MediaWiki extensions manual
QuestyCaptchaEditor
Release status: experimental
Implementation Special page , Database
Description Adds a special page via which privileged users can administrate QuestyCaptcha questions and their answers
Author(s)
  • Benjamin Lees
  • Jack Phoenix
Latest version 1.1 (2023-02-02)
MediaWiki 1.35-1.39+
Database changes Yes
Tables questycaptcha_answers
questycaptcha_questions
License GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download git.legoktm.com
Added rights
  • edit-captchas
Hooks used
  • LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates

QuestyCaptchaEditor is an on-wiki special page interface for managing QuestyCaptcha questions and their answers.

Privileged users can view the list of existing CAPTCHA questions and their correct answers on Special:QuestyCaptchaEditor and use this special page to add and delete questions and their answers. (While direct editing of existing question+answer(s) pairings isn't supported as of version 1.1, you can delete a question and then readd it to functionally "edit" it.)

Actions taken via the special page are logged to Special:Log/captcha; access to this log is restricted only to privileged users (those who have the same edit-captchas user right needed to access the QuestyCaptchaEditor special page).

Do note that since this extension needs a core hack, you will need to reapply that after each MediaWiki upgrade to a major new version of MediaWiki to keep your wiki operating.

Install

Prior to installing the extension, you will need to patch a MediaWiki core file. This is needed because otherwise QuestyCaptchaEditor will not be able to properly overwrite the value of $wgCaptchaClass configuration variable and this will result in an exception being thrown, which thus breaks the wiki and we don't want that.

Apply the needed MediaWiki core hack

  1. Open includes/registration/ExtensionProcessor.php in your favorite text editor
  2. Find the function addConfigGlobal
  3. Change the line if ( array_key_exists( $key, $this->globals ) ) { to if ( array_key_exists( $key, $this->globals ) && $key !== 'wgCaptchaClass' ) {
  4. (Optional but strongly recommended) Add a // single-line comment or /* multi-line comment */ explaining the patch, for example:
// CORE HACK for https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:QuestyCaptchaEditor
if ( array_key_exists( $key, $this->globals ) && $key !== 'wgCaptchaClass' ) {
// END CORE HACK

5. Save changes to the file

Check out the extension via git

Go to your wiki's extensions directory and run:
git clone https://git.legoktm.com/ashley/QuestyCaptchaEditor.git

Edit LocalSettings.php to load QuestyCaptchaEditor

Add something like the following to the wiki's LocalSettings.php file:

wfLoadExtensions( [
	'ConfirmEdit',
	'ConfirmEdit/QuestyCaptcha',
	'QuestyCaptchaEditor'
] );

Ensure that QuestyCaptchaEditor is loaded after the base ConfirmEdit includes!

Create the new database tables

Re-run the MediaWiki core updater script, maintenance/update.php, to have it create the two new, necessary database tables, questycaptcha_questions and questycaptcha_answers.

All three major DBMSes—MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite—should be supported, though support for the latter two hasn't been tested but it's present.

Done!

That's it. You should now be able to use the Special:QuestyCaptchaEditor special page as a privileged user.

Legacy support

If the $wgCaptchaQuestions variable is set in the wiki's LocalSettings.php file, questions and answers from it will override those specified on Special:QuestyCaptchaEditor and the variable should be removed or commented out from LocalSettings.php to make proper use of Special:QuestyCaptchaEditor.

User rights

The new user right edit-captchas, given to the administrator (sysop) user group by default, is needed to access Special:QuestyCaptchaEditor and the restricted log of actions taken via that page at Special:Log/captcha.

Internationalization support

The extension is fully internationalizable. As of version 1.1, the following languages are supported:

  • English (en)
  • Finnish (fi)

While the Special:QuestyCaptchaEditor special page supports adding question+answer(s) pairings in languages other than the wiki's content language, only the pairs in the wiki's content language will be currently used by the code (see includes/QuestyCaptchaDB.php). In the future, this will probably change so that the uselang URL parameter is properly supported to support wikis with multiple supported languages (e.g. Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, etc.).

Known bugs/missing features/etc.

  1. No pagination on Special:QuestyCaptchaEditor
  2. The special page UI is literally from 2006-2007 and thus not responsive, uses <table>s, and so on
  3. The functional fix done in version 1.1 to properly support questions with multiple correct answers is unnecessarily inefficient and needs fixing ASAP
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