Bureaucrat

Within Wikimedia projects, a bureaucrat is a user who has the technical ability to:

• Promote other users to administrator or bureaucrat;
• Grant and revoke a user's bot flag;
• Add and remove users from custom local groups created by local consensus like account creator, deleter, etc;
• Remove a user's administrator and/or bureaucrat flags on some projects listed below.

Stewards fulfill these roles on wikis without bureaucrats using the requests for permissions page. A small community generally doesn't require a local bureaucrat, because stewards can easily handle the low traffic of requests from that wiki with little delay; generally a user with this access is not needed until several local administrators are present. Other positions may be subject to global policies like the Checkuser policy and the Oversight policy, which define minimum community requirements. The default configuration of the MediaWiki software permits bureaucrats with access to Special:UserRights to add and remove users from all user groups. On Wikimedia projects only stewards have full access to Special:UserRights, while bureaucrats can add/remove only a subset of rights.

Promoting users and bots

See also: a tutorial

If you are a bureaucrat, to give or remove another user administrator, bureaucrat or bot access (or any other access), go to Special:UserRights on the wiki where you are a bureaucrat. There is a link to this on the list of special pages.

You will see the following form:

Type the user's name into the box, and enter a reason for the change. Choose the rights you wish to assign/remove to the user by ticking/unticking the relevant boxes. Note that if the user group has an asterisk (*) next to it, you will not be able to remove it yourself. When you are done, press the Save user groups button.

The user will gain their access immediately and the action will be recorded at the User rights log.

If you make a mistake and need to remove an access level which you cannot remove, contact a steward.

Renaming users

See also: a tutorial

Prior to 15 September 2014, bureaucrats were able to rename local accounts through Special:RenameUser. The renameuser right was removed from bureaucrats' toolset as part of SUL finalization. After this date, only stewards are able to rename local accounts. Renaming of global accounts are now done by global renamers and stewards. See global rename for details.

Removing access

Below is a list of public wikis where bureaucrats can remove sysop and bureaucrat access. Normally these removals have to be done by the stewards. On all private or fishbowl wikis, bureaucrats are able to remove both administrator and bureaucrat flags.

both administrator and bureaucrat flags
Wiki	Bug	Fixed on	Notes
Meta	bug 13509	24.04.2008	Removed per phab:T106291.
ru.wikisource	bug 14568	05.07.2008	It looks like this was set inadvertently. Now removed phab:T44105
se chapter wiki	bug 14665	05.07.2008	It looks like this was set inadvertently, but the Swedish chapter board wishes to keep this configuration.
no.wikibooks	bug 13853	03.06.2009	It looks like this was set inadvertently.Now removed bugzilla:42105
fi.wikipedia	No bug	04.03.2009	Originally very likely to have been set inadvertently in March 2009.
	bug 42114	04.01.2013	Local consensus reached (see bugs 42114 and 42105, and this summary).
fi chapter wiki	bug 25668	27.10.2010
wikimania2014 wiki	bug 55480	11.10.2013	Wiki closed, reset to default.
hu.wikipedia	bug 72055	16.10.2014
pt.wikipedia	bug T107661	11.08.2015	Local consensus
only administrator flag
en.wiktionary	No bug		Per a community vote and bug 42113, enwiktionary bureaucrats lost the power to remove the bureaucrat right (which was apparently never asked for).
pa-us chapter wiki	bug 10611	16.09.2008	Wiki was closed.
uk chapter wiki	bug 17388	26.02.2009	Wiki was redirected.
simple.wikipedia	bug 20271	24.09.2009
simple.wiktionary	bug 22522	22.02.2010
en.wikinews	bug 23392	08.05.2010
hi.wiktionary	bug 29702	11.07.2011	Removed per task T214765.
en.wikipedia	bug 18390	11.08.2011
ru.wikipedia	bug 30307	11.08.2011
ba.wikipedia	bug 33769	17.01.2012
fr.wikipedia	bug 35258	12.04.2012	Community Consensus
en.wikivoyage	bug 43851	17.01.2013
test.wiki
fa.wikipedia	T140810	20.07.2016	Community consensus
outreach.wiki	bug 23118	09.04.2010	Ability to remove bureaucrat flag was removed in phab:T214133.
nyc.wikimedia	task T226591	26.06.2019	Wikimedia New York City Chapter wiki.