Extension:FlaggedRevs

Warning:

Flagged Revisions is very clunky, complex and not recommended for production use, despite the "stable" tag. See phab:T185664. As of April 2017, Flagged Revisions will no longer be installed on additional WMF wikis (see m:Flagged Revisions#Enabling).

MediaWiki extensions manual

Flagged Revisions Release status: stable
Implementation	User interface, Special page , User rights , Database , Ajax, API
Description	Allows for article content management by "editor" and "reviewer" classes.
Author(s)	Aaron Schulz, Joerg Baach
Compatibility policy	Snapshots releases along with MediaWiki. Master is not backward compatible.
MediaWiki	1.21+
Database changes	Yes
Tables	flaggedpages flaggedpage_pending flaggedrevs flaggedtemplates flaggedimages flaggedpage_config flaggedrevs_tracking flaggedrevs_promote flaggedrevs_statistics
License	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (Phabricator · GitHub) commit history repository contributors (GitHub) code review
Help	Help:Extension:FlaggedRevs
Parameters $wgFlaggedRevsRestrictionLevels $wgSimpleFlaggedRevsUI $wgFlaggedRevsTagsAuto $wgFlaggedRevsAutoReview $wgFlaggedRevsHandleIncludes $wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions $wgFlaggedRevsTags $wgFlaggedRevsLowProfile $wgFlaggedRevsAutoconfirm $wgFlaggedRevsOverride $wgFlaggedRevsProtection $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote $wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces
Added rights review validate autoreview autoreviewrestore unreviewedpages stablesettings movestable
Hooks used APIGetAllowedParams APIQueryAfterExecute ArticleDeleteComplete ArticleMergeComplete ArticleRevisionVisibilitySet ArticleUndelete ArticleUpdateBeforeRedirect ArticleViewHeader AutopromoteCondition BeforePageDisplay BeforeRevertedTagUpdate CategoryPageView ChangesListInsertArticleLink ChangesListSpecialPageQuery ChangesListSpecialPageStructuredFilters ContribsPager::getQueryInfo ContributionsLineEnding DeleteAccount DifferenceEngineViewHeader EchoGetDefaultNotifiedUsers EditPageBeforeEditButtons EditPageGetCheckboxesDefinition EditPageNoSuchSection GetPreferences GoogleNewsSitemap::Query InfoAction InitializeArticleMaybeRedirect LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates MagicWordwgVariableIDs MakeGlobalVariablesScript MediaWikiServices MergeAccountFromTo NewDifferenceEngine PageHistoryBeforeList PageHistoryLineEnding PageHistoryPager::getQueryInfo PageMoveComplete PageSaveComplete ParserFirstCallInit ParserGetVariableValueSwitch ProtectionForm::save ProtectionForm::showLogExtract ProtectionFormAddFormFields RecentChange_save RevisionDataUpdates RevisionFromEditComplete RevisionUndeleted ScribuntoExternalLibraries SkinAfterContent SkinTemplateNavigation::Universal SpecialContributions::getForm::filters SpecialNewPagesFilters SpecialNewpagesConditions SpecialPage_initList TitleGetEditNotices UserGetRights UserLoadAfterLoadFromSession UserMergeAccountFields WikiExporter::dumpStableQuery getUserPermissionsErrors
Hooks provided FlaggedRevsRevisionReviewFormAfterDoSubmit
Quarterly downloads	78 (Ranked 64th)
Translate the FlaggedRevs extension
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

The Flagged Revisions extension allows for Editor and Reviewer users to rate revisions of articles and set those revisions as the default revision to show upon normal page view. This allows for MediaWiki to act more like a Content Management System (CMS).

Download

The extension can be retrieved directly from Git ^[?]:

• Browse code
• Some extensions have tags for stable releases.
  • Browse tags
  • Select the tag
  • Click "snapshot"
• Each branch is associated with a past MediaWiki release. There is also a "master" branch containing the latest alpha version (might require an alpha version of MediaWiki).
  • Browse branches
  • Select a branch name
  • Click "Continue"

Extract the snapshot and place it in the extensions/FlaggedRevs/ directory of your MediaWiki installation.

If you are familiar with Git and have shell access to your server, you can also obtain the extension as follows:

cd extensions/ git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/FlaggedRevs.git

Setup

The examples in the installation instruction are written for modern Unix-like operating systems (especially Linux and Mac OS X) and assume that MediaWiki is installed in the /var/www/mediawiki directory. If you are working on a different family of operating systems, you will need to use commands and file paths appropriate to the operating system.

Installation

Follow these steps to install FlaggedRevs:

• Ensure that file hashes are up-to-date by running the populateImageSha1.php maintenance script. For example:

  php maintenance/populateImageSha1.php

• Download and move the extracted FlaggedRevs folder to your extensions/ directory.
  Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/FlaggedRevs
• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:

  wfLoadExtension( 'FlaggedRevs' );
  

• Run the update script which will automatically create the necessary database tables that this extension needs.
• Configure as required.
•  Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

AllowEncodedSlashes

If you are using Apache 2.3.12 or later, you should set AllowEncodedSlashes to "NoDecode". Add the following line to your <VirtualHost> or, if you don't have one, at the end of your httpd.conf file:

AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode

After you changed httpd.conf, Apache needs to be restarted.

Alter your .htaccess (if needed)

If you are shortening your URLs, you need to add an exception to .htaccess to allow the use of the REST API.

FlaggedRevs calls on rest.php. For example:

[domain]/w/rest.php/flaggedrevs/internal/review/Main_Page

If the .htaccess conditions are not properly set when the above url is called, FlaggedRevs will literally try to access an article named "W/rest.php/flaggedrevs/internal/review/Main Page".

Here is one way to add an exception to .htaccess, emphasis added:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/w/rest\.php
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI} !-f
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI} !-d

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ w/index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^$ w/index.php [L,QSA]

Promote users to reviewers

After FlaggedRevs is first installed, no user can see the reviewer's widget. To fix this, login as a wiki bureaucrat and go to Special:UserRights, then grant review rights to one or more users. Reviewers will see the reviewer's widget on the bottom of an editable page.

Article review statistics (optional)

For a scheduled collection of article review statistics, create a cron job to run extensions/FlaggedRevs/maintenance/updateStats.php at a regular interval. Run time php updateStats.php to see how long the script takes to run and set your cron jobs interval appropriately. For example, to create a cron job that runs updateStats.php as user www-data every hour:

echo "@hourly php /var/www/mediawiki/extensions/FlaggedRevs/maintenance/updateStats.php" | crontab -u www-data -

Warning:

This will delete all existing cron jobs for the user.

Configuration

User rights and user groups

By default, nobody can review anything, so the first step is to set up user rights.

User groups	User rights
reviewer	validate
	review
editor
	autoreview
	unreviewedpages

User rights

FlaggedRevs creates the following new user rights:

• review – user can review revisions
• validate – user can review revisions and can set all tags to all levels
• autoreview – any new revisions made by the user are automatically marked as sighted
• autoreviewrestore – autoreview of the rollbacks made by the user.
• unreviewedpages – user can view Special:UnreviewedPages
• stablesettings – user can changes the settings of stable revisions of any page
• movestable – user can move pages with stable revisions

User groups

FlaggedRevs creates the following new user groups:

• editor – receive autoreview, review, unreviewedpages, plus the standard MediaWiki user rights autoconfirmed, editsemiprotected
• reviewer – receive autoreview, review, unreviewedpages, validate, plus the standard MediaWiki user rights autoconfirmed, editsemiprotected
• autoreview – receive autoreview

How to assign user rights

User rights can be assigned in two ways:

• Assigning rights to user groups
  Assign these user rights to existing user groups in LocalSettings.php :

$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['review'] = true; //allow administrators to review revisions

• Assigning rights to specific users
  Manually add user accounts to the appropriate groups via Special:UserRights.

By default:

• Bureaucrats can add/remove Reviewers
• Administrators can add/remove both Autoreviewers and Editors.

Basic settings

FlaggedRevs.php comes with a number of configurable variables. These should be configured in LocalSettings.php.

• $wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces – Sets what namespaces may be subject to the review process. This is an array of integers. See Manual:Namespace constants to see what integer the default namespaces map to and use the defined constants for readability.
• $wgFlaggedRevsTags – Sets the tags and their 'levels' setting.

  Definition

  $wgFlaggedRevsTags is an associative array with keys corresponding to each tag name. The only meaningful value of the array is 'levels', which controls the number of review levels, and the array can only have one element.

  Labeling

  • Each tag can be labeled editing the page MediaWiki:revreview-<tag-name>.
  • Each tag level can be labeled editing the page MediaWiki:revreview-<tag-name>-<level-number>.

  By default, the tag is labeled as it appears in the $wgFlaggedRevsTags array. To override this, and show tags for example as their capitalized name, the admins have to edit these pages with the shown content, for example changing the content of MediaWiki:revreview-accuracy

To label the tag levels, the admins have to create these pages with the shown content:

tag	level	labeling page	content
accuracy	0	MediaWiki:revreview-accuracy-0	Inadequate
	1	MediaWiki:revreview-accuracy-1	Spot checked
	2	MediaWiki:revreview-accuracy-2	Accurate

The resulting setup will be:

tag names	level names
Accuracy	Inadequate	Spot checked	Accurate

• $wgFlaggedRevsOverride – Whether the stable version is the default content for pages.

  Individual pages can be configured to have the stable or draft version as the default content by administrators.

• $wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions – An array with keys corresponding to each flag type, and values that are arrays of rights and how high users with it can rate the flags (integral tag level).

  Example

  $wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions = [
  	'accuracy' => [ 'review' => 1 ],
  ];
  

User interface

• $wgSimpleFlaggedRevsUI – When enabled, a simpler, icon based UI is used. Does not affect the tags shown in edit mode.
• $wgFlaggedRevsLowProfile – This setting hides the review status box/bar for pages that are reviewed in their latest version. Explanatory text is also removed from some places.

Workflow

• $wgFlaggedRevsAutoReview – If enabled, every edit by a user with 'autoreview' rights is automatically reviewed upon save. There is no need to hit the "submit review" button. This feature requires that the previous revision was also reviewed; otherwise, auto-review will not occur.
• $wgFlaggedRevsTagsAuto – If wgFlaggedRevsAutoReview is enabled, this settings controls how high each tag can be auto-reviewed. If allowed, tags will be auto-reviewed to the same level the previous revision tags were. This is an associative array; each key is a tag and each value is a tag level.

  Example

  $wgFlaggedRevsTagsAuto = [
  	'accuracy' => 1
  ];
  

Changes in templates are auto-reviewed (per-page). This could possibly cause bad versions to be reviewed. Users should be encouraged to use preview or review the page after saving. You may want to set $wgNamespaceProtection[NS_TEMPLATE] as [ 'editor' ] or [ 'autoconfirmed' ]

Automatic user promotion

• $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote – An array with keys for days, edits, time spacing, benchmarks, emailconfirmed, recent content page edits, total content edits, content pages edited, edit summaries used, IP uniqueness, and userpage existence as keys. The values correspond to how many days/edits are needed for a user account to be autopromoted to Editor status and whether they must be emailconfirmed and have a user page do so. The user must have at least X edits that are Y or more days apart, where X is the number of benchmarks and Y is the time spacing. Set this variable to false to disable this entirely.
  • If a user has their Editor rights removed, they will not automatically be re-granted (the editor status log is checked for revocations).
  • Some of these counts are not retroactive, so you may notice a delay in promotions.

  Example

  For $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote, one might have:

  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['days'] = 60; # days since registration
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['edits'] = 150; # total edit count
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['excludeDeleted'] = true; # exclude deleted edits from 'edits' count above?
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['spacing'] = 3; # spacing of edit intervals
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['benchmarks'] = 15; # how many edit intervals are needed?
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['recentContentEdits'] = 10; # $wgContentNamespaces edits in recent changes
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['totalContentEdits'] = 30; # $wgContentNamespaces edits
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['uniqueContentPages'] = 10; # $wgContentNamespaces unique pages edited
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['editComments'] = 5; # how many edit comments used?
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['email'] = true; # user must be emailconfirmed?
  $wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote['userpageBytes'] = 0; # if userpage is needed, what is the min size?
  

Advanced

• $wgFlaggedRevsRestrictionLevels - Restriction levels for autoreview/review rights. When a level is selected for a page, an edit made by a user will not be auto-reviewed if the user lacks the specified permission. Levels are set at Special:Stabilization.
• $wgFlaggedRevsProtection - Set this to use FlaggedRevs only as a protection-like mechanism (Help:Pending changes), rather than the standard configuration.
• $wgFlaggedRevsAutoConfirm - Define when users get to have their own edits auto-reviewed. Set to false to disable.
• $wgFlaggedRevsHandleIncludes - Whether to use stable versions of templates when rendering the stable version of a page.

To have a wiki where non-users can only see the stable version of articles, see Extension:FlaggedRevs/Restricting unapproved revisions .

Use

See also: Help:FlaggedRevs

Approving pages

Users with some level of review status will have a small rating form on page view (at the bottom of the page) and diffs (at the top of the page) that lets them review revisions. Each tag must at least meet the minimal level of approval. Users should look at the whole page, included templates and images, before reviewing. The (diff to stable) link is very useful for speeding up this process.

Users cannot review a page which they cannot edit. They cannot lower the level of a revision from a level they cannot set. Blocked users cannot do anything.

Upkeep

At Special:UnreviewedPages, there is a list of pages that have not yet been reviewed, for Editors only. A namespace must be selected and an optional category filter is also present.

At Special:OldReviewedPages, there is a list of pages that have been reviewed, but have edits pending. This is for Editors only. An optional category filter is also present.

Pages that cannot be reviewed can still be patrolled for anti-vandalism purposes by Editors to see what has been checked already.

Logging

All relevant actions are permanently logged, so everything can be tracked and overseen properly.

• A log of promotion/demotion of editors and the reasons is kept at Special:Log/userrights.
• A log of the approval/unapproval of revisions is kept at Special:Log/review.
• A log of changes to the stable versioning configuration to pages is logged at Special:Log/stable.

Notes

• $wgUseRCPatrol is enabled with the extension. Patrolling of reviewable pages is disabled, but flagged revisions are marked as patrolled in Recent Changes. This will mean that the only way to patrol a reviewable revision is to flag it. Non-reviewable pages still behave as normal (depending on site patrol settings).
• Sysops can change whether the stable version is shown by default for specific pages. To disable this, add $wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['stablesettings'] = false; to LocalSettings.php.
• Page links, category, image, template, language, and external links are still based on the current version of pages.
• Users cannot move pages they cannot review. This is deliberate; see task T15994. To work around this, add $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['movestable'] = true; to LocalSettings.php
• You can demote Editors either temporarily by blocking them or permanently via Special:UserRights. An extra demotion log item will appear for tracking purposes.

API

FlaggedRevs adds API modules for reviewing revisions and configuring "stabilization" of pages, a module for retrieving flag configuration, and two list modules corresponding to the special pages for unreviewed pages and "old" reviewed pages.

action=review

Reviews a page.

Parameters

• revid: The revision ID for which to set the flags
• token: A csrf token retrieved through action=query&meta=tokens
• comment: Comment for the review (optional)
• flag_accuracy: Set the flag named "accuracy" to the specified value; (replace "accuracy" with the flag name to set another flag)
• unapprove: If set, revision will be unapproved rather than approved

Example

Review revision 12345

api.php?action=review&revid=12345&token=123ABC&flag_accuracy=1&comment=OK [try in ApiSandbox]

Result
<api> <review revid="12345" /> </api>

action=stabilize

Changes page stabilization settings.

Parameters

• title: Title of page to be stabilized
• reason: Reason for stabilization
• expiry: Stabilization expiry. Default: infinite
• review: Whether to auto-review the page
• watch: Whether to watch the page
• token: An edit token retrieved through action=query&meta=tokens
• For protection-like configurations ($wgFlaggedRevsProtection=true):

  protectlevel: The right users must have in order for their edits to not require review.

• Otherwise ($wgFlaggedRevsProtection=false):

  default: Default revision to show (latest | stable)

  autoreview: Restriction level for the 'autoreview' right (sysop | none). Default: none

Example

Configure the page "Foo" such that only reviewed revisions are shown by default

api.php?action=stabilize&title=Foo&reason=Because_I_can&default=stable&token=abc123 [try in ApiSandbox]

Result
<api> <stabilize title="Foo" default="stable" autoreview="none" expiry="infinite" /> </api>

action=flagconfig

Shows information about review flag configuration.

The following parameters are returned for each tag:

• name: the name of the flag
• levels: the number of possible levels the flag has (not counting the "unreviewed" level)

The displayed name for each flag and the different level names for each flag are MediaWiki messages, so can be set and retrieved through the appropriate page; for example the name for the first level of the "accuracy" flag is located at MediaWiki:revreview-accuracy-1.

Example

Retrieve flag configuration

api.php?action=flagconfig [try in ApiSandbox]

Result
<api> <flagconfig> <tag name="value" levels="3" tier1="1" /> </flagconfig> </api>

list=unreviewedpages

Lists pages which have never been reviewed.

Parameters

• urstart: Start listing at this page title.
• urend: Stop listing at this page title.
• urnamespace: The namespaces to enumerate.
• urfilterredir: How to filter for redirects
• urfilterlevel: How to filter by quality (0=sighted,1=quality)
• urlimit: How many total pages to return.

Example

List pages in the main namespace that have not been "sighted"

api.php?action=query&list=unreviewedpages&urnamespace=0&urfilterlevel=0 [try in ApiSandbox]

Result

<api> <query-continue> <unreviewedpages urstart="Arbeitgeberverband_Chemie_und_verwandte_Industrien_für_das_Land_Hessen" /> </query-continue> <query> <unreviewedpages> <p pageid="4762806" ns="0" title="Aaftink" revid="65175047" /> <p pageid="4747500" ns="0" title="Abt RS6" revid="64976429" /> <p pageid="4749877" ns="0" title="Acht Vorlesungen über den Konstruktiven Realismus" revid="65089962" /> <p pageid="4758156" ns="0" title="Alkylglycerole" revid="65169004" /> <p pageid="4719044" ns="0" title="All Riot" revid="64767732" /> <p pageid="4745418" ns="0" title="Allgäu-Panorama-Marathon" revid="64974783" /> <p pageid="4729976" ns="0" title="An- und Einpressen" revid="64742640" /> <p pageid="4742559" ns="0" title="Anjara I. Bartz" revid="64925772" /> <p pageid="4740681" ns="0" title="Anthony Norris Groves" revid="65064712" /> <p pageid="4759964" ns="0" title="Antonino Asta" revid="65169073" /> </unreviewedpages> </query> </api>

list=oldreviewedpages

Lists pages that have at some point been reviewed, but for which the most recent revision is not reviewed.

Parameters

• orstart: Start listing from this timestamp
• orend: Stop listing at this timestamp.
• ordir: In which direction to list.
• ornamespace: The namespaces to enumerate.
• orfilterredir: How to filter for redirects
• orlimit: How many total pages to return.

Example

List pages in the main namespace with recent unreviewed revisions

api.php?action=query&list=oldreviewedpages&ornamespace=0 [try in ApiSandbox]

Result

<api> <query-continue> <oldreviewedpages orstart="2009-09-15T20:23:05Z" /> </query-continue> <query> <oldreviewedpages> <p pageid="144735" ns="0" title="Two International Finance Centre" revid="64562654" stable_revid="62769201" pending_since="2009-09-15T16:16:33Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="1629949" ns="0" title="Porta San Sebastiano" revid="64791898" stable_revid="61610797" pending_since="2009-09-15T16:19:32Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="2157354" ns="0" title="Entwicklungspolitik der Europäischen Union" revid="64640078" stable_revid="59929751" pending_since="2009-09-15T16:38:33Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="971904" ns="0" title="Federpendel" revid="65142775" stable_revid="59587441" pending_since="2009-09-15T17:37:29Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="3106812" ns="0" title="Soultzbach-les-Bains" revid="64552516" stable_revid="60455707" pending_since="2009-09-15T19:04:07Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="1223029" ns="0" title="VfR Bürstadt" revid="65150048" stable_revid="62925935" pending_since="2009-09-15T19:35:30Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="829158" ns="0" title="GSP" revid="64553869" stable_revid="62913440" pending_since="2009-09-15T19:38:46Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="3453867" ns="0" title="Agios Dimitrios" revid="65103799" stable_revid="64544222" pending_since="2009-09-15T19:47:10Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="2583263" ns="0" title="Jörg Kudlich" revid="64554475" stable_revid="62429967" pending_since="2009-09-15T20:03:24Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> <p pageid="325478" ns="0" title="Liste deutscher Komponisten klassischer Musik" revid="65089571" stable_revid="63582610" pending_since="2009-09-15T20:21:55Z" flagged_level="0" flagged_level_text="stable" /> </oldreviewedpages> </query> </api>

prop=flagged

Use action=query&prop=flagged to get information about the flagging status of the given pages.

Limitations

• Transclusions across wikis are not stabilized
• Metatemplates that conditionally include other templates may have the condition change between the time a reviewer loaded a page and when they reviewed it. Therefore, there would be no pointers to the revision id for this different template to load from, making it blue linked. You will be notified if this happens during review.

Uninstalling

1. Remove the require_once or wfLoadExtension line from LocalSettings.php
2. Drop the tables in FlaggedRevs.sql
3. Drop the columns page_ext_reviewed, page_ext_quality, and page_ext_stable, and the index ext_namespace_reviewed from the page table (if they exist; only older versions of FlaggedRevs used these)
4. Run maintenance/refreshLinks.php from the command line to flush out the stable version links
5. Run maintenance/rebuildFileCache.php 0 overwrite from the command line if you use $wgFileCache

Testing platforms

• English
• German
• Polish

See also

• Help:Patrolled edits
• Extension:FlaggedRevs/Specifications
• Extension:Approved Revs
• Extension:Moderation – edits remain private until they're approved
• meta:Flagged Revisions#Flagged Revisions on Wikimedia projects
• Project:Editor – documentation about the user groups and rights created by this extension, while it was at use on mediawiki.org

External links

• Quality Assurance in an Open Project – 2008 Wikimedia blog post
• Images of Flagged Revisions – Wikimedia Commons
• About Flagged Revisions – Meta-Wiki

Licensing

© GPL, Aaron Schulz, Joerg Baach, 2007