Forum:Possible to grant specific users the right to edit specific protected pages?
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I would like to be able to grant specific users the right to edit specific pages such as these 2 protected pages:
But I don't want to make them full admins. Maybe an intermediate level of admins with rights to edit only certain protected pages?
For background info see also:
--Timeshifter (talk) 09:52, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- The short answer: no. You might also find this recent wikitech-l thread somewhat interesting.
- The complicated answer: MediaWiki was not and is not designed to be a content management system (CMS), such as Drupal or Joomla. Nevertheless, in most of the cases MediaWiki can do almost everything those can do, plus a few other things — and I'm sure there's someone working on adding support for remote lawn mowing or coffee-making to MediaWiki. ;-) But in all seriousness, there isn't support for fine-grained access control in the core software, and if the past 10 years or so are anything to go by, there won't be such support anytime soon, as MediaWiki is designed for maximum openness, even though it can be closed down to various degrees, which enables private and semi-private wikis to use MediaWiki.
- One possible work-around could be adding a new protection level, making a new group or giving a pre-existing group the right to edit pages that have such a protection and changing the protection of the pages accordingly. Do you think this could work for your use case here? --Jack Phoenix
(Contact) 17:47, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- The Snowden thread is interesting and funny. I spent several hours in the last couple days looking at Mediawiki info about protection, etc.. That page you linked to is one of the ones I spent some time on. Also, its talk page. It linked to a tutorial that no longer exists.
- It seems that the many extensions out there dealing with related issues are way too complicated for my needs, and they are buggy in many cases, and not maintained. So any method that uses standard Mediawiki tools already built in to Mediawiki would be preferred. Also, I am not trying to set up read access, or any type of secrecy.
- I only want a new protection level as you suggest.
I never use semi-protection on the Cannabis Wiki, and so it might be an option to take it over for my needs. Then instead of any auto-confirmed user being given the right to edit semi-protected pages, only specific users, or a specific group, would be given the right by a bureaucrat or steward could do it.Full admins would automatically be able to edit all protected pages.
- I only want a new protection level as you suggest.
- A completely new protection level and a new group would be even better, since I may need semi-protection in the future for some pages.
- Steward
- Bureaucrat
- Admin
- Special admin
- Auto-confirmed user
- Special admin
- Admin
- Bureaucrat
- Steward
- So stewards, bureaucrats, and full admins could edit all protected pages.
- Special admins could only edit specially-protected pages.
- Auto-confirmed users can edit semi-protected pages.
- Any help would be appreciated. Feel free to change the settings on the Cannabis wiki, and experiment with protection, etc.. I know I could probably figure out what you changed, and how it all works after the fact. But actually creating something that will work looks baffling to me at the moment. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:00, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- Well, I just used semi-protection on a page where I need to stop some info from being deleted by IPs, but I need to allow others to edit the page.
- I struck out some sentences of mine in my previous comment higher up concerning semi-protection. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:04, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
(Unindent). I found this example of a new special protection level on Wikipedia:
So I see that it is a good idea sometimes to create new protection levels. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:37, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, but I get confused with the terminology. This list of protection options makes things more concrete for me:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Anakin101/Protection_levels&action=protect
- So it looks like there is both a new protection level, and a new user group with less user rights than full admins.
- The user group would not be called "template editors" though on Shoutwiki. I am trying to think of a good name for this new user group. I am open to ideas. I bet there are many wikis that would like this new intermediate admin group. So maybe this new user group could be implemented across all Shoutwiki wikis. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:05, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
I have a somewhat similar need. I would like to restrict editing of articles to users that I authorize on my private wiki, but I would like anyone to be able to edit any discussion pages, so as to point out errors, suggest changes, etc. Is there a way to work that in?--Arnold Reinhold (talk) 15:26, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
- I think what I am asking for would work for you too. I am trying to restrict the editing of specific pages to a class of authorized users who are not full admins. Authorized users would be able to edit those pages. I don't want those authorized users to be able to edit other protected pages. Those authorized users will not be full admins who can edit any protected pages.
- So you could protect all the pages on your site except talk pages. You could protect certain pages at a lower level of protection so that a class of authorized users could edit those pages only.
- After further study I see that it is a matter of deciding what user rights to assign to a new user group. See:
- Special:ListGroupRights - long list of user rights, and their assignments.
- Help:Group rights - help page explaining it a little.
- mw:Help:User rights - detailed help page on MediaWiki.org
- I am leaning to assigning very few user rights to this new group beyond what a regular user has. Basically, I just want to give them the right to edit a special limited class of protected pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:15, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
