Wikipedia:User access levels
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A contributor's ability to perform certain actions in Wikipedia depends on his or her user access level. This is determined by whether the editor is logged in to an account, whether the account has a sufficient age and number of edits, and what additional rights ("user groups", also called "flags" or "bits") have been assigned manually to the account.
Everyone is able to read Wikipedia, and (unless blocked) to freely edit most pages, without needing to be logged in. Being logged in gives users (among other advantages) the ability to create new pages. Accounts more than a certain number of days old with more than a certain number of edits automatically become autoconfirmed. Further access levels need to be assigned manually by a user with the appropriate authority. An editor with more experience and good standing can attempt to become an administrator (sysop), which provides a large number of advanced permissions. A number of other flags for specialized tasks are also available.
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Overview
All visitors to the site including unregistered 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 pseudo-group when their account is more than 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 permissions 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.
User groups
Unregistered users
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Contributors who have not created an account or logged in are identified by their IP address rather than a user name, and 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.
New users
Users who edit through an account they have registered may immediately create pages in any namespace (except the MediaWiki namespace, and limited to eight per minute) 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 or by adding personal CSS or JavaScript rules to their vector.css or vector.js files.
Autoconfirmed users
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}} A number of actions on the English Wikipedia are restricted to user accounts that pass certain thresholds of age (time passed since account creation) and edit count. Users who meet these requirements are considered part of the pseudo-group 'autoconfirmed'<tt>. Autoconfirmed status is checked every time a user performs a restricted action: it is then granted automatically by the software. Although the precise requirements for autoconfirmed status vary according to circumstances, most English Wiki user accounts that are more than four days old and have made at least 10 edits are considered autoconfirmed. However, users with IPBE editing through the Tor network are subjected to stricter autoconfirmed thresholds: 90 days and 100 edits.
Autoconfirmed status (or membership of the <tt>'confirmed'<tt> group; see below) 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 mark pages created by others as patrolled in Special:NewPages and save books to the wiki. In addition, the Edit filter has a number of warning settings that only affect editors who are not autoconfirmed.
Administrators, bureaucrats and stewards
Administrators
Template:Seealso Administrator rights are granted by the community. The process involves considerable discussion and examination of their activities as an editor. Users who are members of the <tt>'sysop' 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 fully protected pages and the Mediawiki interface. Administrators also have the ability to grant and remove account creator, rollback, ipblock-exempt rights, confirmed user, auto-reviewer, and edit filter manager rights to other users, and to their own alternate accounts. Administrators are otherwise no different from any other editor.
Administrators are also known historically as "sysops" (system operators). The two terms are used interchangeably.
See Special:ListUsers/sysop for a list of users in this group.
Bureaucrats
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}} Template:Seealso Bureaucrat rights are granted by the community to exceptionally trusted users who are allowed to perform certain actions on other users' accounts.
Bureaucrats have extended access to Special:UserRights, enabling them to add users to the 'bureaucrat' group (but not remove them),<ref>MediaWiki default settings are that the 'bureaucrats' group has the userrights flag (giving access to Special:UserRights) and can add or remove any flags. However this can be modified by mw:Manual:$wgAddGroups and mw:Manual:$wgRemoveGroups to restrict adding/removing flags to specified ones. Wikimedia's settings file uses these, and by default bureaucrats can only remove bot flags and add sysop, bureaucrat and bot flags. English Wikipedia, or 'enwiki', settings additionally permit adding accountcreator and removal of ipblock-exempt and accountcreator; which administrators can do anyway, and removal of sysop.</ref> and both add users to and remove users from the 'sysop'<ref>Since August 2011, per Template:Bugzilla</ref> and 'bot' user groups. Bureaucrats can use Special:RenameUser to rename users (including themselves).
See Special:ListUsers/bureaucrat for a list of users in this group.
Stewards
Template:Seealso 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, oversighters or bureaucrats on wikis which do not have local members of those groups. For example, if a wiki has a passing need for an edit to be oversighted, a steward can add themselves to the 'oversight' user group on that wiki, perform the necessary function, and then remove themselves from the 'oversight' group using their steward rights.
All steward actions are logged at meta:Special:Log/rights or meta:Special:Log/gblrights. See Special:GlobalUsers/steward or meta:Special:ListUsers/steward for a list of users in this group.
Other flags giving access to specialized functions
Reviewer
Template:See also This usergroup was used in the pending changes trial. Members of this group could review other user's edits to articles placed under pending changes. This right was automatically assigned to administrators. Use of pending changes will resume on 01 December 2012.
Members of the Reviewer user group are also able to hide, and view hidden, Article Feedback Tool Version 5 feedback.
See Special:ListUsers/reviewer for a list of users in this group.
Rollback
Template:Seealso Users who are given the rollback flag ('rollbacker' user group) may revert revisions using the rollback feature. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.
Members of the Rollback user group are able to hide, and view hidden, Article Feedback Tool Version 5 feedback.
See Special:ListUsers/rollbacker for a list of users in this group.
Autopatrolled
Template:Anchor Template:See also Members of this group have 'autopatrol', which allows them to have their pages automatically patrolled on the New Pages list. This right is automatically assigned to administrators. Prior to June 2010, this right was known as "autoreviewer".
See Special:ListUsers/autoreviewer for a list of users in this group. Template:Anchors
Confirmed users
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}} In some situations, it is necessary for accounts to be exempted from the customary confirmation period. The 'confirmed' group contains the same rights as the 'autoconfirmed' pseudo-group, but can be granted by administrators as necessary. There is no point in giving this right to a user whose account is already autoconfirmed, because it provides exactly the same abilities. To request this permission see Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Confirmed.
See Special:ListUsers/confirmed for a list of users in this group.
File mover
Template:See also The file mover user right is intended to allow users experienced in working with files to rename them, subject to policy, with the ease that autoconfirmed users already enjoy when renaming Wikipedia articles. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.
See Special:ListUsers/filemover for a list of users in this group.
Accountcreator
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}} Template:See also 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. Users in this group can also override the anti-spoof checks on account creation. This right is automatically assigned to administrators. Additionally, the accountcreator flag allows users to edit or create editnotices.
See Special:ListUsers/accountcreator for a list of users in this group.
Ipblock-exempt
Template:See also 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. This right is automatically assigned to administrators and bots, however the flag must be added separately to enable editing from IP addresses affected by Tor blocks.
See Special:ListUsers/ipblock-exempt for a list of users in this group.
Edit Filter managers
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}} Template:Seealso Members of this group can create, modify and delete edit filters. This flag is given and removed by administrators. It is not assigned to administrators by default.
See Special:ListUsers/abusefilter for a list of users in this group.
Oversight
Template:Seealso 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 at least 18 years old and have identified themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation.
See Special:ListUsers/oversight for a list of users in this group.
CheckUser
Template:Seealso 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 flags which give permissions on Special:Import. This interface allows users to move pages between Wikimedia wikis (for instance, to copy an article written in English on another-language wiki, while preserving full edit history). Although MediaWiki software provides the ability to import articles directly from XML (which may come from any wiki site), this is disabled on en.wikipedia as well as most other Wikimedia projects.
See also the import log, Transwiki log, and Help:Import.
afttest and afttest-hide
Members of the afttest-hide user group will be able to hide Article Feedback Tool Version 5 feedback; members will also be able to view hidden feedback. Members of the afttest user group will be able also to delete feedback and view deleted feedback.
Other flagged accounts
Bots
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}} Template:Seealso 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.
Founder
The 'founder' group was created on the English Wikipedia by developer Tim Starling, without community input, as a unique group for Jimmy Wales. The group gives Wales full access to user rights. As 'local founder actions' are usually of great interest to the local community, and are only relevant to the English Wikipedia, the local 'founder' right also has the benefit of allowing Wales' actions to be visible in the English Wikipedia rights log; actions performed with the global founder bit are not visible in that record, but only on the log at Metawiki.
Researcher
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}} The 'researcher' group was created in April 2010 to allow individuals explicitly approved by the Wikimedia Foundation to perform a title search for deleted pages and view deleted history entries but not to view the actual revisions of deleted pages.<ref>The group has access to the browsearchive and deletedhistory rights, as well apihighlimits [1]</ref> Policies governing the access level are under development by the Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee (RCom).
See Special:ListUsers/researcher for a list of users in this group and meta:Research:Special API permissions/Log for further details.
Ombudsman
The 'ombudsman' group investigates complaints about violations of the privacy policy (in particular concerning the use of CheckUser tools) on any Wikimedia project for the board of trustees in an official manner. To file a complaint, please contact an Ombudsman privately. More information and contact details can be obtained on Meta-Wiki.
Indefinitely blocked users
In general, rights of editors blocked indefinitely should be left as is. Rights specifically related to the reason for blocking may be removed at the discretion of the blocking or unblocking administrators.
Table
- 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.
User access level changes
Template:User access level changes
Notes
See also
- User permissions API
- Manual:User rights
- Meta:User groups
- Special:ListGroupRights
- Wikipedia:Editorial oversight and control (explains the access structure from the perspective of quality control on Wikipedia)
- Wikipedia:Requests for permissions (to request certain userrights)
- See what usergroup a user is in
- Others:
- Administrators
- Bureaucrats
- Oversight permission
- Sockpuppet investigations
- CheckUser policyals:Wikipedia:Benutzer
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