Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Granting and revoking user rights

One of the administrative privileges is the ability to grant and revoke user groups, more commonly referred to under the misnomer permissions or rights. Each user right has a set of prerequisites that candidates should generally meet. A brief outline of expectations can be found at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions#Permissions, but for the most up-to-date information you should refer to the granting guidelines listed below in bold.

Users can request that a right be added to their account at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions. In general, granting of rights is not done without the user's consent, with the exception of autopatrolled.

User groups and granting guidelines

See Special:ListGroupRights for the full list of user groups

The following are user groups administrators are able to grant and revoke. Note the granting guidelines may link to the admin instructions at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions. You can refer to these pages for the accepted prerequisites of a given permission.

• Account creator (granting guideline) – make a large number of accounts for other people who request them, primarily for the purposes of the account creation program or remotely assisting edit-a-thons. This access has mostly been replaced by the "Event coordinator" group.
• Autopatrolled (granting guideline) – automatically set page creations by the user as patrolled
• Confirmed (granting guideline) – edit articles that are semi-protected, move pages and upload files (automatically granted to accounts that are over 4 days old and with 10 edits)
• IP block exempt (granting guideline) – exempts the users from hardblocks on affecting their IP address
• Edit filter manager (granting guideline) – create and modify filters that are run against all edits. This right has extreme potential for (accidental) abuse and should never be granted to non-admins without prior discussion at the edit filter noticeboard
• Event coordinator (granting guideline | revocation criteria) – allows editors to create multiple new accounts, and to temporarily confirm accounts so that they can create new articles.
• Extended confirmed (granting guideline) – edit articles that are extended confirmed protected (automatically granted to accounts that are over 30 days old and with 500 edits) and is primarily used to enforce arbitration committee restrictions, should generally not be manually issued.
• File mover (granting guideline) – rename media in the File namespace
• New page reviewer (granting guideline | revocation criteria) – allows editors to mark pages as reviewed.
• Mass message sender (granting guideline) – send messages to multiple users at once via Special:MassMessage
• Page mover (granting guideline | revocation criteria) – move pages and subpages without leaving redirects, move categories
• Pending changes reviewer (granting guideline) – accept/reject pending changes to articles under pending changes protection
• Rollback (granting guideline | revocation criteria) – revert the last user's consecutive edits on a given page to be undone with a single mouse click
• Template editor (granting guideline | revocation criteria) – allow users to edit templates and modules that have been protected with the "protected template" protection level

Granting permissions

The management page, accessible through Special:UserRights

1. To modify a user's rights, browse to Special:UserRights.
2. Type in the name of the user you wish to grant rights to. In this case, type in "ThisIsaTest" for User:ThisIsaTest. If you type in a non-existent username, you will be informed of this. Also make sure that you are giving the right to the user you intend to give it to, and not a possible imposter of that user.
3. Press the "Edit user groups" button to bring up the User rights management screen. This screen can also be accessed by via the link "User rights management" under the Tools section of your sidebar, visible when you are on a page in a user's userspace. In our case, you can find the link when you are on the page User:ThisIsaTest.
4. On the User rights management screen, you will see two lists: one titled Groups you can change and the other Groups you cannot change.
5. Check the box next to the right you wish to grant in the "Groups you can change". For this purposes of this guide let's go with Rollback.
6. In the lower box titled Reason for change, explain why you are giving the user the right (e.g. "testing on test account" or "trusted user active in counter-vandalism"). You may wish to link to a discussion, or to a noticeboard such as WP:PERM/R if that's where the right was requested
7. Press Save User Groups. The screen will blink and the User rights log at the bottom of the screen will be changed.
8. At this point, you will have changed group membership for User:ThisIsaTest from (none) to rollback.
9. Close the User rights management special page.

Removing permissions

1. Repeat steps 1 to 3 above, again noting you can get to the user rights management screen via the "User rights management" link if you are viewing within their userspace.
2. In the box called Groups you can change, the box next to "rollback" will be checked: click to remove this check.
3. In the lower box titled Reason for change, explain why you are removing the user's rollback access. Here, use "Testing on test account completed".
4. Press Save User Groups. The screen will blink and the User rights log at the bottom of the screen will be reflected.
5. At this point, you will have changed group membership for User:ThisIsaTest from rollback to (none).

Tools

Executing user rights changes

• User:MusikAnimal/userRightsManager.js - for use at WP:PERM. Click "assign permissions" on any PERM page, enter any closing remarks in the popup dialog, and the script will grant the right with a permalink to the discussion, and issue the corresponding talk page template.
• User:Amalthea/MakeReviewer.js - provides a link on userpages to give the user reviewer rights; notifies the user with a template.
• User:Amalthea/MakeRollbacker.js - provides a link on userpages to give the user rollback rights; notifies the user with a template.

Checking candidate's eligibility

• xtools
• Supercount
• Global contributions
• Pages created
• Nonautomated edit counter
• BLP edit counter
• User contribution visualizer
• WikiChecker (if you get a "Forbidden" keep refreshing until it goes away)
• Special:CentralAuth

See also

• Wikipedia:Requests for permissions
• Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Administrator instructions