Last modified: 2011-01-19 19:00:50 UTC
If the output of a parser function or magic word begins with "*", "#", ":" or ";", it will be parsed as a list item even if it's not actually at the beginning of a line. This bug has been observed on both 1.16.1, current wikimedia-deployment and 1.18-svn. It can be easily reproduced by parsing e.g. "foo{{plural:1|*bar}}", which should yield "foo*bar". Instead, the string gets incorrectly parsed as "foo<ul><li>bar</li></ul>". Another way to observe this bug (and the context in which it was first noticed) is to visit a nonexistent page with a leading asterisk in its title: the {{PAGENAME}} magic word in the noarticletext message also triggers this bug if its output begins with an asterisk.
sounds like Bug 12974
There seem to actually be two bugs here. r80511 and r80512 should fix the issue of insufficient escaping of the output of {{PAGENAME}} and friends. Meanwhile, r80430 addresses the more general issue of handling template / parser function output beginning with "*#;:" characters (which seems to be a regression from bug 529). Assuming that neither fix is reverted, I think this bug can probably be closed.
feel free to re-open if they are reverted.