Manual:Setting user groups in MediaWiki

< MediaWiki User's Guide

MediaWiki does not yet have an interface for setting the user_rights field of user accounts. Assigning accounts 'sysop' status has to be done manually by issuing an SQL query in the database. Usually you'll want to do something like this:

UPDATE user SET user_rights='sysop' WHERE user_name='The Username';

The user_rights field is actually a comma-separated list; presently four values are recognized by the software:

sysop
The most common use. A user marked as 'sysop' can delete and undelete pages, block and unblock IPs, issue read-only SQL queries to the database, and use a shortcut revert-to-previous-contributor's-revision feature in contribs. (See en:Wikipedia:Administrators for info on sysops on Wikipedia specifically.)

developer
This is largely obsolete and will be removed from future versions of the software.

bureaucrat
This is a user that is allowed to turn other users into sysops.

bot
A registered bot account. Edits by an account with this set will not appear by default in Recentchanges; this is intended for mass imports of data without flooding human edits from view. (Add &hidebots=0 to list changes made by bots e.g. like this)