Extension:ChangeAuthor
 Release status: stable |
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| Implementation | Special page |
| Description | Allows for changing the author of a revision. |
| Author(s) | Roan Kattouw |
| Maintainer(s) | WikiTeq team |
| Latest version | 1.3.0 (2022-01-07) |
| Compatibility policy | For every MediaWiki release that is a Long Term Support release there is a corresponding branch in the extension. |
| MediaWiki | 1.35, 1.39 |
| License | GNU General Public License 3.0 or later |
| Download | |
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changeauthor |
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| Quarterly downloads | 2 (Ranked 137th) |
| Translate the ChangeAuthor extension if it is available at translatewiki.net | |
| Issues | Open tasks · Report a bug |
ChangeAuthor is an extension that allows for changing the author of a revision, e.g. an edit made by Alice can be changed to look like it was made by Bob instead. Of course, only privileged users can do this, and all changes are logged.
Installation
- Download and move the extracted
ChangeAuthorfolder to yourextensions/directory.
Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/ChangeAuthor - Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:
wfLoadExtension( 'ChangeAuthor' );
Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.
Permissions
You will probably not want to allow every user to use this extension. To control who can and who can't use ChangeAuthor, two approaches can be used:
Using existing groups
Add any of the following lines to LocalSettings.php to allow existing groups of users to use ChangeAuthor:
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['changeauthor'] = true; // Only sysops can use ChangeAuthor. This is the recommended setup
$wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat']['changeauthor'] = true; // Only bureaucrats can use ChangeAuthor
If you have created any custom groups in LocalSettings.php, you can allow these groups to use ChangeAuthor by adding
$wgGroupPermissions['groupname']['changeauthor'] = true;
to LocalSettings.php (replace 'groupname' with the name of your custom group).
NOTE: If a user is in multiple groups, they will be able to use ChangeAuthor even if that's allowed for only one of those groups. E.g.: if group A can't use ChangeAuthor but group B can, a user in both group A and B will be allowed to use ChangeAuthor.
Creating a new group
You can also create a separate group for users who can use ChangeAuthor. To do this, add the following line to LocalSettings.php:
$wgGroupPermissions['changeauthor']['changeauthor'] = true;
This creates a new group named 'changeauthor'. Only users in that group can use ChangeAuthor. You can add users to the changeauthor group using the Special:Userrights special page.
Use
You can change a revision's author using the Special:ChangeAuthor special page. First, enter the name of a page in the input box and click the "Go" button. You will now see a list of the last 50 revisions of the target page. Note that all usernames are in textboxes. To change the author of a revision, simply change the username in the associated textbox. Add a comment in the comment textbox (optional), click the "Change author(s)" button and you're done. If the revision whose author you want to change isn't among the 50 latest, you need to access it by its revision ID. You can find out a revision's ID by looking it up in the page history and click the link stating the date and time the revision was made. In your address bar, you will now see a URL that ends in:
index.php?title=Pagename&oldid=12345
Here, 12345 is the revision ID. You can now enter the revision ID (12345) in Special:ChangeAuthor's input box and follow the normal procedure. As a shortcut, you can also go to Special:ChangeAuthor/Main_Page or Special:ChangeAuthor/12345 and bypass the input box altogether. NOTE: In the event you have both a page called 12345 and a revision ID 12345, you will need to access the page using :12345 (i.e. prepend a colon).
Logs
A log of all author changes is maintained at Special:Log/changeauth. All author changes also appear in recent changes.
Licensing and downloads
The extension is available under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later, and can be downloaded from Git.
The software is provided as-is. Updates will be made where critical vulnerabilities are discovered.
Translating ChangeAuthor
If ChangeAuthor hasn't been translated to your language (completely), feel free to help out. Visit translatewiki.net for more information.
Contact
ChangeAuthor is currently maintained by WikiTeq. If you have any questions, complaints, feature requests, found a bug, or any other reason, use the discussion page.