Multi-user Environment in MediaWiki 1.1

Many organizations use MediaWiki as the platform to deliver content with no option for editing or creating. Even though these options exist, in its truest form, a wiki is a collaborative environment. This means we may have multiple users accessing the system and participating in building the wiki. The count might be more than few thousands for a given moment if the site is popular. With any platform that caters to a diverse group of people, issues are bound to arise. Contributors may make mistakes in their articles, there may be conflicts over changes made to a page, and many other issues can arise when dealing with people. Working in a multi-user environment definitely has its advantages, but as a wiki administrator, it is important to keep in mind that not all users have good intentions. As the system is open, anyone—including malicious users with bad intentions—can partake in any activity on the site. An open system can face a lot of user-related problems. The first major problem is that anyone can edit or add contents. This can be dangerous if the added content is not legal or if it is copyrighted. As the user can avoid being tracked, the site has to take the responsibility for such acts. Another major attack can be on the content itself—people with bad intentions can change content without any reason or present false information. Vandalism is also a common occurrence on such sites, and the concerns regarding false information have plagued even the most well-respected of sites—Wikipedia.

In this article, we will take a detailed look at these issues and learn how we can address them.