This extension provides a mechanism for creating wiki pages with hidden notes. These pages exist in a dedicated namespace and can be associated with a page in the main namespace (similar to a talk page). For example, the game master for a tabletop roleplaying game may have a page that is visible to the players with information about a character or location, as well as an additional page for that character or location with information only visible to the GM.
A namespace is created to hold pages only visible to users in a specified group. For users in that group, pages in the main namespace display a tab to access the page of the same name in the GM namespace, and the contents of the GM page are optionally displayed at the end of the associated main page.
GM Screen relies on the Lockdown extension for namespace permissions; be aware of the security considerations of using MediaWiki for this purpose. A best effort is made to protect hidden information, but a malicious user may trivially see, at minimum, the titles of hidden pages.
In addition to the protections provided by Lockdown, changes to pages in the GM namespace are hidden from the Recent Changes page.
First, ensure that Lockdown is installed.
Place this extension in a GmScreen directory in your installation's
extensions directory. In LocalSettings.php, define a
namespace for
GM notes and set the group permissions appropriately.
wfLoadExtension( 'Lockdown' );
define('NS_GM', 3000); # Custom namespaces start at 3000; change as appropriate
$wgExtraNamespaces[NS_GM] = 'GM'; # Set the namespace name as desired
$wgNonincludableNamespaces[] = NS_GM; # Don't allow transclusion for this namespace
$wgGroupPermissions['gm']['read'] = true; # Create a user group
$wgNamespacePermissionLockdown[NS_GM]['read'] = [ 'gm' ]; # Restrict access to the GM namespace
wfLoadExtension( 'GmScreen' );
$wgGmScreenNamespace = NS_GM; # This should be the namespace created above
#$wgGmScreenText = 'GM Notes'; # Optional: set the text for the page tab (default 'GM')
#$wgGmScreenEmbedPage = false; # Optional: for GM, show notes on main page (default true)Add the GM(s) to the specified group (gm in this example). They should then
see the GM tab and be able to create and view pages in the new namespace.