Thread:Project:Support desk/Offering different content to different user groups/reply

I too installed Mediawiki hoping to be able to have both a private and public version of the site. There are extensions such as ConfirmAccount that can help with limiting availability. That said, there are apparently many issues regarding restricting content. Security issues with authorization extensions covers some of the issues with using Mediawiki for this purpose, and it also links to Category:Page specific user rights extensions. I haven't experimented with these extensions, but perhaps this is a place to start? Hope this helps!