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Help:Preferences

From The Scuba Wiki

MediaWiki Handbook: Contents, Readers, Editors, Moderators, System admins +/-

The preferences dialog allows you to personalize some aspects of a MediaWiki wiki. They will apply only when you are logged in. (The link will appear at the very top of any page.)

Some MediaWiki projects form a family in the sense that one logs in into the family as a whole, and that common preference settings apply. Notably this is the case for the more than 1000 Wikia projects. On Wikimedia projects, logging in and setting preferences are currently done separately on each wiki. You may find it convenient to specify the same preferences on each wiki that you use. See also Single signon transition.

Contents

User profile

Username
your account name
User ID
internal account id
Member of groups
group membership, see Help:Group rights
Number of edits
total number of edits, see Help:User contributions#Number of edits
Global account status
manage your unified account settings, see Help:Unified login
Real name
optional real name; if you choose to provide it this will be used for giving you attribution for your work. This field is disabled on Wikimedia projects
E-mail
your e-mail address, this is optional and not required. If specified, it needs to be confirmed. Your e-mail address will not be shown publicly on the site, and will:
  • allow you to reset your password on the log in screen, if you forget it
  • allow you to use some options (listed in the Email section below)
Signature (nickname)
text that defines your signature, when you enter ~~~ or ~~~~.
If the following "raw signature" checkbox is not checked, then your nickname is applied as a label for a link to your user page, so your signature will be [[User:username|nickname]], although the exact expression depends on the system message MediaWiki:Signature. If you leave nickname field empty, your username will be used instead.
Neither wiki-code nor HTML code is interpreted in 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 "&lt;" rendered as "<".
o Wikitext signature
this option tells MediaWiki to interpret your nickname as wiki-code for your signature, instead of just a nickname. See the Raw signatures section below.
Gender
This option allows you to select a gender (male or female), or unspecified. This option is designed for languages where, unlike English, words, and therefore interface text, can change depending on your gender. As such, this option is not greatly useful for English users at present.
Language
Allows you to specify the site interface language. See Help:System messages.
There are some limitations:
  • If local MediaWiki:Sidebar contains literal labels, these are in effect for all interface languages.
  • Note that some contain internal links, with the name of a page in the interface language project but without the corresponding prefix; therefore these links in general do not work, unless redirects are made.
  • Note that using English as interface language in RTL projects shows "This is a minor edit" and "Watch this page" on the edit page with tick boxes reversed: the tick boxes do not belong to the nearest but to the other text.
  • Note that using Spanish as interface language in version up than 1.4.0 shows no Edit toolbar when editing articles (Mozilla browser, firefox as well).
  • The interface language does not affect namespace names, they are determined by the site language, which is the language with code $wgLanguageCode. 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.

Change password

To change your password, enter your old password, the new password, and the new password a second time. If you're merely changing the other preferences, you do not need to enter your password.
Old password
New password
Retype new password
o Remember password across sessions
this feature will place a cookie in your browser's cache, which will allow MediaWiki to recognize you each time you visit the page. You will not have to log in each time you visit.
This option requires you to change your password if it was generated by Mediawiki and emailed to you. This is a security feature but very often causes trouble for new users.
Please do not try to change your password here; do so at preferences in the top right of the screen.

Email

Beginning of this section shows the status of your e-mail: not specified / need to confirm / already confirmed.
o E-mail me when a page I'm watching is changed
o E-mail me also for minor edits of pages
o Enable e-mail from other users
this allows other registered users to send you an e-mail using "E-mail this user" link on your user page. Emails are sent from MediaWiki web interface, and your e-mail address is not revealed to a sender (that is, until you decide to reply by email).
o Send me copies of emails I send to other users

Several of these options are disabled on some Wikimedia projects for perfomance reasons.

Skin

O Chick
O Classic
O Cologne Blue
O Modern
O MonoBook
O MySkin
O Nostalgia
O Simple

A MediaWiki skin is a style of page display. There are differences in the HTML code the system produces (but probably not in the page body), and also different style sheets are used.

The default is the MonoBook skin; what was called Standard is here in the preferences called Classic (not to be confused with the even older Nostalgia), but the system uses "wikistandard" in the naming of css files.

Links at the edges of the page are in different positions. Some links are not present in every skin. In Nostalgia some links are in a drop-down menu instead of directly visible.

Cologne Blue has a fixed font size unless one specifies in the browser "ignore font sizes specified in the webpage"; even then the line height is fixed; therefore this skin is hardly suitable for a large font.

In MonoBook the width of the panel on the left is dependent on the font size. Therefore, with a large font, the width of the main part of the page is smaller than with other skins.

For Classic with a quickbar and a large font a CSS setting to reduce the size of the quickbar text may be necessary. This depends on the project, specifically on the length of the longest word in the quickbar. If that does not fit in the designated width, there are complications depending on the browser. In Internet Explorer the quickbar overlaps the main text and a vertical line which is intended to separate the two, crosses the main text. In some other browsers the problem does not arise if the quickbar is on the right.

Since there is word wrapping but no wrapping within a word, the longest word and not the longest full label is the criterion:

To use the full width of the screen for the main text, use Classic without quickbar or Nostalgia. The drawback is that links are missing to the special pages and your user page, respectively. With the skin "Chick", all links are grouped at the end of the page.


This page in various skins:

In some cases a skin gives problems changing it. In that case, use e.g. http://thescubawiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Preferences&useskin=monobook and save the desired skin while using the Monobook skin.

See also Help:User style, and for developments and discussions, Skins.

Rendering math 

Rendering math
o Always render PNG
o HTML if very simple or else PNG
o HTML if possible or else PNG
o Leave it as TeX (for text browsers)
o Recommended for modern browsers
o MathML if possible (experimental)

MediaWiki allows you to enter mathematical equations as TeX code. These options let you control how that code is rendered into PNG images.

Files

Limit images on image description pages to:  320x240
                                             640x480
                                             800x600
                                            1024x768
                                           1280x1024
                                         10000x10000

(Prior to version 1.5, this is under "Recent changes and stub display".)

One can specify a limit on the size of images on image description pages.

The large limit 10000x10000 means that one gets the full image.

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, in the case that the browser does not do that itself. If the image has been reduced there is a link to the full image.

From MediaWiki 1.5 the default thumbnail width can be set in the preferences; this can be overridden by an image width specified in the image tag; the latter is typically not advisable, in order to respect the users' preferences.

Date and time

   Date format
<poem>

ʘ No preference ʘ 16:12, January 15, 2001 ʘ 16:12, 15 January 2001 ʘ 16:12, 2001 January 15 ʘ 2001-01-15T16:12:34 </poem>

This setting affects the appearance of timestamps on all special pages. They appear just like shown here, except that in Recent changes etc. date and time are separate, without separator "," or "T". Note that the last option, although inconvenient for many users, 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:


   Time zone
<poem>

Server time: Local time: Offset: </poem>

<poem>

08:34 06:34 -2:00  </poem>

"Offset" is the number of hours to be added or subtracted from UTC to find your time zone. It may become temporarily incorrect from time to time if you observe daylight saving time -- don't forget to update it to match your local time, because the Wiki doesn't know where you are or precisely when you celebrate DST. (Also, the server's clock may be slightly offset from reality, much as Wikipedia articles may be.) Try this link if you are not sure what is your time zone.

This offset is used to display your local time on all special pages, i.e. the pages that are generated by MediaWiki and cannot be directly edited:

On the other hand, site time 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.

Typically on international wikis the site time is UTC. For sites where most users live in one time zone the site time may be set to that, and follow a possible DST. Note that a user who changes his preferences according to the starts and endings of DST still sees a difference if in summer looking at a date/time in winter in a page history, and comparing that with the time in a talk page signature, etc.

Editing

Editing
Rows:           Columns:  
o Enable section editing via [edit] links
o Enable section editing by right-clicking on section titles (JavaScript)
o Edit pages on double click (JavaScript)
o Edit box has full width
o Show edit toolbar
o Show preview on first edit
o Show preview before edit box
o Mark all edits minor by default
o Use external editor by default
o Use external diff by default
o Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary
o Show hidden categories


Recent changes

Days to show in recent changes:
Number of edits to show in recent changes, page histories, and in logs, by default:
⃞ Hide minor edits in recent changes
⃞ Hide patrolled edits in recent changes
⃞ Hide patrolled pages from new page list
⃞ Enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript)

Watchlist 

Days to show in watchlist:  (maximum 7 days)

⃞ Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent
Maximum number of changes to show in expanded watchlist:  (maximum number: 1000)

⃞ Hide minor edits from the watchlist
⃞ Hide bot edits from the watchlist
⃞ Hide my edits from the watchlist
⃞ Hide edits by anonymous users from the watchlist
⃞ Hide edits by logged in users from the watchlist
⃞ Hide patrolled edits from the watchlist
⃞ Add pages I create to my watchlist
⃞ Add pages I edit to my watchlist
⃞ Add pages I move to my watchlist
⃞ Add pages I delete to my watchlist

Search 

Hits to show per page: 
Lines to show per hit: 
Characters of context per line: 
Search in these namespaces by default:
o (Main) 
o Talk 
o User
o User talk
o Meta
o Meta talk
o Image
o Image talk
o MediaWiki
o MediaWiki talk
o Template
o Template talk
o Help 
o Help talk
o Category
o Category talk

Administrators: See also mw:Manual:$wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault for information on how to change the default preferences.

Misc settings

Threshold for stub link formatting (bytes)
See Stub feature.
Underline links
Normally, link text will be underlined. Optionally, you may request that links not be underlined, although your browser may not respect this setting. Normally links that are not underlined can still be recognized by color. However, one can then not distinguish between two consecutive words being a single link or two links, without pointing at the words with the cursor, compare p q and p q. With underlining there is, depending on the font, less (an underscore may be wider than an underlined space) or no distinction between a blank space and an underscore (p_q); for internal links this may be an advantage (for reading, not for editing) because they are equivalent; for external links with underscores it may also be an advantage because it looks better (http://www.example.com/p_q) while the underscore is implied by the fact that the q is part of the link. In a piped link one may want to distinguish between underscore and space (p_q r) but this is very rare. For an old discussion of changing the default here, see m:Link style vote. For further choices of style of links in general and/or types of links one can use CSS (site-wide for all skins, site-wide per skin, user-specific per skin, or web-wide, user-specific)
Format broken links like this (alternative like this?)
An internal link to a non-existing pages is automatically a link to the edit page. By default the link label of [[b]] and [[a|b]] is "b", just like for links to existing pages. Alternatively the link label is a question mark inserted after "b", like this: A red link?. The appearance of the link is further determined by the style specified for css selectors "a.new" and "a.new:hover" (the example on the preferences page wrongly uses class="internal" for the question mark). Internal links to pages which do not yet exist currently appear on your browser like this one. Normally, this is underlined and in red. With the trailing question mark link one can then not distinguish between a single word being linked or a phrase of more than one word, without pointing at the question mark with the cursor. Also, remember that the question mark does not mean that the information is uncertain.
Justify paragraphs
If set, article paragraphs will be formatted to avoid jagged line endings. If unset, the paragraphs will be formatted as-is.
Auto-number headings
This adds hierarchical outline-style numbering to headers in articles.
Show table of contents (for pages with more than 3 headings)
See table of contents.
Disable page caching
This turns off page caching. This is useful if you're experiencing problems of seeing outdated versions of pages, but this comes at a cost of longer loading times.
File:Enable &quot;jump-to&quot; links pref demo.gif
"Jump to" links comparison.
Enable "jump to" accessibility links
Provides two links "Jump to: navigation, search" at the top of each page. These links are normally hidden, except under the Myskin, Chick or Classic skins; they are displayed in browsers lacking CSS support (or with CSS disabled), or read out by screen readers for low vision users. The navigation ("portlet") panel, at the left of the page in Monobook, is at the bottom of the page in these "flat-format" browsers.
Don't show page content below diffs
This option helps save traffic if you check out a lot of diffs. Might also be useful to see changes in a page for which rendering is slow or even timing out. Option can be overridden by &diffonly=yes URL parameter.
Show hidden categories
(New to 1.13) shows categories which are normally hidden from viewers.

Gadgets

See mw:Extension:Gadgets.

QuickBar

This preferences section only appears in the Classic and Cologne Blue skins (after #User Profile section).

File:Prefs help - quickbar.png

This selection allows you to choose the position of the Quickbar, which is a list of links to the various special pages, similar to Monobook sidebar.

The "fixed" quickbar will appear at the top corner of the page, while the "floating" quickbar will appear at the top corner of the browser window instead of scrolling with the article text. Floating quickbars may not float correctly on old or mobile browsers.

The QuickBar must be enabled to allow you access to some features such as moving (renaming) a page, and in the case of Classic, also to arrive at the Special Pages, unless you type the URL.

From MediaWiki 1.5 This has been removed in 1.5

Notes

If you want to change your username, it is recommended that you do this retroactively in the sense that your previous user contributions are recorded under the new name. Users and sysops cannot do this, one can ask a bureaucrat to do so. Signatures are not changed and therefore will no longer match page histories of the talk pages concerned. However, you can edit signatures manually. Also other occurrences of your name on talk pages are not retroactively changed. The deletion log and the upload log are not altered.

Account deletion is not possible.

You cannot indicate personal information (such as your real name) here, but you may do so on a page named after your username in the User: namespace. (That's available as a link on the line which says "You are logged in as user WhatsYourName" above the preferences panel. Feel free to start your own page with anything you want to say about yourself on it.)

Raw signatures

If "Raw signature" is checked, then:

In the case of a common signature on several projects, as in Wikia, note that links may lead to a different page, depending on the project in which you put the signature, even if you use interwiki link style. For example, India:User talk:John leads to the page User talk:John on India, except from the India project, where it leads to India:User talk:John in the India namespace. Therefore you may want to make a redirect such that the final target of the link is always the same.

Invalid raw signatures

You may find the following message displayed in your user preferences:

Invalid raw signature; check HTML tags.

This means you are using invalid HTML markup on your signature. Some possible causes with their corresponding solutions:

Unclosed tags 
If you are opening a tag without the corresponding closing tag (for instance: [[User:Example|<font color="white">Example]]), you should close the tag (for instance: [[User:Example|<font color="white">Example</font>]]). It's also a good idea to put the tags outside the link if possible (for instance: <font color="white">[[User:Example|Example]]</font>).
Mismatched or incorrectly nested tags 
If the tags are mismatched (for instance: ;<s><u>hi</s></u>), fix them (for instance: <s><u>hi</u></s>).
Unquoted attributes 
It's also recommended to use quotes on all attributes (for instance, use <font color="white"></font> instead of <font color=white></font>).
Unclosed entities 
If you have a HTML entity which is lacking the final ;, you need to add it; if you have a bare &, it must be replaced by &amp; (a bare & is always a mistake in either HTML or wikicode).
Unescaped special characters 
If you are using one of &, <, or >, and want it shown as text, it must be escaped as &amp;, &lt;, or &gt;, respectively.

Former use of images and templates in signatures

In the past images and templates were allowed. Thus they can still be present. Changes in them are retroactive, which on one hand may be confusing, but on the other hand, to rectify annoying signatures, may be convenient.

Signature content

Check the rules of your project (for example, for the English Wikipedia see w:Wikipedia:Signatures) and note that:

A wiki can designate a CSS class like "excess-sig" for non-essential parts of the signatures and request users to specify this class in their signatures where applicable, and/or each user can use a user-specific class, such as "excesssigAbc" for user Abc. Thus the signature is e.g. <span class="excesssig excesssigAbc">[[Image:...]]</span>[[User:Abc|Abc]]. This allows a user to hide for themself non-essential parts of the signatures of all or specific users, and/or to highlight for oneself one's own signature.

Browser preferences

Browsers usually also allow you to specify preferences, e.g. font size and font type. The standard skin is compatible with your browser setting of font size and font type. The Cologne Blue skin has most text in a fixed font size, ignoring your browser setting. Some browsers, e.g. IE, allow you to specify that font size specified in the web page is ignored. In that case the font size in Cologne Blue is as specified in the browser, but with the line height not adjusted accordingly. Therefore a large font gives a messy result.

Providing your own CSS

Cascading Style Sheets are used to configure MediaWiki's visual appearance. You can specify your own CSS definitions and overwrite the default settings. See Help:User style.

See also


+/-

Links to other help pages

Help contents
Meta | Wikinews | Wikipedia | Wikiquote | Wiktionary | commons: | mw: | b: | s: | mw:Manual | google
Versions of this help page (for other languages see below)
Meta | Wikinews | Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/Help:Preferences | Wikiquote | Wiktionary
What links here on Meta or from Meta | Wikipedia | MediaWiki
Reading
Go | Search | Stop words | URL | Namespace | Page name | Section
Backlinks | Link | Piped link | Interwiki link | Redirect | Category | Image page
Logging in and preferences
Logging in | Preferences | User style
Editing
Advanced editing | Editing FAQ | Edit toolbar | Export | Import | Shortcuts
Tracking changes
Recent changes (enhanced) | Related changes | Watching pages | Diff
Page history | Edit summary | User contributions | Minor edit | Patrolled edit
Style & formatting
Wikitext examples | Reference card | HTML in wikitext | List | Table | Sorting | Colors
Special input and output
Inputbox | Special characters | Displaying a formula | Images (uploads) | EasyTimeline
Advanced functioning
Template | Advanced templates | Parser function | ParserFunctions | Parameter default
Variable | Magic word | System message | Substitution | Array | Calculation
Page management
Starting a new page | Renaming (moving) a page | Protecting pages | Deleting a page
Special pages
Talk page | Testing | Sandbox | CentralNotice

Template:-

Retrieved from "http://thescubawiki.com/Help:Preferences"

This page has been accessed 5,277 times. This page was last modified on 28 December 2009, at 20:43. Content is available under Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.


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