I'm an ancient UNIX hand and I've been wrangling DBs for even
longer, but am new to MediaWiki. So I know how to accomplish
what I want to do, but not what ways go with the flow.
I have content in other formats that I'm importing as articles and
sections. The original authors of that content will be users in the
wiki. I want the author in the MW database for an edit I'm importing
to be the original author, not the sysop, a bot, or 0.
Occasionally, I may need to edit as someone else, e.g., so that
~~~~ expands to them, not me.
I know I can do the first by going into the DB and changing
revision.rev_user and rev_user_text. This has the advantage that
I could also jigger rev_timestamp to match the original time of
creation.
And I can do the second by su-ing to the user before editing.
But are there ways to do either that fit the MW way of doing
things? And, if not, are these common enough scenarios that I
should build solutions that could be released to the community?
-- David Lubkin.