Extension:ChangeAuthor

From MediaWiki.org

Manual on MediaWiki Extensions
List of MediaWiki Extensions

ChangeAuthor Release status: beta
Implementation	Special page
Description	Allows for changing the author of a revision.
Author(s)	Roan Kattouw
Version	1.0 (October 21, 2007)
MediaWiki	1.11
Download	SVN README Changelog
Added rights	changeauthor

ChangeAuthor is an extension that allows for changing the author of a revision, e.g. an edit made by Alice can be changed to look like it was made by Bob instead. Of course, only privileged users can do this, and all changes are logged.

[edit] Installation

Create a new directory called "ChangeAuthor" (without the quotes) in your wiki's extensions/ directory. Download the three files from SVN and place them in the newly created directory. Then add the following to the bottom of LocalSettings.php:

require_once("$IP/extensions/ChangeAuthor/ChangeAuthor.setup.php");
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['changeauthor'] = true; // Only sysops can use ChangeAuthor

Then go to your wiki's Special:Version to verify the installation. Now sysops can use the Special:ChangeAuthor special page.

[edit] Permissions

You will probably not want to allow every user to be able to use this extension. To control who can and who can't use ChangeAuthor, two approaches can be used:

[edit] Using existing groups

Add any of the following lines to LocalSettings.php to allow existing groups of users to use ChangeAuthor:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['changeauthor'] = true; // Allow *everyone*, including anonymous users, to use ChangeAuthor. This is asking for vandalism
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['changeauthor'] = true; // Only logged-in users can use ChangeAuthor. Probably not very wise either
$wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['changeauthor'] = true; // Only users older than $wgAutoConfirmAge can use ChangeAuthor
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['changeauthor'] = true; // Only sysops can use ChangeAuthor. This is the recommended setup
$wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat']['changeauthor'] = true; // Only bureaucrats can use ChangeAuthor

If you have created any custom groups in LocalSettings.php, you can allow these groups to use ChangeAuthor by adding

$wgGroupPermissions['groupname']['changeauthor'] = true;

to LocalSettings.php (replace 'groupname' with the name of your custom group).

NOTE: If a user is in multiple groups, they will be able to use ChangeAuthor even if that's allowed for only one of those groups. E.g.: if group A can't use ChangeAuthor but group B can, a user in both group A and B will be allowed to use ChangeAuthor.

[edit] Creating a new group

You can also create a separate group for users who can use ChangeAuthor. To do this, add the following line to LocalSettings.php:

$wgGroupPermissions['changeauthor']['changeauthor'] = true;

This creates a new group named 'changeauthor'. Only users in that group can use ChangeAuthor. You can add users to the changeauthor group using the Special:Userrights special page.

[edit] Use

You can change a revision's author using the Special:ChangeAuthor special page. First, enter the name of a page in the input box and click the "Go" button. You will now see a list of the last 50 revisions of the target page. Note that all usernames are in textboxes. To change the author of a revision, simply change the username in the associated textbox. Add a comment in the comment textbox (optional), click the "Change author(s)" button and you're done. If the revision whose author you want to change isn't among the 50 latest, you need to access it by its revision ID. You can find out a revision's ID by looking it up in the page history and click the link stating the date and time the revision was made. In your address bar, you will now see a URL that ends in:

index.php?title=Pagename&oldid=12345

Here, 12345 is the revision ID. You can now enter the revision ID (12345) in Special:ChangeAuthor's input box and follow the normal procedure. As a shortcut, you can also go to Special:ChangeAuthor/Main_Page or Special:ChangeAuthor/12345 and bypass the input box altogether. NOTE: In the event you have both a page called 12345 and a revision ID 12345, you will need to access the page using :12345 (i.e. prepend a colon).

[edit] Logs

A log of all author changes is maintained at Special:Log/changeauth. All author changes also appear in recent changes.

[edit] Licensing and downloads

The extension is available under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later, and can be downloaded from Subversion, or accessed via the web-based viewer.

The software is provided as-is. Updates will be made where critical vulnerabilities are discovered.

[edit] Translating ChangeAuthor

If ChangeAuthor hasn't been translated to your language, feel free to do so. Simply translate all the messages in the ChangeAuthor.i18n.php file, and e-mail the translations to the maintainer (see the contact section below). They will add your translations to SVN.

[edit] Contact

ChangeAuthor is currently maintained by Roan Kattouw. If you have any questions, complaints, feature requests, found a bug, or any other reason to contact the maintainer, please send your e-mails to roan.kattouw@home.nl and mention "ChangeAuthor" in the subject.