Clicking on the My preferences link in the upper right while logged in allows you to change your preferences. You will be presented with the User profile section, as well as a bar of tabs across the top for changing other types of settings.
User profile
User profile
- Username: Your user name.
- User ID: A number assigned to your account when you created it (for example, if your number is 42 you are the 42nd user to sign up at this particular wiki). This number is used for internal purposes.
- Member of groups: This will list the usergroups that you are a part of on the wiki.
- Number of edits: How many edits you have made. Not all wikis will have this.
- Registration date: The date that you registered.
- Real name: If provided, this will be used for attribution (rather than using your username). Providing your real name is entirely optional. Some wikis do not have this option.
- Phone Number: If the phone number is provided, it will provide a two step account verification and notification much like email.
- E-mail: Your email address, if you have supplied one. You can also change or remove your address here.
- Page Type: Whether you wish to use the curse profiles, or the old mediawiki user pages.
- Favourite Wiki: Your favourite wiki (this will appear on your curse profile, if selected).
- About Me: The text that will appear on your curse profile (if selected).
- Location: Your location, that will appear on your curse profile (if selected).
- Other Profiles: The username on facebook, google+, steam, twitter, reddit, xbox live or playstation network that will appear on your curse profile (if selected).
- Language: The language you wish the wiki to appear in.
- Gender: The gender, used to mention you in the correct grammatical gender.
- Signature: Your signature that will appear when using ~~~~.
Change password
To change your password, enter your old password in the first box and your new password in the last two. If you want this site to remember your login, check Remember my login on this computer. Note that this function requires you to have cookies enabled in your browser, and if your cookie is cleared or expires you will no longer be remembered.
If you have supplied an email address, you will need to click the verify address button in order to use these functions. You will receive an email; simply open it and follow the link to enable the following functions.
- E-mail me when a page I'm watching is changed
- E-mail me when my user talk page is changed
- E-mail me also for minor edits of pages
- Enable e-mail from other users
- Send me copies of emails I send to other users
Languages
From your preferences you can select what language you would like the interface to be in. Only the buttons like 'edit' and 'talk', in addition to a few pages in the sidebar, will be affected. The main text of the pages will not be changed by this for the vast majority of pages, although there are a few pages where it will, like some in the Wikimedia Meta Wiki.
Appearance
- Time offset: The time offset is used to display time and dates in your current timezone.
- Files: The file sizes you wish to use when viewing a page.
- Link underlining: Whether you wish links to be more visible being underlined, or using the default skins options.
- Show hidden categories: Whether you want to see hidden categories on a page or not.
- Math: The math display options for rendering on your browser (whether you want to use files for rendering, or not).
Date and time
The following is normally rendered depending on preferences:
[[2001-01-05]] (or [[2001]]-[[01-05]]) (with leading zeros) [[2001]] [[January 5]] ([[2001]] [[January 05]]) [[January 5]], [[2001]] ([[January 05]], [[2001]]) [[5 January]] [[2001]] ([[05 January]] [[2001]]) [[January 5]] ([[January 05]]) [[5 January]] ([[05 January]])
Editing
These are the settings to control editing pages, including the size of the edit box displayed, and whether to automatically watch pages that you have edited or created.
Recent changes
- Days to show in recent changes: Here you can specify how far back the recent changes pages will go. Note that the list will stop prematurely if the number of edits is exceeded (see below).
- Number of edits to show in recent changes: Here you can specify how many edits should be displayed.
- Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist: Whether you want the recent changes to appear in a smaller view format and cause dropdowns for the same page edits, or actions.
- Hide minor edits in recent changes: This enables you to hide edits marked as minor (see Editing pages). Since some users will rapidly make a lot of tiny tweaks to update templates or fix spelling errors you may find enabling this to be useful. You can also turn this on temporarily from the recent changes page (see Tracking changes).
- Hide patrolled edits in recent changes: Whether you want to display pages that have been patrolled or not (pages are patrolled by users with the patrol user right, normally administrators).
- Hide patrolled pages from new page list: Whether you want patrolled pages to appear in Special:NewPages.
Watchlist
These are the settings to control the behaviour of the watchlist (See Watchlist). Most of these options are also available on the watchlist display itself, but by setting them in your preferences, you control the default behaviour of the watchlist i.e., it will perform the same actions every time you visit the page.
Search
Default settings for searches including how many results to display and how much context to show for each result. Check the boxes next to the namespaces which you want to show up, the first time that you search for something. You can override this when doing an actual search, by checking or unchecking the boxes at the bottom of the search results screen.
Misc
- Disable social pop up prompts to share links with Facebook, Twitter etcetera?: Whether you want a popup to appear when you save a page or not.
Semantic MediaWiki
This option is only enabled in preferences if your wiki has semantics enabled on it.
- Event calendar options: Whether you wish to use automatic updates of calendar events and pane view..
- DataTables options: Whether you wish to use automatic updates of table content and using local storage to improve load times.
- Semantic search options: Allow the displaying of parameter text as an info tooltip and enabling option boxes to be collapsed by default.