Help:Preferences
This page is an overview of user preferences. For more details see Meta:Help:Preferences.
Preferences are the user options for browsing, editing, searching, notifications, and more. Along with Preferences, services such as list of your Contributions are available at the top of every page when you have an account. Preferences offers an extraordinary number of feature settings.
Special:Preferences offers skins, plug-ins, date formats, a signature, and more; and it provides easy access to install other plug-ins into your custom JavaScript and CSS profiles. (See Appearance below.) The overall effect of those settings is a virtually comprehensive control of one's interface to Wikipedia for personal affect. For example, you may want to be prompted to enter an edit summary if you forget to. To access the preferences page, click "Preferences" at the top of any page, or from the search box navigate to Special:Preferences.
This page mainly serves the Special:Preferences page. That page is a JavaScript-driven interface to simplify altering the default settings. These features and the Preferences page that sets them are provided by WikiMedia—the software of Wikipedia. (For the Special:Preferences talk page see Wikipedia talk: Special:Preferences.) New settings for preferences are automatic, whereas certain other tools, that are similar to some preferences but not provided by WikiMedia, require installation to your custom JavaScript file. Special:Preferences is a result of consensus (for example, at the Village pump) on about seventy choices for you to explore, but there are also hundreds of other user scripts to explore at Wikipedia:Tools#Browsing and editing.
Contents |
Preferences page
The preferences page is accessible when you are logged-in. It has numerous tabs along the top (requires JavaScript). Save is not required for every tab; it is for the preferences page itself.[1] Save applies the changes made in all tabs. If you only wish to undo unsaved changes during the current session, click "Preferences" again. "Restore all default settings" will harmlessly load another page which will then offer the button to restore all preferences in every tab, to default values.
The default settings are aimed at beginning readers and editors of articles. Intermediate editors tend to make more rules for themselves, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors and administrators use the special gadgets and editors for their tasks.
If you have chosen to have accounts automatically created on all Mediawiki wiki's (See "global" accounts on your User profile), then each account's preferences are independent from any other of your accounts. This is because each wiki has it's own software, so the options may differ from account to account, just as they can with Wikipedia software versions. For similar reasons the word "Preferences" on the top of any page may be different. At Simple Wikipedia it says "My settings".
User profile
- Preferences → User profile → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#User profile
- Change your password.
- Stay logged in for 30 days at a time.
- Change your signature.
- Choose your user-interface messages in British or Canadian instead of the default US English.
Appearance
- Preferences → Appearance → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Appearance
Change the web browser experience, including:
- Change your skin.
- Access your Custom CSS or Custom JavaScript. The red-lettered version of the link knows the filename to create.
- Bail out of features and experiments, such as banners and other page behaviors.
- Change the default "thumbnail" size.
- Make paragraphs justified.
- Number section headings.
- Choose PNG, TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas
Date and time
- Preferences → Date and time → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Date and time
Change the timestamps' style in talk space, and say which timezone they'll refer to.
Editing
- Preferences → Editing → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Editing
Wikipedia caters to editors, with many options, including how to initiate an edit and what their edit page looks like, including:
- The number of character rows and columns in the edit box.
- "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" into the database.
- "Enable VisualEditor". A WYSIWYG edit session when you choose the Edit tab. No markup at all. Or use the Edit source tab at any time to get to the wikitext.
- "Use live preview". Both Show preview and Show changes send only the contents of the edit box to the Wikipedia server, and JavaScript refreshes the area below the edit box. The benefits are that it uses less network bandwidth, and that it generates no new URL in the browser history to disturb any forward page in the browser cache. Testing links from the preview is safe (as usual), but while it is still experimental in nature, there may occur accidental loss of edits in some rare situations.
Two editing toolbars are offered that will span the top of the edit box. (Wikipedia:Reftoolbar shows versions.)
- "Show edit toolbar" is the legacy 1.0 version that gives a row of buttons. (See m:help:Edit toolbar for details.)
- "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" gives a frame with icons. It is a default feature that can be turned off.
is a search and replace dialog that can accept regular expressions as a search target for replacement text. (See the list of regular expression symbols[2])
Recent changes
- Preferences → Recent changes → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Recent changes
Recent changes refer to pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear:
- Length of the list
- Time window of the list
- Grouping methods of the list
The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors.
Watchlist
- Preferences → Watchlist → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Watchlist
The watchlist preferences are both recent change preferences and offer controls on types of edits, users, and pages, and the time window of "recent" changes that show up.
Search
- Preferences → Search options → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Search options
- Choose the namespaces to search.
- Choose how the search box buttons and frame appear.
- Change whether the drop-down-list appears suggesting existing page names.
Misc
- Preferences → Misc → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Misc
- Change whether "diffs" are accompanied by an actual page view of the earlier version or not.
- Make WikiLove messages easy to send. These will post a pleasant picture and provide an edit summary for your message on a user's talk page.
- Make course pages more or less prominent while you surf Wikipedia.
Gadgets
- Preferences → Gadgets → Details = Wikipedia:Gadget#Currently_installed_gadgets
Gadgets are the software contributed by users, not the software that runs Wikipedia, and so you'll see the group names Editing and Appearance are the same as the tab names on the preferences page. If you see tabs on the preferences page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. There are gadgets for, browsing, editing, appearance and for compatibility. An general overview of the select gadgetry available there is as follows.
Browsing.
- Language translating
- Media files, search results, and diffs
- Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor
- Teahouse for the new editor question
- Mouseing-over on an inline citation to read it
Editing.
- Citation modifying/expediting/proving
- Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets
- Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes
- The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff
Appearance.
- Editing the introductory section.
- Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls
- Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps
- Enabling an external search engine for searching Wikipedia
- Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc.
Compatitiblity.
- Font and JavaScript support
Advanced.
- Regular expression tools
- Tracking software bugs
- Patrolling recent changes
See much more customization available in the pages in the See also section, such as a search and replace dialog that understands JavaScript regular expressions.
Notifications
See Wikipedia Signpost, "English-language Wikipedia to be first to receive Echo deployment", for a brief overview.
Pending changes
- Preferences → Pending changes → Details = meta:Help:Preferences#Pending changes
These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of
- new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and
- how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page.
For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges.
Other tools
The MediaWiki preferences page offers a set of options for the generic user. If you like to experiment or have special needs, there are tools comparable in functionality at WP:Tools#Browsing and editing.
