Help:Extension:RealMe

The RealMe extension allows verifying URLs used on user pages. This can be used for Mastodon and similar software.

What is link verification?

Link verification refers to using rel=me (an XFN microformat) to mark a link. XFN defines rel=me as "A link to yourself at a different URL". It is "Required symmetric", meaning if you use rel=me for a link on one page, the other page must also link back to the first page using rel=me.

On Mastodon and similar platforms, you can enter links to your other profiles. These platforms will check your other profiles and look for a rel=me link back, and if they see a link marked as rel=me, they mark your link as verified.

However, on MediaWiki, the only way to link to an external site is to use the external link wikitext syntax. It is not possible to include rel=me using this syntax. An extension is therefore needed.

With this extension, if you mention an external link on your user page and enter the same external link into the extension, the extension adds a <link rel="me"> HTML tag to the <head> element of your user page, so that the other site can verify you.

Verifying a link on your user page

the external URL preference field (see step 2)

On your wiki, edit your user page to add an external link to the URL you want to mark as verified. Examples: https://wikis.world/@YOURNAME or [https://wikis.world/@YOURNAME Mastodon]. The link can have any label or no label.
In the "User page" section of your wiki's user profile preferences, add the exact same link to the "URLs to external profiles:" setting, and save the changes.
On the third-party service (e.g. Mastodon) , add a link to your wiki user page. You may need to edit your "Profile metadata" or "Extra fields" for this.

Limitations

The link must use the http:// or https:// protocol.
Only five links can be set.

Global user pages

On wikis that use global user pages , the preference must be set on each local wiki or globally through the GlobalPreferences .

Verifying a link on non-user pages

It is possible to verify links on non-user pages by adding them to the page MediaWiki:Realme-config.json on your wiki.

For example, to verify the link https://social.example.org/@mywiki on "Main Page", add:

{
    "Main Page": "https://social.example.org/@mywiki"
}

Multiple links can be specified for a single page by using an array.

After adding or changing a page's links you should purge the page to ensure the change is reflected immediately.

Unlike user pages, these links do not need to be present on the wiki page itself to be verified.