MediaWiki – Can Moderators Set System Messages for New Users?

mediawiki

I am an admin on a MediaWiki instance where I can't edit the code, only act through the MediaWiki system itself.

Can I setup a notification for every new user? The notification should be seen until discarded by the user, never to appear again.

Best Answer

Check to see whether your MediaWiki installation has the extension DismissableSiteNotice installed. You can check this by navigating to Special:Version of your wiki.

(If not installed, the notice would stay there without the ability to be discarded, so would not work for you -- you'd want to speak to the person who has access to the installation files.)

If you do have it, you can use a combination of MediaWiki:Sitenotice and MediaWiki:Anonnotice. (These are the things Wikipedia etc. use to display stuff like fundraisers on their pages.)

The two messages work in the following manner:

  1. If the user is anonymous, MediaWiki:Anonnotice is displayed (if defined).
  2. Otherwise, MediaWiki:Sitenotice is displayed (if defined).
  3. Otherwise, the global notice in $wgSiteNotice is displayed (if defined).
  4. Otherwise, no notice is displayed.

Therefore, you would want to set MediaWiki:Sitenotice to whatever message you want to show to the logged-in users; and set MediaWiki:Anonnotice to <p></p>. (The Anonnotice is necessary because if it's totally blank, it wouldn't be "defined" and thus the Sitenotice would be shown for anonymous users too.)