Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-7599283-20140619092542/@comment-856287-20140619184826

So, to answer your question directly and with much verbosity, User670839245...

A Bureaucrat's only power is to grant and remove Sysop/admin rights (and other groups like Chat Moderator and Rollback). Only a Sysop/admin can edit in the MediaWiki namepsace, NOT Bureaucrats, unless they also have Sysop/admin. Most Bureaucrats do have Sysop/admin status as well, but some don't (for example, on my wiki, inactive Bureaucrat+Sysop/admins have their Sysop/admin status removed and remain Bureaucrats only).

However, Bureaucrats have the power to give themselves Sysop/admin any time they want. Thus, they may also edit in the MediaWiki namespace by giving themselves Sysop/admin first. If they don't do that first, then they can't edit in the MediaWiki namespace: only Sysop/admins can do that.

I've changed the help page to reflect this: It now says only "admins," rather than "admins and bureaucrats."