This is an information page that describes a communal consensus on some aspect or aspects of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is intended to supplement and/or clarify a process or some guidance. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; where something is inconsistent with this essay, please defer to those.
The user access level of editors affects their abilities to perform specific actions on Wikipedia. The user access level depends on which rights (also called permissions, user groups, bits, or flags) are assigned to accounts. There are two types of access leveling: automatic, and requested. User access levels are determined by whether the Wikipedian is logged in, the account's age and edits, and what manually assigned rights the account has.
Anyone can use the basic functionalities of Wikipedia even if they are not logged in. Unless they are blocked, they may freely edit most pages. Being logged in gives users many advantages, such as having their public IP address hidden and the ability to track one's own contributions. Additionally, once user accounts are more than a certain number of days old and have made more than a certain number of edits, they automatically become autoconfirmed or extended confirmed, allowing the direct creation of articles, the ability to move pages, to edit semi-protected and extended-protected pages, and upload files. Further access levels need to be assigned manually by a user with the appropriate authority. An editor with more experience and in good standing can attempt to become an administrator, which provides a large number of advanced permissions. Many other flags for specialized tasks are also available.
All visitors to the site, including unregistered users, are part of the Template:Mono group, and all logged-in registered users are also part of the Template:Mono group. Users are automatically promoted into the autoconfirmed/confirmed users pseudo-group of established users when their account is more than four days old and has ten edits, and the Template:Mono user group later on.
User groups have one or more rights assigned to them; for example, the ipblock-exempt (IP block exemptions) group have the 'Template:Mono' and 'Template:Mono' rights. All members of a particular user group will have access to these rights. The individual rights that are assigned to user groups are listed at Special:ListGroupRights. Terms like rights, permissions, bits and flags can refer to both user groups and the individual rights assigned to them.
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.
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Registered users may immediately 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. Edits that they make to a page that is under pending changes protection will be accepted, but will not be immediately visible to non-logged in users until they have been reviewed and approved. 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 - either via Special:Preferences, or by adding personalCSS or JavaScript rules to their common.css or common.js files.
Several actions on the English Wikipedia (such as article creation) are restricted to user accounts that are at least 4 days old and have made at least 10 edits to the encyclopedia. Users who meet these requirements are considered part of the pseudo-group Template:Mono. 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 MediaWiki 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 (including deleted edits) are considered autoconfirmed. However, users with the IP block exemption flag and who are editing through the Tor network are subjected to much stricter autoconfirmed thresholds: 90 days and 100 edits.[1]
Autoconfirmed or confirmed users can create articles (except for create-protected pages), move pages (except for move-protected pages), edit semi-protected pages, and upload files (including new versions of existing files, except for upload-protected files). Edits that they make to a page that is under pending changes protection will be accepted and immediately visible to non-logged in users without requiring review or approval. Autoconfirmed users are no longer required to enter a CAPTCHA for most edits, including, but not limited to, adding external links. Autoconfirmed users may email users that have their allow emails from brand-new users checkbox off. They also may save books to the Books namespace. In addition, the Edit filter has a number of warning settings that will no longer affect editors who are autoconfirmed.
In some situations, it is necessary for accounts to skip the customary confirmation period and to be confirmed right away. The Template:Mono group contains the exact same rights as the Template:Mono pseudo-group, but can be granted by administrators and event coordinators[2] as necessary. It is redundant to grant the Template:Mono right to an account that is already autoconfirmed since it provides the exact same abilities. To request this permission, see Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Confirmed. See Special:ListUsers/confirmed for a list of the 102 confirmed users.
As of Template:MONTHNAME 2019[update], there were approximately 1.7 million autoconfirmed users on the English Wikipedia, of which the vast majority were inactive. See Special:ActiveUsers for a list of recently active users.
Before 16 November 2016, confirmed and autoconfirmed users could also mark new pages as patrolled. This has been changed and now requires the new page reviewer right to do so.
A registered editor becomes Template:Mono automatically when the account is both at least 30 days old and has made at least 500 edits (including deleted edits).[3] This user access right allows editors to edit and create pages that are under extended confirmed protection. On English Wikipedia, it also enables editors to use the Content Translation tool. This access is included and bundled in the Template:Mono and Template:Mono (administrator) user groups. This group was primarily created to deal with specific arbitration remedies and community issues; the Arbitration Committee has since left community-use decisions up to the community.[4]
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Administrators, also commonly referred to as "admins" or sometimes "sysops" (system operators), are editors who are granted the rights by the community following a Request for Adminship (RfA). The RfA process involves in-depth and considerable discussion and examination of the candidate's activity and contributions as an editor and are granted the rights by community consensus. Administrators have exclusive 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 users, and the ability to edit fully protected pages. Administrators also have the ability to grant and remove most access rights to other users (account creator, autopatrolled, confirmed, file mover, edit filter helper, edit filter manager, event coordinator, extended confirmed, IP block exempt, mass message sender, new page reviewer, page mover, pending changes reviewer, rollback, template editor, and AutoWikiBrowser) 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 more editorial control over article content than other editors. They are required to follow all policies and guidelines and are held to the same level of accountability as non-administrators. They are not employees of the Wikimedia Foundation and should not be confused with Wikimedia system administrators ("sysadmins").
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Bureaucrats are exceptionally trusted editors who have the capability to perform certain actions on other users' accounts. These capabilities are granted by the community following a successful Requests for Bureaucratship (RfB).
Flags granted to users giving access to specialized functions
Unless otherwise noted, see Wikipedia:Requests for permissions to request the following rights. Some of these rights are automatically assigned to administrators.
Pending changes reviewer
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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 Template:Mono.
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Users who are given the rollback flag (Template:Mono user group) may revert consecutive revisions of an editor using the rollback feature. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.
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Members of this group have Template:Mono, 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 Template:Mono.
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Members of this group have Template:Mono, which allows them to mark pages created by others as patrolled or reviewed. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.
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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.
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The page mover user right (Template:Mono 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. They are also able to create and edit editnotices as well as move categories. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.
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The account creator user right (Template:Mono user group) is intended for users involved in the request an account process (ACC), and so have signed the Wikimedia Foundation's confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information. They 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. Additionally, account creators are able to create accounts with names that are otherwise blocked by the title blacklist. This right is automatically assigned to administrators and bureaucrats.[7]
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The eventcoordinator flag (Template:Mono user group) is intended for individuals involved with off-wiki outreach events to create accounts for their attendees. Event coordinators are not affected by the 6 account creation limit per day per IP. In addition, they can allow their event attendees to create new articles by temporarily adding newly created accounts to confirmed user group.
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Users who are given the templateeditor flag (Template:Mono user 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, as well as a few pages in the Wikipedia namespace. This right is intended to allow experienced template and module coders to make changes without having to request that an administrator make the edits for them. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.
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Users who are given the ipblock-exempt flag (Template:Mono user group) are not affected by autoblocks, blocks of IP addresses and ranges that are made with the "Prevent logged-in users from editing" option enabled,[8] and by Tor blocks.
The flag is intended for trusted users in good standing who are unfortunately affected by such blocks. Requests for this permission may be included with your unblock request. If you are affected by an IP address range block, you must send your unblock request using the Unblock Ticket Request System. If you are trying to edit through a blocked anonymous proxy or a VPN service, you must instead send your request to Template:Nospam, or contact a CheckUser directly.
This right is automatically assigned to administrators and bots.[9] If known, an administrator is also free to grant the right to affected good-faith editors without waiting for an unblock request.
Members of the edit filter manager group can create, modify, enable, disable, and delete edit filters as well as view private filters and their associated logs. This right is not assigned to administrators by default but they are allowed to grant the user right to themselves. These capabilities can also be granted to non-admins following a successful request at Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard.
Members of the edit filter helper group can view private edit filters and their associated logs. This access is also included in the administrator groups. These capabilities can also be granted to non-admins following a successful request at Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard.
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Users who are given the interface administrator flag (Template:Mono user group) have the ability to edit site-wide CSS, JavaScript and JSON pages (pages such as MediaWiki:Common.js or MediaWiki:Vector.css, or the gadget pages listed on Special:Gadgets), CSS/JS/JSON pages in another user's userspace, and pages in the Mediawiki namespace. Interface administrator access, along with access to another group that has undelete access is required to view deleted versions of pages only editable by this group. Because it provides the potential to send malicious CSS/JS/JSON code to execute in other users' browsers, this right may only be granted to existing administrators,[10] with two-factor authentication enabled on their accounts.[11] These capabilities can be granted following a successful request at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard.
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Users who are given the CheckUser flag (Template:Mono user group) have access to Special:CheckUser, a function page that allows them to view a list of all IP addresses used by a user account to edit the English Wikipedia, an extended list of all edits made from an IP (which includes edits that were made by any user accounts while using the specific IP), or a list of all user accounts that have used a given IP address. They also have access to the Checkuser log, which logs each time a Checkuser uses their tools to view any of the information listed. This user right is only granted to exceedingly few users and after a high level of scrutiny and review by the community, and after review and the support of the Arbitration Committee. Users must also be 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" first.[12]
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Users who are given the oversight flag (Template:Mono user group) have access to additional functions on the page deletion, revision deletion, and block function pages through which they can hide logs or revisions of pages (partially or entirely) from any form of usual access by all other users, including administrators. They also have access to the suppression log, where they can view actions made by other oversighters, as well as the content of the hidden revisions. This user right is only granted to exceedingly few users and after a high level of scrutiny and review by the community, and after review and the support of Arbitration Committee. Users must also be at least 18 years old and have signed the Wikimedia Foundation's confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information. Oversighters are also required to have passed a "RfA or RfA-identical process" first.[12]
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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 require less scrutiny than human edits.
For this reason, contributions from accounts with the bot flag (Template:Mono 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.
The [[Special:ListUsers/founder|Template:Mono]] group was created on the English Wikipedia by developer Tim Starling, without community input, as a unique group for Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales—although Larry Sanger is a co-founder, he has never been a member of this group.[13] 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. Wales is also a member of the founder global group, which has view-only rights across the Wikimedia network.
The Template:Mono 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. Originally the group did not have the ability to view the actual revisions of deleted pages. On May 26, 2020, after a request approved by the Wikimedia Foundation, the group was granted Template:Mono permissions, allowing researchers to access deleted contents as well.[14][15]
Transwiki importers is a group which gives editors the (import) permission for use on Special:Import. This interface allows users to copy pages, and optionally entire page histories, from certain other Wikimedia wikis. The import permission is also included in the administrators and importers user groups. There are currently 9 users in the transwiki importers group. This group is mostly deprecated and is only available for assignment by stewards following a special community approval discussion.
Importers is a similar group which gives editors the (importupload) permission as well as the (import) permission for use on Special:Import. Importers have the additional ability to import articles directly from XML (which may come from any wiki site). The importupload permission is also included in the stewards group. See Special:ListUsers/import for the 19 importers. This access is highly restricted and is only available for assignment to a limited number of very trusted users by stewards following a special community approval discussion.
All users can use Special:Export to create an XML export of a page and its history.
Any user account can be blocked, regardless of which user group(s) it belongs to. During the duration of the block, the blocking flag disables the user or IP's existing editing privileges depending on which block options are set by the administrator. A partial block still allows some parts of Wikipedia to be edited.
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.[16] This also applies to the user rights of site banned editors.[17]
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Stewardship is an elected role, and stewards are appointed globally across all public Wikimedia wikis.
Users who are members of the Template:Mono 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 Template:Mono or Template:Mono 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 Template:Mono and Template:Mono, as no other group is capable of making such changes except Foundation sysadmins and Trust and Safety staff.
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 Template:Mono user group on that wiki, perform the necessary function, and then remove themselves from the Template:Mono group using their steward rights.
Other global groups include WMF staff; sysadmins (system administrators); ombudsmen; OTRS-members (Volunteer Response Team); global bots; global rollbackers; global sysops (not enabled on English Wikipedia); interface editors. See Global rights policy and meta:User groups for information on these, as well as a full list.
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Generally, bureaucrats on the English Wikipedia are also administrators, and so have all the permissions of the Template:Mono user group in addition to those rights from the Template:Mono group. However, this is not a requirement of the MediaWiki software nor is it a formal requirement of the Requests for Bureaucratship process; 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.
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 minute. Rollbackers in the same situation are limited to 100 rollbacks per minute.[18] Account creations are subject to an IP based limit, set at 6 for WMF wikis, but users with noratelimit are unaffected.
^This flag only grants the exempted user to edit behind the IP address. IP block exempt users are not able to create accounts while behind an IP address that is also blocked with the "Prevent account creation" option enabled.
^Administrators and bots are not affected by autoblocks and hard IP address blocks. However, the ipblock-exempt flag must be added to the administrator or bot account as a separate user right to allow them to edit from IP addresses affected by Tor blocks.
