Nick Pisarro here...after disappearing into the woodwork since the
Spring...
I recently upgraded our MediaWiki run site to 1.3.7. In a fit of
programming frenzy, I have implemented a new feature; the ability to edit
the summary and Minor Edit flag of an article revision. Assuming I still
have the proper access rights to 'phase3' on SourceForge, I would like to
merge my feature into the head branch and upload it assuming enough of you
find the feature worthwhile.
The purpose of the feature is to allow people to correct errors they may
have made in a summary or to add one when the may have forgotten to--a
problem I have personally all the time. Sysops have the option to clean up
offensive language in summaries.
I have attached screen shots of the feature in action. I don't know if the
mailing list program will forward them.
Features.
* The feature is controlled by a flag in Default/LocalSettings.
* You may only edit the summaries of revisions you have made, except for
SysOps, who may edit any summary. (Summaries are referred to in the PHP
code as "comments".) Anonymous users, and hence users not logged in, may
not edit summaries.
* In the History listing and Contributions listings I have put a small
icon next to the summary on lines a user may edit the summary of.
* Clicking on the icon will bring up a page titled after the article being
edited and subtitled "Editing summary of revision...". The page has an
edit field and check box for adjusting the summary and/or changing the
Minor Edit flag. A user my click "Save" or "Cancel".
* A double check is done as part of making the database update, that the
user is still logged in and that they are the author of the revision, if
they are not a SysOp. This is done to thwart any evil robots spoofing a
submit of the edit page.
* The page is refreshed with a confirmation or cancellation message and a
link back into the History or Contributions page the user came from. After
ten seconds the user is flipped back automatically in a way that is
similar to Login/Logout.
* The edit page is implemented by a new file--EditComment.php. Internally
I modified the function OutputPage::returnToMain() to allow flipping back
to exactly where you came from, rather than always to a main article page.
Issues: Because there are no histories of summaries and hence no
'reversions' I thought there were too many security risks in letting
anonymous users edit their summaries (which may not actually be theirs),
or letting logged in users edit summaries other than there own.
Changing a summary will NOT change its listing in Recent changes. This is
because this is a log of past events and is a copy of the original
summary, not an actual reference to it. I thought it might cause too big
of a performance hit to try to fix up the Recent changes log, and perhaps,
philosophically not a good idea.
Future enhancement: Log changing the summary in Recent changes. This might
require a database format change, so I did not want to attempt it.
If desired, I could convert this message to an article on
meta.wikimedia.org.
User:Nick Pisarro, Jr.