A contributor's access to perform certain actions in Wikipedia is determined by various flags on their account, some of which are automatic and others of which must be given to them manually. A user with a flag is said to be a member of that flag's 'user group', giving them certain 'permissions' and the use of certain features of the
MediaWiki
software.
Users are assigned the highest possible permissions based on the groups they are members of. A user who is an
administrator
,
bureaucrat
and
rollbacker
, for instance, would be able to use
Special:Unwatchedpages
(granted with the
'sysop'
group),
Special:RenameUser
(granted with the
'bureaucrat'
group) and to also use
rollback
(granted with the
'sysop'
and
'rollbacker'
groups). If the user was removed from the
'sysop'
group, he would still be able to use rollback, because he is still a member of the
'rollbacker'
group.
Membership in a user group is sometimes referred to as a "
flag
" or "
bit
"; being made a member of the
'sysop'
group is synonymous with being "given the admin bit" or "receiving the admin flag"
All visitors to the site, including anonymous users, are part of the
'
*
'
group, while all logged-in users are also part of the
'
user
'
group. Users are automatically promoted into the
Autoconfirmed/Established users
group when their account is four days old and has ten edits. Other flags are only given upon request; some, such as
'
rollbacker
'
or
'
bot
'
, are granted unilaterally if the user demonstrates a need for them (see
Wikipedia:Requests for rollback
and
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval
). Others, such as
'
sysop
'
and
'
bureaucrat
'
, are given only after community discussion and consensus at
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship
. Users are only made members of groups such as
'
oversight
'
and
'
checkuser
'
with the approval of the
Arbitration Committee
and after confirming their identity with the
Wikimedia Foundation
.
Regular user levels
[
?????????
]
Anonymous users
[
?????????
]
Contributors who have not
created an account
or
logged in
may read all Wikipedia pages (except restricted Special pages), and edit pages that are not
protected or semi-protected
. They may create
talk pages
in any talk
namespace
but may need to ask for help to create pages in some parts of the wiki. They cannot
upload
files or images. They must answer a
CAPTCHA
if they wish to make an edit which involves the addition of one or more
external links
, and click a confirm link to
purge
pages. All users may also query the
site API
in 500-record batches.
A user who edits through an account they have registered, may immediately
create pages
in any namespace (except the
MediaWiki namespace
) and may also e-mail other users if they activate an email address in their
user preferences
. All logged-in users may mark edits as
minor
. They may purge pages without a confirmation step, but are still required to answer a CAPTCHA when adding external links. They may also customize their Wikimedia interface and its options as they wish, via
Special:Preferences
and their monobook.
Autoconfirmed users
[
?????????
]
A number of actions on the english wikipedia are restricted to user accounts which pass certain thresholds for age and editcount: users which meet these requirements are considered part of the pseudo-group
autoconfirmed
. Autoconfirmed status is checked every time the user performs a restricted action: consequently, it is granted automatically by the software and
cannot be removed
. The precise requirements for autoconfirmed status varies according to circumstances: for most users on en.wiki, accounts which are more than 4 days old and have made at least 10 edits are considered autoconfirmed. However, users editing through a
TOR
network are subjected to much stricter autoconfirmed thresholds: currently 90 days and 100 edits.
Autoconfirmed status is required to
move pages
, edit
semi-protected pages
, and
upload files
or upload a new version of an existing file. Autoconfirmed users are no longer required to enter a
CAPTCHA
for most events. Autoconfirmed users may also mark pages as
patrolled
in
Special:NewPages
.
Administrators, Bureaucrats and Stewards
[
?????????
]
Administrators
[
?????????
]
Administrator rights are granted by the community to users requesting them. The process involves considerable discussion and examination of their activities as an editor. Users who are members of the
'administrator'
user group have access to
a number of tools
to allow them to carry out certain functions on the wiki. The tools cover processes such as
page deletion
,
page protection
,
blocking and unblocking
, access to modify protected pages and the mediawiki interface, and the ability to grant and remove rollback and ipblock-exempt rights to other users. Administrators are otherwise no different from any other editor.
Administrators are also known historically as "sysops" (
sys
tem
op
erator
s
). The two terms are used interchangeably.
See
Special:Listusers/sysop
for a list of users in this group.
Bureaucrat rights are given to exceptionally trusted users who are allowed to perform certain actions on other users' accounts. As a result of the
method
used to appoint bureaucrats on the english wikipedia, they are inevitably also
administrators
.
Bureaucrats have extended access to
Special:UserRights
, enabling them to add users to the
'sysop'
and
'bureaucrat'
groups (but not remove them), and both add users to and remove users from the
'
bot
'
user group. They may also use
Special:MakeSysop
and
Special:MakeBot
for the same purposes. Bureaucrats can use
Special:RenameUser
to
rename users
(including themselves).
See
Special:Listusers/bureaucrat
for a list of users in this group.
Stewardship is an elected role, and stewards are appointed globally across all
Wikimedia Foundation
wikis.
Users who are members of the
'steward'
user group may grant and revoke any permission to or from any user on any wiki operated by the
Wikimedia Foundation
. This group is set on
MetaWiki
, and may use
meta:Special:Userrights
to set permissions on any wikimedia wiki; they may add or remove any user from any group. Stewards generally act only when there is no user on a particular wiki that can make the necessary change. This includes granting of the
'administrator'
or
'bureaucrat'
access levels on wikis which do not have any local bureaucrats, and removing such flags if the user resigns or the account is acting maliciously. Stewards are also responsible for granting and revoking access levels such as
'oversight'
and
'checkuser'
, as no other group is capable of making such changes.
Stewards can also act as
checkusers
or
oversighters
on wikis which do not have local members of those groups. If a wiki has a passing need for an edit to be oversighted, for instance, a steward can add themselves to the
'oversight'
user group on that wiki, perform the necessary oversight activity using
Special:HideRevision
, and then remove themselves from the
'oversight'
group using their steward rights.
All steward actions are logged at
meta:Special:Log/rights
. See
meta:Special:Listusers/steward
for a list of users in this group.
Other flags giving access to specialized functions
[
?????????
]
Users who are given the rollback flag (
'rollbacker'
user group) may
revert
revisions using the
rollback
feature.
See
Special:Listusers/rollbacker
for a list of users in this group.
Ipblock-exempt
[
?????????
]
Users who are given the ipblock-exempt flag (
'ipblock-exempt'
user group) are not affected by
autoblocks
and blocks of IP addresses and ranges that aren't made with the "anonymous users only" setting.
See
Special:Listusers/ipblock-exempt
for a list of users in this group.
Accountcreator
[
?????????
]
Users who are given the accountcreator flag (
'accountcreator'
user group) are not affected by the 6 account creation limit per day per IP, and can create accounts for other users without restriction.
See
Special:Listusers/accountcreator
for a list of users in this group.
Users who are given the oversight flag (
'oversight'
user group) have access to
Special:HideRevision
, through which they can permanently hide revisions of pages from all users, and
Special:Oversight
, where they can view a log of such actions and the content of the hidden revisions. This right is only granted to exceedingly few users who are age 18+ and have identified themselves to the
Wikimedia Foundation
.
See
Special:Listusers/oversight
for a list of users in this group.
Users who are given the checkuser flag (
'checkuser'
user group) have access to
Special:CheckUser
. They are able to view a list of all
IP addresses
used by a user account to edit the English wikipedia, a list of all edits made by an IP, or all user accounts that have used an IP address. They may also view a log of such requests. This right is only granted to exceedingly few users who are age 18+ and have identified themselves to the
Wikimedia Foundation
.
See
Special:Listusers/checkuser
for a list of users in this group.
Importers and Transwiki
[
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]
Transwiki and Importers are unused flags which give permissions on
Special:Import
. Although Mediawiki software provides the ability to import articles directly from XML, this is disabled on en.wikipedia as well as most other Wikimedia wiki projects. On en.wikipedia, these flags would only allow access to a disabled page, so they are unused.
Instead of Special:Import, en.wikipedia uses an alternative method to move information across wikimedia wikis. See
Transwiki log
.
For more information on the Import function, see
Help:Import
on Meta.
Other flagged accounts
[
?????????
]
Accounts used by approved
bots
to make pre-approved edits can be flagged as such. Bot accounts are automated or semi-automated, the nature of their edits is well defined, and they will be quickly blocked if their actions vary from their given tasks, so they need less scrutiny than human edits.
For this reason, contributions from accounts with the bot flag (
'
bot
'
user group) are not displayed in
recent changes
or
watchlists
to users who have opted to hide bot edits. Minor edits made by bot accounts to user talk pages do not trigger the
"you have new messages"
banner. Bot accounts can query the
API
in batches of 5,000 rather than 500.
See
Special:Listusers/bot
for a list of users in this group.
There are a number of development areas of some sort to which access is limited, which are not specific to any particular wiki.
SVN
commit access allows the development version of the
MediaWiki
software to be modified, toolserver access allows applications to be uploaded to and run on the
toolserver
, and a small number of people have
shell
access to the servers on which Wikipedia and the other projects of the
Wikimedia Foundation
are hosted.
Several of the Wikimedia developers with
root access
to the wikimedia servers are granted permissions without using the normal approval channels, as the rights they infer are merely safer or more efficient alternatives to modifying the database directly. For instance,
Tim Starling
,
Brion Vibber
,
Kate
and
RobH
have
'steward'
rights although they were not
elected
.
The
'developer'
user group exists on all Wikimedia projects, but it is not usually populated. If a developer needs access to a specific permission on wikipedia, they can assign the permission to the
'developer'
group, then add themselves to the group using steward rights. Permissions which have been assigned to the
'developer'
group include
siteadmin
, which enables them to rename users with more than 200,000 edits.
A (usually empty) list of users in the
'developer'
group can be found at
Special:Listusers/developer
The
'founder'
group was created on the English Wikipedia by developer Tim Starling, as a unique group for
Jimmy Wales
, co-founder of Wikipedia. The group gives Wales full access to
Special:UserRights
and
Special:Makesysop
. As Wales is also a steward on Meta, he has the ability to change the user rights of any editor on any wikimedia wiki from
meta:Special:UserRights
, making the
'founder'
group largely a
status symbol
. However, as "founder actions" are usually of great interest to the local community, and are only relevant to the English Wikipedia, the
'founder'
right also has the benefit of allowing Wales' actions to be visible in the
en.wiki rights log
; actions performed with the steward bit are not visible in that record, but only on the
log at metawiki
.
Granted
|
Inherited
|
Denied
|
Revoked
|
Depends
|
Limited
|
Deprecated
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- As a function of the
Requests for adminship
and
Requests for Bureaucratship
processes, all bureaucrats on the English Wikipedia are also administrators, and so have all the permissions of the
'sysop'
user group in addition to those rights from the
'bureaucrat'
group. However this is not a requirement of the MediaWiki software; it is technically possible for a user to be a bureaucrat without also being an admin.
- Deprecated permissions are either no longer assigned to any group, or the group to which they are assigned is no longer populated.
Granted
|
Inherited
|
Denied
|
Revoked
|
Depends
|
Limited
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Permission
|
Allows user(s) to…
|
Blocked users
|
Anonymous
users
|
Registered accounts
|
Auto-confirmed
|
Bots
|
Administrators
|
Bureaucrats
|
other groups
|
apihighlimits
|
request
API
queries in batches of 5,000, rather than 500
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
autopatrol
|
automatically mark all edits made by the user as patrolled
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
bigdelete
|
delete pages with over 5,000 revisions
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
steward
|
block
|
block an IP address, user name, or range of IPs, from editing
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
boardvote
|
check IPs and strike out votes during Board elections
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
boardvote
|
bot
|
edit without their edits showing up in recent changes
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
checkuser
|
see all IP addresses used by a registered user or to show all edits from a given IP address
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
checkuser
|
createaccount
|
create a new user account for themselves or another user
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
createpage
|
create a new page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
createtalk
|
create a new talk page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
delete
|
delete a page with ≤ 5,000 revisions
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
deletedhistory
|
view the history of a deleted page or a user's
deleted contributions
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
edit
|
edit any page which is not protected
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
editinterface
|
edit the
MediaWiki namespace
to affect the interface
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
editprotected
|
edit pages which have been
protected
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
editusercssjs
|
edit .css or .js subpages of other users
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-
|
e-mail a user
(using
Special:EmailUser
/
username
) who have associated an email address with themselves
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
hiderevision
|
permanently hide revisions from public view
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
oversight
|
import
|
import pages from a locally stored
XML
file
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
import
|
ipblockexempt
|
be unaffected by blocks applied to the user's IP address or a range (CIDR) containing it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ipblock-exempt
|
makebot
|
set/remove bot flags for accounts
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
makesysop
|
give admin/bureaucrat abilities to another
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
markbotedit
|
mark rollback as bot edits, to keep them out of
recent changes
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
minoredit
|
make an edit marked as 'minor'
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
move
|
change the title of a page by moving it
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
nominornewtalk
|
minor edits by this user to user talk pages do not trigger the "you have new messages" banner
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
override-antispoof
|
blocks the creation of accounts with mixed-script, confusing and similar usernames
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
oversight
|
view revisions such that have been permanently hidden
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
oversight
|
patrol
|
state that they have checked a page that appeared in
Special:Newpages
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
protect
|
protect or unprotect pages
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
purge
|
purge
a page by adding
&action=purge
to the URL
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
read
|
read pages
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
renameuser
|
change the name of an existing account
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
rollback
|
use a special link to more easily revert a bad edit
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
rollbacker
|
siteadmin
|
use
Special:LockDB
to lock the database or
Special:UnlockDB
to unlock the database
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
developer
|
undelete
|
undelete a previously deleted page or specific revisions from it
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
unwatchedpages
|
view a list of pages which are not on anyone's watchlist
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
upload
|
upload a media file, or overwrite an existing unprotected file
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
userrights
|
change the user groups of another user
|
|
|
|
|
|
+/??rollbacker,
+/??Ipblock-exempt,
+/??Accountcreator
|
+?bureaucrat, +?sysop,
+/??bot
|
steward
+/??any
|
- Others: