Manual:$wgRequirePasswordforEmailChange

Email settings: $wgRequirePasswordforEmailChange
Whether the user must enter their password to change their email address
Introduced in version:	1.20.0 (Gerrit change 12604; git #f7d8c9e3)
Removed in version:	1.27.0 (Gerrit change 280945; git #854a462d)
Allowed values:	(boolean)
Default value:	true
Other settings: Alphabetical | By function

Details

Set to true (default setting) to require users to enter their password to change their email address. Set to false to disable this requirement.

Avoid changing this setting on public wikis following security considerations.

The functionality this configuration setting provided was removed in an effort to adapt reality to MediaWiki rather than vice versa. It is no longer possible to change an email address without knowing the respective accounts password.

Starting with MW 1.27.0 the pre MW 1.20.0 procedure has to be followed:

1. The user "John Doe" who cannot request a new password because the email address added is no longer available or never existed due to a typo when adding the email address has to create another account on the wiki, e.g. "John Doe 2"
2. The admin uses the UserMerge extension to merge the old account "John Doe" into the new account "John Doe 2" and at the same time deletes the old account.
3. The admin uses the Renameuser extension to rename the new account "John Doe 2" to "John Doe" to regain the old user account name.

Note that this is a procedure you will probably like to avoid whenever you can since it involves numerous "invasive" database actions to reassign the edits of the accounts involved thus increasing the chance of something going wrong.

See also

• Extension:Sudo - allows to log into a foreign account without knowing the respective accounts password. Useful for MediaWiki 1.20.x to 1.26.x in conjunction with this configuration setting.