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 documentation page for that user right.

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

User groups and granting guidelines

The user groups administrators are able to grant and revoke include the following (not all granting guidelines are linked):

• Pending changes reviewer – accept/reject pending changes to articles under pending changes protection
• Account creator (granting guideline) – make a large number of accounts for other people who request them, for the purposes of the account creation program, education program, or an edit-a-thon
• IP block exempt – exempts the users from hardblocks on affecting their IP address
• Rollback (granting guideline) – revert the last user's consecutive edits on a given page to be undone with a single mouse click
• Autopatrolled – automatically set page creations by the user as patrolled
• File mover – rename media in the File namespace
• Template editor – allow coders to edit templates and modules that have been protected with the "protected template" protection level
• Mass message sender – send messages to multiple users at once via Special:MassMessage
• Edit filter manager – create and modify filters that are run against all edits
• Confirmed – 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)

And rights specific to the education program:

• Course coordinator
• Course online volunteer
• Course campus volunteer
• Course instructor

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 accountcreator 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).

See also

• Wikipedia:Requests for permissions