Help:Preferences

The Special:Preferences page, accessible from the user menu on every page when logged in. It allows each user to personalize some elements of the wiki.

The  tab contains information and basic settings relating to the user account.


 * The name of the user account, this may not be changed here (see wiki project FAQ).


 * The names of the groups the user belongs to. These provide certain "rights" (powers to carry out certain actions).


 * Connected apps: Lists any applications that connected to the account using the OAuth protocol.


 * The total number of edits made with this account on the wiki.


 * Date of account registration.


 * Real name is optional. If provided, this may be used for giving attribution.


 * Click the Change Password link to go to a page where to change the wiki password.


 * Always use a secure connection while logged in


 * Account data


 * Two-factor authentication: Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an authentication method in which a computer user is granted access only after successfully presenting two or more pieces of evidence (or factors) to an authentication mechanism.


 * Specify the language in which the site interface will be displayed. There are some limitations:


 * If the wiki's header contains hard-coded custom labels, these are in effect for all interface languages, and will not change according to this setting.


 * The interface language does not affect namespace names; they are determined by the site's main language. However, in links and in page names entered in the address bar of the browser, English namespace names, being the generic namespace names, are automatically converted to the local names.


 * How do you prefer to be described?: Setting this preference is optional. The software uses its value to address the user, and to mention them to others using the appropriate grammatical gender. This information will be public.


 * This shows how the current signature will appear, when using ~ to insert the signature.


 * Text that defines the signature, when entering ~ or.


 * If the following "raw signature" checkbox is not checked, the nickname is applied as a label for a link to the user page, so the signature will be nickname, although the exact expression depends on the system message MediaWiki:Signature. If nickname field is left empty, the username will be used instead.


 * Neither wiki-code nor HTML code is interpreted in a non-raw signature: the server passes the wiki-code on unchanged, while it converts the HTML in such a way that the browser effectively does not interpret it; for example, "<" is replaced by "&amp;lt;" rendered as "&lt;".


 * This option tells the wiki to interpret the nickname as wiki-code for the signature, instead of just a nickname.

Wikimedia wikis provide e-mail functionality, whereby forgotten passwords can be returned, and users can contact other users by e-mail without anyone having to reveal their address. Entering an e-mail address is entirely optional.


 * E-mail address associated with account. (See wiki project FAQ)


 * The status of e-mail address associated with account: not specified, need to confirm (click the link in the confirmation e-mail message), or authenticated.


 * This allows other registered users to send e-mail using the "E-mail this user" link on the sidebar of the user page. Emails are sent using a web interface, and e-mail addresses are not revealed to senders (as long are replies are not sent by email).


 * This option is helpful for keeping track of messages sent using "E-mail this user".


 * Notify by mail of changes to pages on Special:Watchlist.


 * Send notifications for minor edits.

These options control the appearance of some dates and times, and allow setting an appropriate time zone.


 * This setting affects the appearance of timestamps on all special pages, including page histories (as listed below). They appear just like shown here, except in Recent Changes and on the watchlist, where date and time are shown in different places. Note that the last option, provides the only way to see seconds.


 * This setting also affects the appearance of links produced by wikitext for which the date formatting feature applies.


 * "Offset" is the number of hours to be added or subtracted from UTC to find local time zone. It may become temporarily incorrect from time to time during Daylight Saving Time -- don't forget to update it to match local time. See this link for help on determining local time zone.

These two options are used to display local date and time on all special pages, i.e. the pages that are generated automatically and cannot be directly edited:


 * Recent changes, Related changes, Watchlist


 * Special:Log, Special:Newpages, Special:Imagelist


 * Page history, image history, diff, user contributions


 * "This page was last modified" at the bottom of pages

UTC is always shown in the timestamps on all Talk pages (and also used in referring to non-localized events, including things that happen on the wiki). Keep this in mind when copying an excerpt from any special page to a Talk page. Convert manually to UTC or temporarily set the preferences to a zero offset before producing the revision history, etc. to be copied. Many experienced users prefer to keep offset as 0 all the time.


 * Image size limit: Specify a limit on the size of images on image description pages. With a slow connection it is not practical to have to load a large image just to read image info. Also, it may be practical if a large image at first is made to fit on the screen.


 * The width of thumbnails shown in articles and pages on the wiki. This will be used unless a specific image provides its own thumbnail size.


 * Choose whether links will be underlined. The "Browser default" option means the site will honor the browser's setting.


 * Having underlining on permits differentiationg between two links side-by-side, like [ p] [ q] and [ p q] . However, underlining means underscores (_) may get lost in the underline, which can pose a problem, particularly with URL links.


 * Threshold for stub link formatting (bytes): A wikilink to an existing page will be in class 'stub' if the page is in the main namespace, it is not a redirect, and the number of bytes of the wikitext is less than the threshold.


 * This allows users to immediately identify links to very short pages that probably need to be expanded, and links to short disambiguation pages. Alternately, a user may set a very high threshold to achieve any of the following:


 * Identify links to very large pages. However, the criterion is the size of the wikitext; possible inclusion of templates and images can make the rendered page large, even if the amount of wikitext is small.


 * Determine at a glance whether a link leads to the main namespace or not. However, this does not take into account redirects to the main namespace (even if the redirect itself is in the main namespace).


 * Identify links to redirects, for clean-up work such as bypassing redirects.


 * However, section linking to a "stub" does not work. Although this is normally a minor issue, this may cause problems with users who set a very high threshold.


 * Shows categories which are normally hidden, at the bottom of the page.


 * This adds hierarchical outline-style numbering to headers in articles.

The options on the  tab can fine-tune the process of editing.


 * In compatible browsers, if this option is checked, a right-click on the section title will bring up the edit box for that section only, just as if using the small [edit] link beside the heading.


 * In compatible browsers, if this option is checked, a double click anywhere on the page will bring up the edit box for the entire contents of the page, just like what happens when clicking on the "" tab at the top of the page.

Editor

 * Change the font family of text in the edit area. The browser will determine exactly which font to use, depending on which fonts are available on the local computer. "Browser default" will normally provide a  font.


 * This option automatically selects the "This is a minor edit" checkbox when editing pages.


 * If selected, the editor will display a warning message when no edit summary is provided. This can help to remember to provide edit summaries, as they help other editors greatly.


 * Warn me when I leave an edit page with unsaved changes: Warn if closing or navigating away from an open edit window with unsaved changes.


 * In compatible browsers, the enhanced toolbar developed as part of the Usability Initiative will be displayed.


 * Enable the visual editor:


 * Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta:

Preview

 * When pressing the edit button or otherwise following a link to an edit page, a preview will appear, just like after pressing "Show preview".


 * With this option, the edit preview will be displayed above the edit box when clicking the "Show preview" button while editing a page.


 * This is an experimental feature that speeds up the retrieval of edit previews. When clicking the "Show preview" button, the browser will retrieve a preview from the wiki server and display it above the edit box, without needing to reload the page. This is only an experimental feature for the time being.


 * Comma separated list of language codes. Translation of a message in these languages are shown when translating. The default list of languages depends set language.

On the  tab, choose what appears on the Recent changes page (linked in the sidebar, and available at Special:RecentChanges). Some of these options also affect related changes at Special:RecentChangesLinked.


 * The number of days' worth of changes to show in the Recent Changes list. The default is 7 days; the maximum is 91 days. On busy wikis (like English Wikipedia), there may only be changes from the last few hours or minutes, regardless of this setting.


 * Select the number of changes which will be shown by default on the Recent Changes page, all page "history" tabs, and on some log pages at Special:Log. Links are provided for other options on those pages. The default is 50.


 * Group recent changes per day by article, display the titles of the changed articles in order from new to old latest change, or in the case of hiding minor edits, latest major change. This feature applies also to Related Changes, and, in the case that "" has been selected, to the watchlist. It requires a browser with JavaScript enabled.


 * Use non-JavaScript interface: Loads RecentChanges without filters search or highlighting functionality.

Control what appears on the watchlist (accessible by visiting the page Special:Watchlist, or clicking "Watchlist" in the user menu).

Edit watchlist
Allows access to pages to edit what pages will be watched.


 * The number of days worth of changes to show in the watchlist. Maximum 7 days.


 * This controls how many recent changes to show for each watched article when "Expand watchlist" is switched on under "Advanced options". Maximum 1000 changes.


 * This option will expand the watchlist to include all changes made to an article within the time-frame of the watchlist, up to a maximum number (as set in "Display options"). Normally, only the most recent modification is shown.


 * Add direct unwatch/watch markers (×/+) to watched pages with changes:


 * Use non-JavaScript interface: Loads Watchlist without filters search or highlighting functionality.

Changes shown












Watched pages







 * Add new files I upload to my watchlist:

Token

 * Generate an RSS feed from the watchlist - input a secret token here. Anyone who knows this token can use it to access the account's watchlist. When subscribing to the RSS feed, the browser should store this. A randomly-generated token is provided under the field.