Global actions refer to several administrative actions that when taken have a global effect; that is, they affect all Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) public wikis, such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikibooks, in all available languages. These wikis are all listed at Special:SiteMatrix. Global actions include global blocks, global locks, global bans, and global rights.

Full descriptions and policies can be found in pages in Category:Global actions on the Meta-Wiki site; this is brief overview only, and the relevant Meta-Wiki pages should be consulted in case of problems. The stewards' handbook contains practical advice on how stewards should proceed.

Global blocks prevent editing by accounts or logged-out users on all public Wikimedia wikis, except for Meta-Wiki. They are applied for cross-wiki vandalism, spamming, or other types of disruption, or to block open proxies. Blocks can be applied to accounts, IP addresses or IP address ranges. Options and policies are similar to local blocks; key points include:

• Access to user email can be blocked if account creation is disabled
• Account creation is disabled by default, but can be enabled per-block by a steward
• Optionally they can also be hard-blocks, which means logged-in registered users cannot normally edit from those IP addresses.
• There is no option for autoblocks, though this will be added soon.

When blocking IP addresses, there are some other additional key points:

• Range blocks are an option.
• They may only be given for a fixed period of time, per policy.
• Logged-in users are affected by hard-blocks, but can be exempt if they are a member of the "global IP block exempt" global user group.

As of 18 July 2024, global blocks can be applied directly to registered users. Registered users can be globally locked (see below), but global blocks are preferred if the steward wishes to temporarily prevent access or if the target is a temporary account.

Requests for global blocks should be made at m:SRG (Steward requests/Global at Meta-Wiki). Global blocks can be appealed by email at stewardswikimedia.org , or through their Meta-Wiki talk page if available. Globally blocked IPs/Users can also be unblocked locally, for that wiki only, by any local administrator at Special:GlobalBlockWhitelist.

Global locks prevent registered users (i.e. users with accounts) from logging into their accounts, and will apply to all Wikimedia wikis; attempts to do so will be met with an error message. Locks cannot be applied to IP editors. Again the main criteria for global locks is cross-wiki abuse of some kind (vandalism, spamming, etc.); but some other particularly serious conduct issues can also lead to global locks, such as accounts with offensive or abusive usernames, and globally banned users will have their accounts locked.

The locking of accounts is often permanent, but can be applied as a temporary measure to suspected compromised accounts until they are returned to their rightful owners. Locked accounts can be identified by other users by looking at user contributions pages, which will have the message "This account is globally locked. See global account details for more information."; or by looking at global account information, where the global account information section will contain "This account is locked. See the global account details on Meta-Wiki for more details.".

Requests for global locks should be made at m:SRG (Steward requests/Global at Meta-Wiki). Global locks can be appealed by email at stewardswikimedia.org . In the case of suspected compromised account locking see Wikipedia:Compromised accounts.

Global bans are formal revocations of editing and other access privileges against members of the Wikimedia wiki editing community. They are intended to be permanent measures. Global bans apply to users rather than users' accounts, but they are enforced with global locks. Serious cross-wiki abuse is the usual reason for global bans, although simple disruption (e.g. vandalism or spamming) is usually met with global locks instead. There are two types of global ban:

• Global bans enacted by the community, in accordance with a request for comment as described at m:Global bans.
• Global bans enacted by the WMF, in accordance with m:WMF Global Ban Policy. It is possible to request WMF global bans in accordance with policy.

See also this list of globally banned users. Bans enacted by the community can be appealed using the request for comment process on Meta-Wiki; however, bans enacted by the WMF may or may not be appealed.

Other actions will also have global effects. Global rights can be given to users by stewards, and will affect all Wikimedia wikis; see Wikipedia:Global rights policy for more information. Stewards can also be requested to give local rights, and perform other global actions, such as CheckUser, account renaming, URL blacklisting, and title/username blacklisting. See m:Stewards for more information on their abilities.

• Wikipedia:Office actions