Wikipedia:User access levels

WP:UAL

To find out what permissions your account has, go to Special:Preferences. Your permissions are listed in the user profile tab under "Member of groups".

A contributor's ability to perform certain actions in Wikipedia depends on their user access level. This is determined by whether the editor is logged into 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. Unless they are blocked, they may freely edit most pages without the need to be logged in. Being logged in gives users a number of advantages, such as the ability to create new pages and the ability to track one's contributions. 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.

Overview

All visitors to the site, including unregistered users, are part of the '*' group, and 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

The system-generated technical permissions are listed at Special:ListGroupRights.

Unregistered (not logged in) users

Shortcut:

WP:IP

Contributors who are not logged in are identified by their IP address rather than a user name, whether or not they have already registered an account. They may read all Wikipedia pages (except restricted special pages), and edit pages that are not protected (with the exception of Pending changes protected/ move-protected articles). They may create talk pages in any talk namespace but 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.

Edit screens of unregistered users are headed by a banner that reads:

You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to a user name, among other benefits.

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 save books to their userspace but not the Books namespace. 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 and confirmed users

Shortcuts:

Several actions on the English Wikipedia are restricted to user accounts that have been created for a certain number of days and which have made a certain number of edits. Users who meet these requirements are considered part of the pseudo-group 'autoconfirmed'. The conditions for autoconfirmed status are checked every time a user attempts to perform a restricted action; if they are met, permission is granted automatically by the software. Although the precise requirements for autoconfirmed status vary according to circumstances, most English Wikipedia 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 or confirmed 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; they may mark pages created by others as patrolled in Special:NewPages and save books to the Books namespace. In addition, the Edit filter has a number of warning settings that only affect editors who are not autoconfirmed.

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. It is redundant to grant the right to an account that is already autoconfirmed, since the right provides the same abilities. To request this permission, see Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Confirmed. See Special:ListUsers/confirmed for a list of the 454 confirmed users.

As of 1 August 2014^[update], there were approximately 1.4 million autoconfirmed users on English Wikipedia, of which the vast majority are inactive. See Special:ActiveUsers for recently active users.

Extended confirmed users

Shortcut:

WP:EXTENDEDCONFIRMED

The 'extendedconfirmed' user access level is automatically granted to registered editors who make an edit after having 30 days tenure and at least 500 edits. This user access right allows editors to edit pages with extended confirmed protection. This access is included in the 'bot' and 'sysop' user groups.

See Special:ListUsers/extendedconfirmed for a list of the 23582 extended confirmed users.

Administrators and bureaucrats

Administrators

Administrator rights are granted by the community at Requests for Adminship (RfA). The RfA process involves considerable discussion and examination of the candidate's activities as an editor. Users who are members of this 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, confirmed user, file mover, page mover, pending changes reviewer, autopatrolled, template editor and edit filter manager rights to other users, and to their own alternate accounts. By convention, administrators also normally take responsibility for judging the outcome of certain discussions requiring these technical controls (such as deletions). Administrators are not granted special editorial control over article content.

See Special:ListUsers/sysop for a list of the 1304 administrators, also known as "sysops" (system operators). The two terms are used interchangeably.

Bureaucrats

Shortcuts:

Bureaucrat rights are granted by the community at Requests for Bureaucratship (RfB) 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),^[1] and both add users to and remove users from the 'administrator'^[2] and 'bot' user groups. Bureaucrats who are also Global renamers can use meta:Special:GlobalRenameUser to rename users (including themselves).

See Special:ListUsers/bureaucrat for a list of the 22 bureaucrats.

Other flags giving access to specialized functions

Pending changes reviewer

Members of this group can review other users' edits to articles placed under pending changes protection. This right is automatically assigned to administrators. Prior to September 2014, this right was known as "reviewer".

See Special:ListUsers/reviewer for a list of the 6627 reviewers.

Rollback

Users who are given the rollback flag ('rollbacker' user group) may revert consecutive revisions of an editor using the rollback feature. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.

See Special:ListUsers/rollbacker for a list of the 5542 rollbackers.

Autopatrolled

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 the 3432 autopatrolled users.

File mover

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 the 395 additional filemovers.

Page mover

The page mover user right ('extendedmover' user group) is intended to allow users who have demonstrated a good understanding of the Wikipedia page naming system to rename pages and subpages without leaving redirects, subject to policy.

See Special:ListUsers/extendedmover for a list of the 44 pagemovers.

Accountcreator

Shortcut:

WP: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. Users in this group can also override the anti-spoof checks on account creation. This right is automatically assigned to administrators and bureaucrats.^[3] Additionally, account creators are able to create accounts with names that are otherwise blocked by the title blacklist.

See Special:ListUsers/accountcreator for a list of the 132 additional account creators.

Template editor

Members of this group are allowed to edit pages protected with template protection as well as create and edit editnotices. Template protection is only applied to pages in the template and module namespaces. It is intended to allow experienced template and module coders to make changes without having to request that an administrator make the edits for them.

See Special:ListUsers/templateeditor for a list of the 138 template editors.

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. 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 the 103 affected users.

Edit Filter managers

Shortcut:

WP:AFE

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 the 168 filter editors. All users can check their log entries on the Special:AbuseFilter pages.

Oversight

Users who are given the oversight flag ('oversight' user group) have access to additional functions on the deletion and block screens through which they can hide revisions of pages from all other users, and Special:Log/suppress, 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 signed the Wikimedia Foundation's confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information. Oversighters are also required to have passed an "RFA or RFA-identical process".^[4]

See Special:ListUsers/oversight for a list of the 48 Oversighters.

CheckUser

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 at least 18 years old and have signed the Wikimedia Foundation's confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information. As Checkusers have access to deleted revisions, they are also required to have passed an "RFA or RFA-identical process".^[4]

See Special:ListUsers/checkuser for a list of the 36 CheckUsers.

Course coordinator, instructor, online and campus volunteer

Shortcuts:

Members of these user groups (in addition to administrators) can manage course pages in the "Education Program:" namespace. Course coordinator rights (as well as the instructor, online volunteer and campus volunteer rights) are assigned by administrators. Course coordinators may assign "course online volunteer", "course campus volunteer", and "course instructor" rights to other users. Online and campus volunteers, respectively, can designate themselves as supporters for individual courses (whom students can turn to for help, online or in person). They do this by going to the course page and using the software interface to associate their account with the course.

Mass message sender

Members of this group may send messages to multiple users at once. See Special:ListUsers/massmessage-sender for a list of the 44 mass message senders.

Other flagged accounts

Bots

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 the 363 bots.

Founder

Shortcut:

Wikipedia:Founder

The founder group was created on the English Wikipedia by developer Tim Starling,^[when?] 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. Jimbo Wales is also a member of the founder global group, which has view-only rights across the Wikimedia network.

Researcher

Shortcut:

WP:RESEARCHER

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.^[5] Policies governing the access level are under development by the Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee (RCom) and being discussed here at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Research.

See Special:ListUsers/researcher (for the list of 10 current researchers) and meta:Research:Special API permissions/Log for further details.

Importers and Transwiki

Shortcut:

WP:Importers

Transwiki and Importers are flags which give permissions on Special:Import. This interface allows users to copy pages and page histories from other Wikimedia wikis. For instance, the right allows a user to copy an article written in English on another-language wiki, while preserving full edit history if they select the appropriate option. Although MediaWiki software provides the ability to import articles directly from XML (which may come from any wiki site), this requires a special user right 'importupload', which is restricted to Stewards and occasionally one or two other highly trusted users.

See Special:ListUsers/import for the 2^[6] remaining importers. All users can use Special:Export. See also the import log, Transwiki log, Help:Import and WP:RFPI.

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.^[7]

Global rights

Global rights have effects on all public Wikimedia wikis, but their use may be restricted by local policy, see Wikipedia:Global rights policy. For an automatically generated list of global groups with all their permissions, see Special:GlobalGroupPermissions. For a list of users along with their global groups, see Special:GlobalUsers.

Stewards

Stewardship is an elected role, and stewards are appointed globally across all public Wikimedia 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 which allows open account creation. 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 configured on metawiki. 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 except staff/sysadmins.

Stewards can also act as checkusers, oversighters, bureaucrats or administrators on wikis which do not have active 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.

Most steward actions are logged at meta:Special:Log/rights or meta:Special:Log/gblrights (some go to meta:Stewards/Additional log for global changes). See Special:GlobalUsers/steward or meta:Special:ListUsers/steward for a list of users in this group.

Other global user groups

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.
Special:ListGroupRights is an automatically generated list of granted user group rights. The below table is manually updated, and also includes global groups with local access.

Granted	Inherited	Denied	Revoked	Depends	Limited

v t e Permission	Allows user(s) to…	Blocked users	Unregistered users	Registered accounts	Autoconfirmed and Confirmed	Bots	Administrators	Bureaucrats	other groups
abusefilter-log	View the abuse log
abusefilter-log-detail	View detailed abuse log entries
abusefilter-modify	Modify abuse filters								Edit filter manager
abusefilter-view	View abuse filters
abusefilter-revert	Revert all changes by a given abuse filter
apihighlimits	Request API queries in batches of 5,000, rather than 500								Researchers
autoconfirmed	Edit semi-protected pages
autopatrol	Automatically mark all edits made by the user as patrolled								Autopatrolled, Global rollbacker
bigdelete	Delete pages with over 5,000 revisions								Stewards
block	Block an IP address, user name, or range of IPs, from editing
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, Ombudsman
collectionsaveascommunitypage	Save books as community page in the book namespace
collectionsaveasuserpage	Save books as user subpage
createaccount	Create a new user account for themselves or another user								Account creator
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								Researchers
deletedtext	View the text of deleted revisions								ombudsman
deleterevision	Access RevisionDelete tool for viewing, deleting, restoring the text, edit summary, and/or username of a revision
edit	Edit any page which is not protected
editinterface	Edit the MediaWiki namespace to affect the interface								interface editor
edittalk	Edit their own talk page
ep-addstudent	Enroll users as student								Education Program staff
ep-becampus	Add or remove yourself as campus ambassador from terms								Course campus volunteers, Course coordinators
ep-beinstructor	Add or remove yourself as instructor from courses								Course coordinators, Course instructors
ep-beonline	Add or remove yourself as online ambassador from terms								Course coordinators, Course online volunteers
ep-bereviewer	Add or remove yourself as reviewer from articles
ep-bulkdelcourses	Bulk delete courses								Course coordinators
ep-bulkdelorgs	Bulk delete institutions
ep-campus	Add or remove campus ambassadors to courses								Course coordinators
ep-course	Manage Education Program courses								Course campus volunteers, Course coordinators, Course instructors, Course online volunteers
ep-enroll	Enroll in Education Program courses
ep-instructor	Add or remove instructors to courses								Course coordinators
ep-online	Add or remove online ambassadors to courses								Course coordinators
ep-org	Manage Education Program institutions								Course campus volunteers, Course coordinators, Course instructors, Course online volunteers
ep-remarticle	Dissasociate articles from students								Course campus volunteers, Course coordinators, Course instructors, Course online volunteers
ep-remreviewer	Remove reviewers from articles								Course coordinators
ep-remstudent	Remove students from courses								Course coordinators, Course instructors
ep-token	See Education Program enrollment tokens								Course campus volunteers, Course coordinators, Course instructors, Course online volunteers
editusercss	Edit other users' CSS files
edituserjs	Edit other users' JavaScript files
extendedconfirmed	Edit 30/500 protected pages								Extended confirmed editors
import	Import pages from other wikis								importer and transwiki importers
importupload	Import pages from a locally stored XML file								importer
ipblockexempt	Be unaffected by blocks applied to the user's IP address or a range (CIDR) containing it.								ipblock-exempt
markbotedits	Mark rollback as bot edits, to keep them out of recent changes								global rollbacker
minoredit	Make an edit marked as 'minor'
Permission	Allows user(s) to...	Blocked users	Unregistered users	Registered accounts	Autoconfirmed and Confirmed	Bots	Administrators	Bureaucrats	other groups
move	Change the title of a page by moving it
movefile	Change the title of a file by moving it								file movers
move-rootuserpages	Move root user pages
move-subpages	Move pages with their subpages								page mover
nominornewtalk	Minor edits by this user to user talk pages do not trigger the "you have new messages" banner
noratelimit	Not be affected by rate limits								account creator, global rollbacker
override-antispoof	Blocks the creation of accounts with mixed-script, confusing and similar usernames								account creator
oversight	View revisions that have been permanently hidden								oversight
patrol	State that they have checked a page that appeared in Special:Newpages
protect	Change protection levels, edit and move protected pages
purge	Purge a page by adding `&action=purge` to the URL
read	Read pages
renameuser	Change the name of an existing account								global renamer, steward
reupload	Overwrite an existing unprotected file
reupload-own	Overwrite existing files uploaded by oneself
rollback	Use a special link to more easily revert a bad edit								rollbacker, global rollbacker
sendemail	E-mail a user (using `Special:EmailUser/username`) who have associated an email address with themselves
skipcaptcha	Perform captcha triggering actions without having to go through the captcha
suppressredirect	Not create a redirect from the old name when moving a page								global rollbacker, page mover
suppressrevision	Permanently hide revisions from public view								Oversight
tboverride	Override the title blacklist								template editors
tboverride-account	Override the username blacklist								account creators
undelete	Undelete a previously deleted page or specific revisions from it, view deleted revisions
unwatchedpages	View a list of pages which are not on anyone's watchlist
upload	Upload a media file
userrights	Change the user groups of another user						± rollbacker ± Ipblock-exempt ± accountcreator ± autopatrolled ± Edit Filter managers ± Confirmed ± Filemover ± Reviewer ± Template editor ± Page mover ± Mass message sender ± extendedconfirmed	- Ipblock-exempt ± accountcreator ± Filemover ± Reviewer ± administrator ± bot ± flow bot + bureaucrat	steward, founder ± any
writeapi	Use of the write API
Permission	Allows user(s) to…	Blocked users	Unregistered users	Registered accounts	Auto-confirmed and Confirmed	Bots	Administrators	Bureaucrats	other groups

The userright proxyunbannable is assigned to administrators but has no effect since WMF wikis use mw:Extension:TorBlock instead of the default mediawiki proxy blocker. Administrators are not exempt from tor blocks, only users in the IP block exemptions usergroup are, due to the torunblocked userright.
IPs and new users are limited to 8 edits per minute. Autoconfirmed or confirmed users who are in no usergroup with the noratelimit userright are limited to 8 moves per minutes. Rollbackers in the same situation are limited to 100 rollbacks per minute.^[8] Account creations are subject to an IP based limit, set at 6 for WMF wikis, but users with noratelimit are unaffected.

User access level changes

Key to Rights
Granted	Inherited	Denied

Key to Project
Local	Global	Restricted

	Confirmed		Bot		Administrator		Bureaucrat		Pending changes reviewer		Rollbacker		Checkuser		Autopatrolled		Oversight		Import		Ipblock-Exempt		Edit Filter managers		Account Creator		Page mover		File mover
	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take	give	take
Administrator
Bureaucrat
Steward						¹
Founder

^1 Because bureaucrats were granted the ability to do this, stewards would refer most ordinary requests for removal of the sysop permission to them, but retain the right to remove the sysop permission when appropriate (such as emergencies or requests from the Arbitration Committee).

Notes

^ 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 administrator, 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.
^ Since August 2011, per Bugzilla: 18390
^ "Project:Account creators". MediaWikiWiki. 2015. Retrieved 2015-02-01. DefaultSettings.php grants the noratelimit user right to bureaucrats and sysops.
^ ^a ^b The Wikimedia Foundation has stated that an "RFA or RFA-identical process" is required for users to be granted access to deleted revisions.
^ The group has access to the browsearchive and deletedhistory rights, as well apihighlimits (Wikimedia NOC)
^ As of 2016
^ See the RfC at Wikipedia talk:User access levels/Archive 2#Rights of indef blocked users.
^ The API query https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=userinfo&uiprop=ratelimits%7Cgroups can be used to check those values.

Wikipedia:User access levels

Contents

Overview

User groups

Unregistered (not logged in) users

New users

Autoconfirmed and confirmed users

Extended confirmed users

Administrators and bureaucrats

Administrators

Bureaucrats

Other flags giving access to specialized functions

Pending changes reviewer

Rollback

Autopatrolled

File mover

Page mover

Accountcreator

Template editor

Ipblock-exempt

Edit Filter managers

Oversight

CheckUser

Course coordinator, instructor, online and campus volunteer

Mass message sender

Other flagged accounts

Bots

Founder

Researcher

Importers and Transwiki

Indefinitely blocked users

Global rights

Stewards

Other global user groups

Table

User access level changes

Notes

See also

Navigation menu

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