Thread:Talk:MediaWiki/Public vs Private controls

I'm looking to host a wiki that has the ability to have some pages marked as private where they are not seen by the public but are by an individual or group of contributors. Then I want other pages marked as public which are available to everyone to read. Reason being, if we start creating a page for a topic we want to build the content up in that page up in a private collaborative environment to a point before releasing to the public. Can MediaWiki do that??