Help:Your Account and Personalization

This page is a work-in-process draft.

This article covers why you should create a JFA Wiki account and takes you through the process. It also covers setting your personal preferences, creating your personalized user pages, and watching pages.

Why Create an Account?

The reasons you should create an account go beyond just allowing you to edit content. By creating an account, you can:

• Edit existing pages and create a new sandbox and draft pages.
• Create your own user page to share information about yourself.
• Exchange emails with other users (if your preferences permit).
• Be eligible for consideration as a contributor, senior contributor, moderator, or editor.
• View a convenient list of all your contributions (edits).
• Use your watchlist to monitor changes made to pages that interest you, and be notified via email when a page you are watching is edited.
• Use custom preferences to change the look and behavior of the JFA Wiki.

Creating an Account

In creating an account, please use a Firstname.Lastname format for your username. For example, Jane.Doe. Your username cannot be changed after an account is created.

To create your account, do one of the following (while not logged in):

• Click or tap here.
• Select Create Account in the sidebar menu,
• Select Create Account from the dropdown menu on the top right of the screen.

Verifying Your Email

After you create your account, you will receive an email asking you to verify your email address. Please click the link in the email to verify your email. For most purposes, your account will not be recognized as valid until you take this important step.

Creating Your User Page

After you create your account and verify your email address, a link to your user page will be shown in the menu on the top-right of the application under your name. The link will be shown in red because the page has not been created. If you wish, click the link and follow the instructions to create the page. You can include information about yourself on the page.

Creating Your Talk/Discussion Page

Every user is assigned two pages, a user page and its associated talk/discussion page. A link to these pages can be found under the drop-down menu in the top left corner when you are logged in. The first time you visit these pages, you will see a message prompting you to create them.

Your user page is like a profile page that allows you do describe yourself to the site's users and visitors. If you wish, you can use it as the general profile page and give others a link to your page. It can be as short or as long (within reason) as you like.

You are not required to create a user profile page unless you write new articles for the site, but it's good if you. If you write for the site there will be internal links to your profile page whether or not it has been created. If it has not been created, the links will show up in red.

If you write new articles on assignment for the site, you should also create your user talk/discussion page—leaving it empty if you wish. Then, you should watch both pages so that you will be notified of changes. Invitations to write new articles, paid or not, are posted on your user talk page, and there will be continuing correspondence about the assignment on that page. So if you don't watch your talk/discussion page, then there is a possibility you might not see some correspondence you should see.