we’re posting this on a Tuesday to give you advance notice. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.

Major Bugs Fixed

 * The chat server crashed periodically over the last week, but the underlying issue was found and fixed.
 * We also fixed the "Error communicating with MediaWiki server" message that was appearing on chat for some wikis.
 * The link on the Community Messages bubble was redirecting to Special:ActivityFeed, not Special:WikiActivity.
 * An issue with our analytics software was inserting greatly inflated numbers into the Quick Stats part of Admin Dashboard.

Other Notable Changes

 * The floating toolbar will now also appear on the Visual Editor edit page.
 * The Visual Editor will no longer appear on namespaces critical to Semantic MediaWiki functionality - Property, Form, Category, and Concept.
 * Wikia Staff has a new tool that will allow us to refresh Special pages if data becomes outdated due to caching issues. Please use Special:Contact for such requests.
 * Special:WikiaLabs now redirects to Special:WikiFeatures.

Select Known Issues

 * Private Messages on Special:Chat are not working for a number of wikis.
 * Unfortunately, the oft-appearing bug of images not refreshing after a re-upload has returned. Our technicians have identified the underlying issue but a fix is not yet in place.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave them below. And if you have additional bugs to report, please send them to us via Special:Contact.

Update: 9/23/11, 5:44pm UTC (10:44am U.S. Pacific): Chat is currently down. We're working on the issue, and we expect it will take a few hours. Thanks for your patience. (Now resolved.)