File:Wikipedia simplified.PNG

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:

	This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Subject to disclaimers.
	You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.
	This licensing tag was added to this file as part of the GFDL licensing update.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/CC BY-SA 3.0Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0truetrue

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License. Subject to disclaimers.http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.htmlGFDLGNU Free Documentation Licensetruetrue

Summary[edit]

This image attempts to categorize Wikipedia editors into a social hierarchy; higher levels on the diagram indicate increasing levels of trust. The diagram is not intended to be authoritative; furthermore, administrative, checkuser and oversight privileges are functional duties, not titles of esteem. Indeed, the function of an administrator is likened to that of a w:janitor^[1][2][3] because of the duties of cleaning up after users who engage in vandalism or other unconstructive edits, and part of the administrator's symbol is a mop.^[1] Administrators might also be compared to customer-service reps.

key[edit]

Blue denotes entities that are part of the Wikimedia Foundation; black and gray comprise the English-language Wikipedia community. There are dozens of other (language-based) Wikipedia, wiktionary, wikinews, wikibook, wikisource, etc. communities not depicted on this diagram; membership as a registered user in any of these confers elective franchise, but one is only entitled to vote once regardless of how many communities one is a member of, and if one is blocked or banned from any Wikipedia community one is not permitted to vote in the board election.

References for this description (or part of this) or for the depiction in the file are not provided.

In the diagram, solid black or blue text indicates users with elective franchise; gray text indicates no elective franchise.

Solid lines with arrows at the end denote direct supervision. Dotted lines with arrows indicate authority other than direct supervision. Upward-pointing arrows indicate some type of voting. Placement of items on the left or right side of the diagram has no meaning.

summary of user rights[edit]

An authoritative description of user privileges can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_access_levels. In summary, administrators are the entry-level privileged user; bureaucrats are election judges; oversight is the ability to definitively remove items from page-revision histories, and to delete content in such a way that not even administrators can recover it; and checkusers can uncover the IP address behind a registered username in case of suspected abusive sockpuppetry. The Mediation Committee is an independent group that selects its own members; although they have no special privileges, it is placed near the top of the diagram to indicate the high esteem in which its function is held.

Except in extraordinary circumstances such as in cases where the board or office staff intervenes, the arbitration committee has final authority to interpret the policies of the English Wikipedia; its members are recommended by the community by means of an advisory (non-binding) election, and appointed by the founder. Stewards hold one of the highest privilege levels on the system, but they rarely, if ever, exercise their authority over any Wikipedia (such as the English-language Wikipedia) that has an arbitration committee. The sole function of the ombudsmen is to handle complaints that report violations of the privacy policy.
Only the office staff are paid.

notes[edit]