Forum:Users who have confirmed their email address cannot upload files to a wiki

Special:Contact has been used to direct staff attention to this forum post. See also:* http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:User_access_levels
 * http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Administrators%27_how-to_guide

A user has just pointed out to me that at vsk.wikia.com a use insert text r who does not have membership of the "emailconfirmed" group cannot upload files to the wiki.

The error message they are shown is:

Permission error The action you have requested is limited to users in one of the groups: Administrators, Wikia Staff, Helpers, emailconfirmed.

(This is different than my prior experience at rappelz.wikia.com where a user merely needed to be a member of "Users" group to have file upload rights.)

After a little checking I see that users who have confirmed their email address are being added to the groups: "Users" and "Autoconfirmed users" but not to "emailconfirmed" (maybe this is the fundamental bug in the system i.e. root cause)


 * 1) Is this a bug? (See also http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:MediaWiki_1.13_upgrade/Resolved_issues#Lowering_upload_rights)
 * 2) Is there something else each user must do to get added to the "emailconfirmed" group?
 * 3) Is there something else I need to be doing as sysop to permit either "Autoconfirmed users" or "Users" to upload files to a wiki?

Studying http://vsk.wikia.com/wiki/Special:ListUsers - I notice that there are zero members in the "emailconfirmed" group and that the "Autoconfirmed users" group is not even mentioned.

Reviewing http://vsk.wikia.com/wiki/Special:ListGroupRights I discover that uploading files is not a right assigned to the Users group. Whereas at http://rappelz.wikia.com/wiki/Special:ListGroupRights and http://test-najevi.wikia.com/wiki/Special:ListGroupRights this right has been assigned to the "Users" group. I cannot recall having asked that the "Users" group right to upload files at vsk.wikia.com be removed. (maybe this is an alternate root cause)

Obviously I want users who have registered a user name at Wikia to be able to upload files to the wiki. It is not clear to me what a user must do to become a member of the "emailconfirmed" group but from it's name I would assume that they must confirm their email address. (Requiring this level of "authentication" makes sense to me.) However, this action has been taken for several users and yet they are not added to the "emailconfirmed" group.


 * What is the best known method for allowing users who have dutifully verified their email address to be able to upload files to a wiki?
 * Is there a downside to granting either the "Users" group or the "Autoconfirmed users" group this right to upload files?
 * Is there a help page (which I clearly have missed) that explains all of this?

-- najevi 06:02, December 30, 2009 (UTC)


 * a) I think you missed a "not" in the pagename. Users have to have a confirmed email to upload at that wiki, not ones that have, cannot.
 * b) This was specifically setup this way for this wiki (vsk), when you asked for the uploading of .zip file for your race data. We did discuss at length the security issues of allowing people to upload these types of files, and I explicitly told you that I was changing so that only users with a confirmed email would be allowed to upload, and that you replied that you would also monitor/review uploads of these files for relevancy of the content. I also let you know (and you confirmed) that if you were going to stop being active in an administor role, to let us know, and we would disable these extra uploads, because no one would be around to review them.
 * c) emailconfirmed and autoconfirmed are special hidden/filtered user groups, that are automatically added to users when they meet certain requirements (such as providing and then confirming an email address, and being older then 4 days, for the former and latter of those two)
 * d) none of these settings are configurable by admins in any way directly.
 * e) please have that user (since you did not provide the name) contact us directly via w:c:vsk:Special:Contact, and we can look at their account to see if they are actually email confirmed or not, or as to what the root of the reason they cannot upload files at that wiki.

--Uberfuzzy 21:58, December 31, 2009 (UTC)

Test: http://vsk.wikia.com/wiki/File:UberfuzzyTest.jpg uploaded by a non-admin, but email-confirmed account. --Uberfuzzy 22:03, December 31, 2009 (UTC)

Happy new year! Thank you for the test case. I agree that what is described at (a) is the desirable goal but it is not the current reality. The post title is accurate. None of the above explains why the "emailconfirmed" group appears to have zero members however it does remind me of the 'downside' to allowing "Users" or "Autoconfirmed users" to upload files at that wiki.

In fact the above only raises more questions because User:FzyBot and User:Najevi are clearly able to upload files at the wiki and yet if you examine the checked boxes at you will note that FzyBot appears to belong to no group and najevi appears to belong to just two groups and does not appear to belong to "emailconfirmed". This contradicts the group membership information displayed at Special:Preferences and is therefore very confusing.
 * http://vsk.wikia.com/index.php?title=Special%3AUserRights&user=FzyBot+
 * http://vsk.wikia.com/index.php?title=Special%3AUserRights&user=najevi+

Take a look at the output from http://vsk.wikia.com/wiki/Special:ListUsers (You should note that it reports zero (0) users in the "emailconfirmed" user group.) 1.	Admiral 1 (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		35	-	16:59, 2009 August 25 (diff) 2.	ALB (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		1	06:54, 2010 January 1	03:45, 2009 December 27 (diff) 3.	An unknown anonymous user (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		0	-	21:29, 2009 December 30 (diff) 4.	Andres bonilla 196 (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		1	07:50, 2010 January 1	08:33, 2009 November 29 (diff) 5.	Anomoly (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		1	01:55, 2009 December 31	03:35, 2009 December 15 (diff) 6.	Charitwo (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)	vstf	0	12:05, 2010 January 1	- 7.	CreateWiki script (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		5	-	17:05, 2009 June 10 (diff) 8.	Delica (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		15	14:00, 2010 January 1	12:35, 2009 August 3 (diff) 9.	Diades (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		6	-	- 10.	Drennan (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		1	21:54, 2009 December 28	21:02, 2009 August 18 (diff) 11.	Eulalia459678 (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)	helper, vstf	0	16:54, 2009 December 31	- 12.	Joeyaa (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)	vstf	1	11:02, 2010 January 1	02:57, 2009 July 31 (diff) 13.	Karacticus2 (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		7	-	03:20, 2009 August 7 (diff) 14.	Kiwi bardy (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		7	-	06:51, 2009 September 17 (diff) 15.	M.mendel (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		8	11:49, 2010 January 1	20:18, 2009 July 28 (diff) 16.	Ose (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		5	11:45, 2010 January 1	03:53, 2009 June 18 (diff) 17.	Phlox (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		9	13:19, 2009 December 8	06:12, 2009 October 24 (diff) 18.	Semajdraehs (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		4	13:42, 2009 December 26	02:09, 2009 July 9 (diff) 19.	Tedjuh10 (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		3	07:22, 2010 January 1	23:29, 2009 November 10 (diff) 20.	Wikia (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		41	13:21, 2009 December 3	21:39, 2009 October 23 (diff) 21.	Yamamoto114 (Talk) · (Contribs) · (Edit stats) · (Block)		1	08:46, 2010 January 1	14:14, 2009 December 1 (diff)
 * The following users belong to "No group" and yet you can recognize several regular Wikia contributors (Charitwo, Delica, Drennan, Joeyaa, M.mendel, Ose, Phlox, Tedjuh10) who most probably have confirmed their email address.
 * One I know to have confirmed their email address is User:Delica because that is an alias I will use from time to time to test a wiki from a "non-admin perspective". (Note this user successfully uploaded an image on 2-Aug-2009 http://vsk.wikia.com/index.php?title=File:Logged_off_user_-_Manage_your_Favorites.png&oldid=5652 mmm ... this would have been before the date that .ZIP files were permitted to be uploaded.)
 * 1) 	↓ User name	 Groups	 Revisions (edits)	 Last logged in	 Last edited
 * 1) Something seems broken about adding users to the "emailconfirmed" group. (... and yet a new user account created just now and having dutifully responded to email address verification message was added to this group automatically.)
 * 2) Something is certainly broken about displaying members of (and membership count of) that "emailconfirmed" group. (The most accurate group membership info appears to be at each user's Special:Preferences and not Special:ListUsers or Special:UserRights.)
 * 3) What is the best known method for allowing users who have dutifully verified their email address to be able to upload files to a wiki?
 * 4) Is there something else each user must do to get added to the "emailconfirmed" group? (If I must ask each user to use Special:Contact then that is a non-starter.)

-- najevi 04:56, January 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * PLEASE take my word for it that it works. The emailconfirmed group is is a special internal/hidden/masked group that wont show listed members on listusers. Please stop using that tool to say they are not in emailconfirmed. The ONLY place it will show is on Special:preferences (and thus, only to the viewer). Users are automatic promoted into that group upon confirming their email. This is the same for the "autoconfirmed" group, whichis also not listed normally. The only reason that it exists on s:listusers is because I have given it the upload right (it normally has no actual rights, the few things that check it, check by group). I have no idea what you mean by your bolded #3 sentence. No other manual action is needed for users to be in this group. The reason that the originally reported user could not upload, was they were infact, NOT email confirmed. --Uberfuzzy 16:51, January 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * Answer for question 4 above:I don't know why I'd not noticed this before today ... at Special:Preferences page on the User profile tab there is a section headed Email and the very first line of that section indicates the date on which a users email address was authenticated. If a user has not yet authenticated their email address then they will see a link to Special:ConfirmEmail.
 * Via that special page a new authentication code can be sent to the email address on record for that user. Once that authentication message has been acted upon a user is added to the emailconfirmed group.

I wonder if there is a good reason why Special:ListUsers does not show the names of users who belong to the emailconfirmed group? -- najevi 18:55, January 19, 2010 (UTC)