Page Approvals

Quality control for your wiki

Increase trust in your knowledge base via approval workflows

Wiki page that is marked as freshly approved

On this page

About Page Approvals Usage documentation Configuration reference

External links

Installation instructions Issue tracker Source code

Page Approvals for MediaWiki

Ensure compliance and accuracy of your wiki content. Essential for regulated industries and enterprise knowledge management.

Approve pages to let readers know that the content has been reviewed and is up-to-date. Or request approval from assigned approvers.

Pages are marked as "pending approval" whenever their content changes. This includes changes to embedded content such as templates, parser functions, and Semantic MediaWiki queries. This is an important difference compared to extensions such as Approved Revs and Flagged Revisions, which only track changes to the wikitext, thus allowing for radical content changes of approved pages without requiring re-approval.

Your editors can continue to make changes to pages while they are pending approval. Their changes are always published immediately, but the page remains marked as "pending approval" until an approver reviews the changes. This is another important difference compared to extensions such as Approved Revs and Flagged Revisions.

Administrators can assign users as approvers for categories from within the wiki.

Install Page Approvals today to improve your content curation and edit approvals process and maintain the high standards crucial for user trust and engagement.

Professional Wiki created Page Approvals. We are MediaWiki developers that provide professional MediaWiki services. We thank our clients for funding initial development.

Usage documentation

Approving and Unapproving Pages

To change the approval status of a page, click the current status.

Wiki page that is marked as not approved

Wiki page that is marked as not approved with the dialog to approve it open

Only users assigned as approvers for the page's category can approve or unapprove pages. All other users will only see the current approval status.

Wiki page that is marked as freshly approved with additional information shown on hover

Assigning Approvers

Administrators can assign users as approvers for categories via the "Manage Approvers" special page. This page can be found at Special:ManageApprovers, which is also linked from Special:SpecialPages.

The Special:ManageApprovers page with controls to add new approvers and add or remove categories from approves

More precisely, everyone with the manage-approvers right can assign approvers. By default, this right is only assigned to the sysop (Administrators) group.

Pending Approvals

You can find a list of pages pending approval at Special:PendingApprovals. This list is personalized to your user account, showing only pages for which you are an approver.

The most recent requests for approval are shown first, though you can change the sort order.

Comparing Approval Extensions

Comparison of the MediaWiki quality control extensions. The Flagged Revisions column also applies to the newer Content Stabilization extension.

	Page Approvals	Approved Revs	Flagged Revisions
Content Tracking Pages are marked as unapproved upon all content changes
Approval Scope What is approved and invalidates approval when changed	Displayed HTML	Wikitext	Wikitext
Continuous Collaboration Edit are immediately visible rather than gate-kept		Optional	Optional
Approver Categories Administrators can assign approvers to categories
Approval Task List Provides a personalized list of pages pending approval			Partial
Multiple Approval States Pages can have states beyond "approved" and "unapproved"
Available on ProWiki The extension is available on ProWiki MediaWiki hosting
Open-Source The extension is free and open-source
Initial development The year the extension was created in	2024	2010	2007

Configuration reference

Page Approvals does not require any PHP configuration. However, you can customize who has access to the "Manage Approvers" special page by assigning the manage-approvers right. By default, only the sysop (Administrators) group has this right.

Example configuration to assign the right to the bureaucrat group:

$wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat']['manage-approvers'] = true;

For more information, see the MediaWiki documentation on user rights.

Professional MediaWiki Services

Software Development

Get superior results from the best MediaWiki developers with a proven track record of creating MediaWiki extensions & integrations.

Explore Mediawiki Development

Theme Development

Make your wiki look great! Use a time-tested responsive MediaWiki theme, or have us create a custom MediaWiki skin for you.

Style Your Wiki

MediaWiki Hosting

Let us take care of your wiki. We are MediaWiki hosting experts and provide cloud hosting, dedicated hosting, and on-premise hosting.

Find the Perfect Wiki Hosting Plan

MediaWiki Consulting

Bring your wiki to the next level by leveraging our MediaWiki expertise. From strategic planning to wikitext, we have you covered.

Explore Our Consulting Services

MediaWiki Migration

Migrate your wiki with confidence. We move your MediaWiki to a new home, or we help you migrate from another system to MediaWiki.

Migrate Your Wiki

MediaWiki Upgrades

Keep your MediaWiki up-to-date and secure. We offer MediaWiki maintenance services to keep your wiki running smoothly.

Secure & Update Your Wiki