The user access level of editors affects their abilities to perform specific actions on Wikipedia. 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 Wikipedian 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 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. 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. An editor with more experience and in good standing can attempt to become an administrator, which provides a large number of advanced permissions. Many different flags for specialized tasks are also available.

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; some, such as rollbacker, pending changes reviewer, 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 made members of such groups as oversight and checkuser only with the approval of the Arbitration Committee, after signing the Wikimedia Foundation's confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information.

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 permissions only have local rights on the English Wikipedia wiki. Members of global user groups have rights across all Wikimedia Foundation wikis, although that access can sometimes be restricted by local wiki policies. 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.

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

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.

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.

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. 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 English Wikipedia 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/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 will immediately be visible to people who are not logged in without requiring review or approval (unless there are prior pending changes awaiting approval, in which case edits not made by reviewers or administrators will not become visible until the prior pending changes are accepted).

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. Autoconfirmed/confirmed users gain access to additional tools such as Wikipedia:Twinkle.

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 and event coordinators as necessary. 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 552 confirmed users.

As of April 2024, there were approximately 2.38 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 extendedconfirmed automatically on 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. The English Wikipedia also enables editors to use the Content Translation tool to create articles and the INDEX template on user pages. This access is included and bundled in the bot and sysop (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.

Extended confirmed 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.

See Special:ListUsers/extendedconfirmed for a list of the 72,711 extended confirmed users.

Administrators and bureaucrats are requested from pages other than Wikipedia:Requests for permissions.

Administrators, often referred to as "admins" or "sysops" (system operators), are editors who are granted the rights by the community following a successful 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. Candidates 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 and from 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.

Administrators are not employees of the Wikimedia Foundation and should not be confused with Wikimedia system administrators ("sysadmins").

See Special:ListUsers/sysop for a full list of the 853 English Wikipedia administrators.

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 Request for Bureaucratship (RfB).

Bureaucrats have access to Special:UserRights, enabling them to add users to the bureaucrat group (but not remove them), and add users to and remove users from the administrator, bot, and interface administrator user groups.

See Special:ListUsers/bureaucrat for a list of the 15 bureaucrats.

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

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 8,018 reviewers.

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 6,852 rollbackers.

Members of this group have autopatrol, which allows them to have their pages automatically patrolled on the New Pages list. Prior to June 2010, it was known as autoreviewer. Before December 2021, it was automatically assigned to administrators, but following an RFC, it was removed from the default toolkit. The 2021 RFC concluded that administrators are allowed to grant the user right to themselves without approval or a discussion beforehand, similar to the edit filter manager user right.

See Special:ListUsers/autoreviewer for a list of the 4,823 autopatrolled users.

Members of this group have patrol, which allows them to mark pages created by others as patrolled or reviewed. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.

See Special:ListUsers/patroller for a list of the 803 new page reviewers.

The file mover 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 388 file movers.

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. They are also able to create and edit editnotices as well as move categories. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.

See Special:ListUsers/extendedmover for a list of the 406 page movers.

The account creator user right (accountcreator 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.

See Special:ListUsers/accountcreator for a list of the 8 account creators.

The event coordinator flag (eventcoordinator 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. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.

See Special:ListUsers/eventcoordinator for a list of the 122 event coordinators.

Users who are given the template editor flag (templateeditor user group) are allowed to edit pages that are template-protected, 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.

See Special:ListUsers/templateeditor for a list of the 187 template editors.

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 802 affected users.

Members of the edit filter manager group can view, create, modify, enable, disable, and delete edit filters, including private edit filters that are hidden from public view. They can also view any associated logs that are generated by any edit filter. This right is not assigned to administrators by default, but they are allowed to grant the user right to themselves without approval or a discussion beforehand. The edit filter manager user right can also be granted to non-administrators following a successful request at the edit filter noticeboard.

See Special:ListUsers/abusefilter for a list of the 143 edit filter managers.

Members of the edit filter helper group have the ability to view all edit filters (including private edit filters that are hidden from being publicly viewed), as well as view their associated logs. It does not grant them the ability to modify or make any changes to edit filters. The user right is intended for editors who are interested in helping with edit filters or have demonstrated experience with helping with public edit filters on appropriate discussion pages, but do not yet meet the thresholds required to be able to modify them. The user right is also intended for users who are currently active administrators or edit filter managers on other Wikimedia wikis who would like to learn from the English Wikipedia, as well as, at the discretion of any checkuser, sockpuppet investigation (SPI) clerks and trainee clerks.

This access is also included in the administrator groups. These capabilities can also be granted to non-administrators following a successful request at the edit filter noticeboard.

See Special:ListUsers/abusefilter-helper for a list of the 23 edit filter helpers.

Members of this group may send messages to multiple users at once. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.

See Special:ListUsers/massmessage-sender for a list of the 52 mass message senders.

Users who are given the interface administrator flag (interface-admin 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), all CSS, JavaScript, and JSON pages regardless of location, 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, and JSON code to execute in other users' browsers, this right may only be granted to existing administrators with two-factor authentication enabled on their accounts. These capabilities can be granted following a successful request at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard.

See Special:ListUsers/interface-admin for a list of the 13 interface administrators.

Users who are granted and possess the CheckUser flag (checkuser user group) have access to Special:CheckUser, a function page that allows them to view a list of all IP addresses that have been used by a user account to edit the English Wikipedia, an extended list of all edits made from an IP address or range (which includes edits that were made by any user accounts while using the specific IP or range), or a list of all user accounts that have used a given IP address or range to edit the English Wikipedia. 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, typically around once a year (see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight § Appointments). 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.

See Special:ListUsers/checkuser for a list of the 55 CheckUsers.

Users who are granted and possess the Oversight flag (suppress user group) have access to additional options 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, typically around once a year (see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight § Appointments). 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.

See Special:ListUsers/suppress for a list of the 41 Oversighters.

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 296 bots.

A copyviobot is an approved bot that is given the (pagetriage-copyvio) permission, allowing it to use the API to tag pages listed on Special:NewPagesFeed as likely copyright violations.

See Special:ListUsers/copyviobot for a list of the 2 copyviobots.

The founder 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—see Special:ListUsers/founder. The group formerly gave Wales full access to user rights, and no longer has any function but continues to exist as a courtesy. Wales is also a member of the founder global group, which grants several more rights across the Wikimedia network.

The researcher group allows individuals approved by the Wikimedia Foundation to perform a title search for deleted pages, view deleted history entries, and view deleted contents. It was created in 2010 and expanded in 2020.

See Special:ListUsers/researcher for a list of the 0 current researchers and meta:Research:Special API permissions/Log for further details.

The Transwiki importers group 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 0 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 2 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.

See also the import log, transwiki log, Help:Import, and Wikipedia:Requests for page importation.

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.

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, their 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 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.

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 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.

• Generally, 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 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.

• 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, except that those granted the page mover usergroup are subject to an increased limit of 16 moves per minute. Rollbackers in the same situation are limited to 100 rollbacks per minute. Account creations are subject to an IP based limit, set at 6 for WMF wikis, but users with noratelimit are unaffected.

Group	Count	% held indirectly
Edit filter manager (abusefilter)	143	0%
Account creator (accountcreator)	861	99.1%
Autopatrolled (autoreviewer)	4,823	0%
Bot (bot)	296	0%
Bureaucrat (bureaucrat)	15	0%
CheckUser (checkuser)	55	0%
Event coordinator (eventcoordinator)	975	87.5%
Extended confirmed (extendedconfirmed)	73,564	1.2%
File mover (filemover)	1,241	68.7%
Founder (founder)	1	0%
Importer (import)	2	0%
Interface administrator (interface-admin)	13	0%
IP block exemption (ipblock-exempt)	802	0%
Mass message sender (massmessage-sender)	905	94.3%
Page mover (extendedmover)	1,259	67.8%
New page reviewer (patroller)	1,656	51.5%
Researcher (researcher)	0	0%
Pending changes reviewer (reviewer)	8,871	9.6%
Rollbacker (rollbacker)	7,705	11.1%
Oversight (suppress)	41	0%
Administrator (sysop)	853	0%
Template editor (templateeditor)	1,040	82%

• Course coordinator, instructor, online and campus volunteer

  Enabled users to manage course pages in the "Education Program:" namespace, which was shut down in June 2018

• Afttest and Afttest-hide

  Only granted by WMF staff, these enabled users to delete and/or hide article feedback. Removed in March 2014 after one year.

• EP staff, administrator, campus-ambassador, online-ambassador, and instructor

  Used by users to coordinate and work with students, instructors, and institutions as part of the education program. Deprecated since 2013.

• Meta:User groups
• Manual:User rights on MediaWiki
• Special:ListGroupRights
• See what usergroup a user is in
• Wikipedia:Editing restrictions
• Wikipedia:Editorial oversight and control (explains the access structure from the perspective of quality control on Wikipedia)
• Wikipedia User permissions API
• Wikipedia:Requests for permissions (to request certain userrights)
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations