I was wondering if there is an extension/setting where you can do an edit to any article, but that edit wont show up on the spot, but rather added into the future on a specified date. Perfect for when you need to update an article of which you have ahead information but cant release it on the spot. Anyone know if this is possible?
Topic on Project:Support desk
Don't know of any extensions, but one way to do it is through templates using time variables.
But this method is likely to require the information you want to release later on and presumably to keep hidden at the moment, to be publicly available on the templates page.
The information will not appear on the article page but anyone will be able to see the information on the template page.
Would you please tell me how to with those time variables?
A similar approach is performed for the featured articles on Wikipedia's main page. A sort of summary for an article is created and edited for around 3-4 weeks before the time to display it on the main page arrives.
Wikipedia does this by using templates like:
- {{Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{#time:F j, Y}}}}
- which uses parser functions to get today's date
- When a particular date arrives, this template transcludes the information that was created and saved weeks ago.
- {{Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{tomorrow|long}}}}
- Other relevant links:
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And is there a way to restrict people to access those templates ahead?
If the information isn't too sensitive, there isn't really much need to restrict them. Wikipedia uses them and few people go poking around in the source code to get to the template.
One method which can be used to restrict these templates would be to use Extension:Lockdown. This extension can be used to create a restricted namespace. The future date template can be created in this namespace to restrict other people from viewing the information on the the page.
That seems helpful! Thank you very much for all your help!