Wikipedia:User groups
 | This is an information page. It is not a Wikipedia policy or guideline; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
User groups are groups that an editor can apply for in order to receive advanced tools to help them with editing the encyclopedia. There are also some default user groups for logged-out editors and logged-in editors. Additionally, after making some edits, logged-in editors will be automatically assigned to certain user groups.
On the technical side, user groups are a collection of user rights which are assigned to various editors. Examples of user groups include extended confirmed, rollbacker, and administrator. User rights are actions an editor can perform, such as block, protect, edit, and rollback. User rights are assigned to user groups, and user groups are assigned to editors. A user group can have multiple user rights, and an editor can be in multiple user groups.
A specific editor's user groups can be checked at Special:UserRights. The complete list of English Wikipedia user groups and their user rights is at Special:ListGroupRights and is also summarized on this page. The complete list of global user groups (user groups that assign user rights on all 1,000 Wikimedia wikis) is at meta:Special:GlobalGroupPermissions.
Unregistered users
Users who are not logged in are identified by a temporary account identifier (or previously 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 to restrict editing.[1] They may create talk pages in any talk namespace, but must 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 Autocreate-edit-warning system message.
Registered user accounts
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 is at Special:ListGroupRights.
User groups usually conferred automatically
New accounts
You are not logged in or registered. Log in or create an account.You are logged in.
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 styling or JavaScript customization. They may create and maintain a watchlist.
Registered users may immediately email other users if they activate an email address in their user preferences.
Confirmed and autoconfirmed accounts
You are not logged in, so you are not autoconfirmed.Your account is autoconfirmedis not autoconfirmed.
Several actions on the English Wikipedia (such as article creation) are restricted to user accounts that have made at least 10 edits to the English Wikipedia and after 4 days have passed since the time of their first edit.[2] Users who meet these requirements are automatically considered part of the autoconfirmed user group by the MediaWiki software. The "confirmation" of accounts is almost always performed automatically by the MediaWiki software, but an administrator or an event coordinator can manually confirm an account by adding it to the confirmed user group.[3]
The required threshold for the autoconfirmed user group is checked every time a user attempts to perform a restricted action; if they are met, permission is granted automatically by the MediaWiki software.
Once an account has reached the required autoconfirmed threshold, they will have the exact same user rights as accounts that were manually added to the confirmed user group; it is redundant to grant the confirmed right to an account that has already reached the required autoconfirmed threshold, since it provides the exact same abilities. To request an account to be manually added to the confirmed user group, see Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Confirmed. See Special:ListUsers/confirmed for a list of the 516 confirmed users.
Confirmed and autoconfirmed users can perform the following actions:
- create articles, move pages, and upload files (including new versions of existing files).[4][5]
- edit semi-protected pages.
- make instant changes to pages under pending changes protection.[6]
- email users that have their