ApprovedRevs
The content approval feature lets administrators mark a certain revision of a page as "approved". The approved revision is the one displayed when users view the page at its main URL. If no version has been approved, the most recent version will be the default.
How it works
Users with the approverevisions permission (eg.: Administrators) will see a link that reads "(approve)" on each row of an article's history page. Clicking on that link will set that revision as the approved one.
If you then go back to the history page, you will see an "(approve)" link next to every other revision, along with an "(unapprove)" link for the approved revision. The approved revision's row will also have a star next to it. Clicking "approve" for any other revision will reset the approval to that revision; clicking "unapprove" will mean that there will no longer be an approved revision for this page.
Users without approverevisions permission will see nothing special in the history page, other than a star icon on the approved revision's row.
By default, if a user with approverevisions permission makes an edit to a page that already has an approved revision, that edit, i.e. the latest revision of the page, gets automatically marked as approved. By contrast, if a page has no approved revision (this of course includes new pages), automatic approvals will not be applied.
Banner
Depending on configuration, there can be a banner displayed at the top of an article showing the current approval state.
Special page
There is a special page, Special:ApprovedRevs which shows four separate lists:
- pages whose approved revision is not their latest
- all pages with an approved revision
- "unapproved pages" (all pages without an approved revision)
- pages with invalid approvals (such as pages in a namespace that was previously approvable but no longer is).
