Wikipedia:Core administrator rights

Block, protect, and delete are the core set of maintenance tools which should only be given to administrators.

It is often proposed that various rights and abilities that Wikipedia administrators have be unbundled from the administrator toolset and given to other editors. This has been proposed successfully on several occasions. However, there are three administrator rights which have never been successfully unbundled. These are the three core administrator rights:

  • Blocking – the ability to prevent users, IP addresses, and IP address ranges from editing Wikipedia (either site-wide, or in part)
  • Protection – the ability to restrict editing and moving on specific pages, the creation of specific pages, or the uploading of new versions of locally uploaded files
  • Deletion – the ability to remove, restore, and view deleted pages, as well as revisions and logs

Currently, only administrators have the ability to perform these actions, and it is unlikely that the ability to perform these actions will ever be given to other users, as they are intimately related to each other and sit at the core of administrative work on Wikipedia.