Manual:Extension/FlaggedRevs

The extension FlaggedRevs is a MediaWiki extension that activates an approval mechanism. New versions of a page are initially marked as drafts and remain so until a user with revision review rights checks and approves the page.

Activating the acceptance feature

What are page drafts?

In BlueSpice, you can create draft versions of a page. Published or accepted versions of After a page will be shown on the main page and the draft versions can be accessed by has been edited and saved in draft mode readers of the page will, by default, see the most recently accepted version of the page. This allows editors to work on a draft version until all changes "fit". The changes can then be approved by users with reviewer rights.

By default, all users can see the latest draft version by clicking on the status information of a page . This functionality is known as the Acceptance feature of your quality management tools. Activating drafts or by switching to the version history. It is possible to limit view permissions of drafts to specific user groups.

Activating the acceptance feature

Activating the acceptance feature is done on the namespace level. A user with admin permissions checks that FlaggedRevs is activated for each namespace that should enable drafts. This is done activates the feature in Global actions > Management > Namespace manager:

for individual namespaces. The dialog window opens after clicking the edit icon (wrench) in the Actions column. Select FlaggedRevs Approval and click Done.

Each page in the namespace now displays a banner at the top of the page with the acceptance status (1) and a quick link to publish the page (2)

Activate the Approval feature

Existing pages

After activating Approvals for a namespace, all pages in the namespace are set into first draft mode.

Draft banner notice (1) and page status information in the status bar (2).

Existing pages

After activating FlaggedRevs for a namespace, all pages in the namespace are set in draft mode. Users with read permissions will always see the latest accepted version of a page. Since the existing page is considered accepted, all users can see the page content that was visible before FlaggedRevs was activatedEach page in the namespace now displays a banner at the top of the page with the acceptance status (1) and a quick link to publish the page (2).

New pages

When a new page is created and first saved, it will automatically be visible to all users. If you do not want to show any information on the page, simply save the new page empty or with a short notification, such as "In progress" and immediately publish it: Subsequent page edits will be collected in the draft version of the page. If a page is edited and saved multiple times while in draft mode, each edit gets logged in the version history:

Draft revisions

The revisions during in draft status have a dotted border and are highlighted in orange. In addition, they are marked as pending review. These revisions can be compared before the pending changes of the page are accepted.

Accepting a page

Users with review rights can accept a draft page any time they save a page (Accept this unreviewed page):

Accepting pending changes

If the page is not accepted when the file is being savedat this point, it can be accepted independently from the editing process.

A user with review user rights can accept the page quickly with the review feature in the title section of the page. The draft message will display an arrow which includes the accept function:

Accepting a draft from the title section

Alternatively, the reviewer can go to the Acceptance page in the Quality Management toolbar instead:

Accepting a draft from the QM-Tools

In both cases, the reviewer can leave a comment. This comment will then be shown in the version history of the page.

Although the acceptance feature uses the term first draft, there is no further distinction between drafts. A page is therefore either in first draft or in accepted status.

Once the page has been accepted and until it is further being edited, the page The page now shows the page version as accepted: .

Accepted page

Setting read permissions for drafts

By default, all users can see the drafts of a page, even readers. In the default BlueSpice installation, users have the role "reader".

To hide drafts from readers, the group user has to be removed from the configuration. An administrator deletes the group user form "Show unstable pages for the following groups" in Global actions > Management > Config manager:

Warning: If the group user is removed from the BlueSpiceFlaggedRevs configuration, users in this group will not be able to see draft versions when they are added as reviewers in a review process.

When the group user is removed, only sysop and reviewer users can access drafts. If you want other groups, for example editor, to see draft versions, you need to add them to the configuration and save it:

The two checkboxes Automatically set the page to stable... (checkbox is available until version 3.1.) and Automatically delete the workflow... determine what happens at the end of a workflow, if there is an active Review for a page. A page can be set to accepted status by a workflow and the workflow can be deleted after the page is marked as stable.

Note: If no user groups are specified in the configuration field, not even reviewers and sysops users will see a visual status indication of a page. They will have access to drafts through the revision history of a page instead.

Anyone with edit permissions will receive a notification that there are pending page changes for the page when they access the page in edit mode:

Template changes

Pending changes notification

Changes to embedded templates and files

If a page uses templates includes templates or files such as images or PDFs and there is a change to these files after the template page itselfhas been approved, it will also create a draft for this page. This will show up as a 0 Drafts () notice in your quality management toolbar under Acceptance. To update the page, simply click review now to see the changes and accept the change:

Related info

• Reference:FlaggedRevs
• Quality management tools

this will also be reflected in the status banner (1) and the QM status information in the title area (2).

Changes to embedded resources

If the embedded resources are located in a namespace without its own approval function, the version of the resource at the time of page approval is displayed in the approved version of the page. The draft version accordingly shows the most current version of the embedded resource. To approve the resource change, the page has to be approved again. This creates a new page version.

Approving a resource

Before approving the changed resource(s), you should check which resources are affected.

1. Open the quality management tools (1). Here you can see under Approval that there are changes to resources (2).
2. Click on a changed resource (3) to display the changes between the last two versions of the resource.
3. Click "Review now" (4) under Unapproved changes. This will take you to the draft version of the page. From there you can approve the page in the title area. Note: If there are several changed resources, they can only be approved together.

Approving a ressource

Settings for resources on approved pages

It is possible via server configuration to show embedded resources (i.e., files, templates or transcluded content) that were changed after the page has been released, in a certain version. The following options exist:

Setting	Description
FR_INCLUDES_FREEZE	Shows the resource version that was valid when the page was approved. Warning:The setting FR_INCLUDES_FREEZE for handling the state of included files of an approved wikipage has no long term support by and should not be introduced in a new wiki for that reason.
FR_INCLUDES_STABLE	Always shows the latest approved (stable) version of a resource, even if it was approved after the page was approved (this works only if the resource is located in a namespace with active approval feature).
FR_INCLUDES_CURRENT	Always shows the latest version of the included resource.

Important! Results of a semantic query, unlike attribute values cannot be "frozen", even if FR_INCLUDES_FREEZE has been set. The query results do not persist in the source text of a page, but are generated dynamically at the time of the query. As a consequence, they are not available for versioning.

Effects on Semantic MediaWiki properties

Wenn in einem Namensraum gleichzeitig mit der Seitenfreigabe auch Semantic MediaWiki aktiviert ist, sind je nach Freigabestatus der Seite folgende Attribute für SMW-Abfragen verfügbar:

Document state	Available properties
First draft	Current values
Approved	Values of the approved (stable) version
Draft	Values of the approved (stable) version (default setting)
Implicit draft	Values of the approved (stable) version

The availability of the semantic properties is determined by the following configuration setting:

                $bsgFlaggedRevsConnectorStabilizeSMWPropertyValues = true;

            

The value for this setting can be set to false in the LocalSettings.php of the server file system. If set to false, the property values of the draft version are used for semantic queries instead of the values for the stable version.

Quality management overview

The Special page Special:Quality_management_overview allows users with admin or reviewer rights to view and filter a list of wiki pages and their review status.

Special page Quality management overview

Related info

• Quality management tools
• Reference:FlaggedRevs
• Reference:BlueSpiceFlaggedRevsConnector
• Manual:Semantic MediaWiki