Topic on Project:Support desk

When we have users that leave our organization we disable them in mediawiki, however, if they had pages in their watchlist that get edited, mediawiki still tries to send them an email. This email bounces due to their email account no longer existing. What is the best way to manage watchlist for 'gone' accounts?

An “Admin user” has no access to private things, and I am not aware of any configuration that permits wiki users to interact here.

However, there is the site sysop with database access. They can act as master next to god and at least delete records and field contents from involved databases.

How would this work exactly? We are hoping to not have to manually interact with the underlying database.

How about logging in as the user and visiting Special:EditWatchlist/clear?

We don't know the user's credentials.

Try Manual:Resetting passwords.

Thank you. Yes, we can do that, but were hoping for a simpler process. 'Blocking' a user should prevent email from sending to that account and ideally clear their watchlist as well, or at least have the option to.

I am afraid a password reset has no influence on mailing behaviour. For security I will tell you the more safe way.

• First you need any DMS tool which is able to edit your database. There are hundreds, also for free.
• If you want to disconnect people forever, you may open database table user.
  • Flter to the user_name in question.
  • Clear field user_email of that record.
  • Without address there is no spam any longer.
• If you want to keep connection in some cases, you could operate selectively.
• Then you need the user ID of the account in question.
  • Best you find it on Special:Info/User:PerfektesChaos.
  • My user ID is: 299181
  • It is the key in database table user as well.
• Now open database table user_properties​ and filter to that user ID.
• There are three fields in this table:
  • up_user
  • up_property
  • up_value
• You might simply delete records you do not like.
• Or you might want to selectively change preferences. Those up_property related to page editing business are and may be deleted or cleared:
  • echo-subscriptions-email-article-linked
  • echo-subscriptions-email-edit-thank
  • echo-subscriptions-email-mention
  • echo-subscriptions-email-page-review
  • echo-subscriptions-email-reverted