Manual:User rights

A default MediaWiki installation assigns certain rights to default groups (see below). You can change the default rights by editing the $wgGroupPermissions array in LocalSettings.php with the syntax.

$wgGroupPermissions['group']['right'] = true /* or false */;

If a member has multiple groups, they get all the permissions from each of the groups they are in. All users, including anonymous users, are in the '*' group; all registered users are in the 'user' group. In addition to the default groups, you can arbitrarily create new groups using the same array.

This example will disable viewing of all pages not listed in $wgWhitelistRead , then re-enable for registered users only:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;
# The following line is not actually necessary, since it's in the defaults. Setting '*' to false doesn't disable rights for groups that have the right separately set to true!
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['read'] = true;

This example will disable editing of all pages, then re-enable for users with confirmed email addresses only:

# Disable for everyone.
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
# Disable for users, too: by default 'user' is allowed to edit, even if '*' is not.
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['edit'] = false;
# Make it so users with confirmed email addresses are in the group.
$wgAutopromote['emailconfirmed'] = APCOND_EMAILCONFIRMED;
# Hide group from user list.
$wgImplicitGroups[] = 'emailconfirmed';
# Finally, set it to true for the desired group.
$wgGroupPermissions['emailconfirmed']['edit'] = true;

You can create new user groups by defining permissions for the according group name in $wgGroupPermissions[ 'group-name' ] where group-name is the actual name of the group.

Additionally to assigning permissions, you should create these three wiki pages with fitting content:

• MediaWiki:Group-<group-name> (content: Name of the group)
• MediaWiki:Group-<group-name>-member (content: Name of a member of the group)
• MediaWiki:Grouppage-<group-name> (content: Name of the group page)

By default, bureaucrats can add users to, or remove them from, any group. However, if you are using Manual:$wgAddGroups and Manual:$wgRemoveGroups , you may need to customize those instead.

This example will create an arbitrary "projectmember" group that can block users and delete pages, and whose edits are hidden by default in the recent changes log:

$wgGroupPermissions['projectmember']['bot'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['projectmember']['block'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['projectmember']['delete'] = true;

In this example, you would probably also want to create these pages:

• MediaWiki:Group-projectmember (content: Project members)
• MediaWiki:Group-projectmember-member (content: Project member)
• MediaWiki:Grouppage-projectmember (content: Project:Project Members)

This will ensure that the group will be referred to as "Project members" throughout the interface, and a member will be referred to as a "Project member", and overviews will link the group name to Project:Project members.

This example disables write access (page editing and creation) by default, creates a group named "writer", and grants it write access. Users can be manually added to this group via Special:UserRights:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createpage'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['edit'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['createpage'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['writer']['edit'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['writer']['createpage'] = true;

In this example, you would probably also want to create these pages:

• MediaWiki:Group-writer (content: Writers)
• MediaWiki:Group-writer-member (content: Writer)
• MediaWiki:Grouppage-writer (content: Project:Write)

MediaWiki out of the box comes with a number of predefined groups. Most of these groups can be removed by unsetting the according array keys, among them $wgGroupPermissions[ '<group-name>' ]. For details, see below.

This example will eliminate the bureaucrat group entirely. It is necessary to ensure that all six of these variables are unset for any group that one wishes to remove from being listed at Special:ListGroupRights; however, merely unsetting $wgGroupPermissions will suffice to remove it from Special:UserRights. This code should be placed after any require_once lines that add extensions, such as Extension:AntiSpoof containing code that gives bureaucrats group permissions by default.

unset( $wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat'] );
unset( $wgRevokePermissions['bureaucrat'] );
unset( $wgAddGroups['bureaucrat'] );
unset( $wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat'] );
unset( $wgGroupsAddToSelf['bureaucrat'] );
unset( $wgGroupsRemoveFromSelf['bureaucrat'] );

In some extensions (Flow, Semantic MediaWiki, etc.), rights are added during extension registration or in a registration function. In this case, it could be necessary to use a registration function in LocalSettings.php to remove some predefined user groups:

$wgExtensionFunctions[] = function() use ( &$wgGroupPermissions ) {
    unset( $wgGroupPermissions['oversight'] );
    unset( $wgGroupPermissions['flow-bot'] );
};

With the above mechanism, you can remove the groups sysop, bureaucrat and bot, which - if used - can be assigned through the usual user permission system. However, it is currently impossible to remove the user group. This group is not assigned through the usual permission system. Instead, every registered user automatically is a member of that group. This is hardcoded in MediaWiki and currently cannot be changed easily.

The following user rights are available in the latest version of MediaWiki. If you are using an older version, look at Special:Version on your wiki and see if your version is covered in the "Versions" column.

The following groups are available in the latest version of MediaWiki. If you are using an older version then some of these may not be implemented.

From MW 1.12, you can create your own groups into which users are automatically promoted (as with autoconfirmed and emailconfirmed) using $wgAutopromote . You can even create any custom group by just assigning rights to them.

The default rights are defined in MainConfigSchema.php .

• Default values in HEAD version: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/MW/browse/master/includes/MainConfigSchema.php
• The default values in the latest stable MediaWiki release, version 1.42, are available here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/MW/browse/REL1_42/includes/MainConfigSchema.php
• Additional rights: you should be able to list all the permissions available on your wiki by running PermissionManager::getAllRights().

Information for coders only follows.

If you're adding a new right in core, for instance to control a new special page, you are required to add it to the list of available rights in PermissionManager.php , $coreRights (example). If you're doing so in an extension , you instead need to use $wgAvailableRights .

You probably also want to assign it to some user group by editing $wgGroupPermissions described above.

If you want this right to be accessible to external applications by OAuth or by bot passwords, then you will need to add it to a grant by editing $wgGrantPermissions .

// create projectmember-powers right
$wgAvailableRights[] = 'projectmember-powers';

// add projectmember-powers to the projectmember-group
$wgGroupPermissions['projectmember']['projectmember-powers'] = true;

// add projectmember-powers to the 'basic' grant so we can use our projectmember powers over an API request
$wgGrantPermissions['basic']['projectmember-powers'] = true;

You also need to add right-[name] and action-[name] interface messages to /languages/i18n/en.json (with documentation in qqq.json). The right-* messages can be seen on Special:ListGroupRights and the action-* messages are used in a sentence like "You do not have permission to ...".

• Special:ListGroupRights – Links to this help page and might contain not yet documented rights
• Help:User rights and groups – Help page describing use of the Special:Userrights interface (for bureaucrats)
• Manual:Setting user groups in MediaWiki – Information about managing and the assignment of user groups.
• Manual:$wgNamespaceProtection
• Manual:$wgAutopromote
• Manual:$wgAddGroups , Manual:$wgRemoveGroups
• Manual:Preventing access – Examples
• Manual:Establishing a hierarchy of bureaucrats
• Category:User rights extensions – Many extensions relating to user rights