Wikimania:User access levels

PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION. FOR CLARIFICATIONS IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE USE THE TALK PAGE.

The user access level of editors affects their abilities to perform specific actions on Wikimania wiki. A user's 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 user is logged in, the account's age and edit count, and what manually assigned rights the account has.

Anyone can use the basic functionalities of Wikimania even if they are not logged in. Being logged in gives users many advantages, such as having their public IP address hidden and the ability to track one's own contributions. Furthermore, 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. Administrator rights are assigned on an as-needed basis, usually to the members of current Core Organising Team, WMF staffers supporting Wikimania, Wikimania steering committee members, and other Wikimedia community members who have demonstrated a need for the tool.

Overview

All visitors to the site, including unregistered users, are part of the * group, and all logged-in registered users are also part of the user 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 extended confirmed user group later on, at 30 days of age and 500 edits.

Other flags are only given upon request at Wikimania:Requests for rights: bot, sysop, and bureaucrat.

User groups have one or more rights assigned to them; for example, the IP block-exempt (IP block exemptions) group has the 'ipblock-exempt' and 'torunblocked' 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.

Permissions requested at Requests for rights only have local rights on the Wikimania wiki. Members of global user groups have rights across all Wikimedia Foundation wikis. Users registered at Wikimedia wikis also have registered user rights to other Wikimedia wikis if their account is a SUL or unified login account. Both local and global user group membership across Wikimedia wikis can be viewed at Special:CentralAuth.

Unregistered (IP or not logged in) users

"WP:IP" redirects here. For intellectual property, see Wikipedia:Copyrights.

Users who are not logged in are identified by their IP address rather than a username, 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 (including 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. Furthermore, they cannot upload files or images. They must answer a CAPTCHA if they wish to make an edit which involves the addition of external links, and click a confirmation 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 displaying the Anoneditwarning system message.

User groups granted to accounts

Standard user rights

Each of Wikipedia's account permissions - whether systematically granted (automatically applied), or approved and granted by an administrator or bureaucrat - are listed and described in-depth. This information can be located by clicking here.

Registered (new) users

See also: Wikipedia:Why create an account?

You are not logged in or registered. You can log in or create an account here.You are logged in.

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. They may customize their Wikimedia interface and its options as they wish—either via Special:Preferences, or by adding personal CSS or JavaScript rules to their common.css or common.js files. They may create and maintain a watchlist.

Autoconfirmed and confirmed users

You are not logged in, so you are not autoconfirmed. Your account is autoconfirmedis not autoconfirmed.

Several actions on the Wikimania wiki (such as creating and editing pages in the 'years' and Template namespaces) are restricted to user accounts that are at least 4 days old and have made at least 10 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 MediaWiki software. Although the precise requirements for autoconfirmed status vary according to circumstances, most Wikimania wiki user accounts that are at least 4 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.

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. In addition, the edit filter has a number of warning settings that will no longer affect editors who are autoconfirmed.

Confirmed users

Sometimes, it is necessary for accounts to skip the customary confirmation period and to be confirmed right away. The confirmed group contains the exact same rights as the autoconfirmed pseudo-group, but can be granted by administrators. It is redundant to grant the confirmed 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 1 confirmed users.

Pending: a bot will be created to automatically elevate new accounts upon edit as an non-autoconfirmed editor to confirmed users for a period of three months if the editors are established editors in any of Wikimedia wikis (10 global edits, 4 days old).

Extended confirmed users

"WP:EXTENDEDCONFIRMED" redirects here. For extended confirmed protection, see Wikipedia:Protection policy § Extended confirmed protection.

You are not logged in, so you are not extended confirmed. Your account is extended confirmed.does not have the extended confirmed flag, but you are an administrator, so your account is extended confirmed by default.

A registered editor becomes extendedconfirmed automatically one edit after the account has existed for at least 30 days and has made at least 500 edits. This user access right allows editors to edit and create pages that are under extended confirmed protection. This access is included and bundled in the bot, translationadmin, and sysop (administrator) user groups. This group was primarily created to allow administrators for a more targeted remedy, i.e. allow edits to highly visible pages or templates to a larger group of users than just administrators.

Membership in the extendedconfirmed group is revoked if a user is in another group with which it is redundant, and in rare cases may be revoked for other reasons, such as if a user games the system by making many trivial edits. If extended confirmed is revoked, it may be re-granted at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Extended confirmed. That page may also be used to request early grants of the group, but requests are almost never accepted except for legitimate alternate accounts of users who are extended confirmed on other accounts or in other Wikimedia wikis.

Pending: a bot will be created to autopromote extended-confirmed editors for a period of 3 months upon request at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Extended confirmed if the editor is an extended confirmed editor on another Wikimedia wiki and is not blocked on that wiki as well as not being blocked on more than 2 wikis.

See Special:ListUsers/extendedconfirmed for a list of the 1 extended confirmed users.

Flags granted to users after approval by an administrator or bureaucrat

Unless otherwise noted, see Wikipedia:Requests for permissions to request the following rights. Some of these rights are automatically assigned to administrators.

IP block exemption

See also: Wikipedia:IP block exemption

Users who are given the ipblock-exempt flag (ipblock-exempt 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, 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 checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org, or contact a CheckUser directly.

This right is automatically assigned to administrators and bots. Administrators are also free to grant the right to good-faith editors known to be affected by IP blocks, without waiting for an unblock request.

See Special:ListUsers/ipblock-exempt for a list of the 9 affected users.

Other flagged accounts

Bots

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 require 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 9 bots.

Blocked users

Any user account can be blocked, regardless of which user group(s) it belongs to. While the account is blocked, 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.

Blocked users are listed on Special:BlockList.

Indefinitely blocked users

If an editor is blocked indefinitely but not site-banned, their rights should generally be left as is. Rights specifically related to the reason for blocking may be removed at administrators' discretion; certain rights might also later be removed under applicable inactivity rules.

When an editor is indefinitely site-banned by the community, all manually-granted permissions should be removed. If the ban is reversed due to actual error (e.g. votestacking in the ban thread), the rights should be restored, but otherwise a user who successfully appeals their ban is not automatically entitled to regain the rights.

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

Template:Seealso 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 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 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

Main articles: Wikipedia:Global rights policy and meta:User groups

Other global groups include WMF staff, sysadmins (system administrators), ombuds, Volunteer Response Team (VRT) members, global bots, global rollbackers, global sysops (not enabled on English Wikipedia), and interface editors. See Global rights policy and meta:User groups for information on these, as well as a full list.