Help:User Page

For New Contributors and Moderators
Your user page is a great place where people can learn more about you and your genealogical interests. Begin by telling us a little bit about yourself. Then write a short paragraph or two about your research interests, places you have worked, or genealogical societies in which you are a member. As you become more familiar with FamilySearch Wiki, please return to your user page to explain more about yourself and include some of the great tools or ideas below to develop your user page. === What is a User Page === A &lt;a href="https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/FamilySearch_Wiki:User_page"&gt;user page&lt;/a&gt; is a page about a wiki user, someone who registered on the wiki and is likely also a contributor. If you have registered, you can create your own user page. Your user page is linked at the top of the Personal tools section of the menu bar. More importantly, others will see links to your user page from various places which assist wiki collaboration. They include the 'Recent changes' and page 'history' displays (See &lt;a _fcknotitle="true" href="Help:Recent changes"&gt;Help:Recent changes&lt;/a&gt;). You can also link to your user page within text of a wiki page, which is mainly useful on &lt;a href="Help:Talk pages"&gt;talk pages&lt;/a&gt; when you &lt;a href="Help:Signatures"&gt;Sign your name&lt;/a&gt;. === Creating your user page === Your user page will help other users and contributors to learn about you and your interest in family history. You must be signed in to create your &lt;a href="Special:MyPage"&gt;user page&lt;/a&gt;. #Using the navigation menu on the right side of the page, expand Personal Tools by clicking on the arrow out to the right. #The first item you see under Personal Tools should be your username. Click on this, and it will take you to your user page. #Before you make your first edit to your user page, a message may display there saying "This page has not been created yet." Do not let that confuse you; just click on Edit This Page and begin typing. === What to put on your user page === User pages are just as flexible as any other wiki page, and your user page is a page all about you, so people will usually allow you to freely write your user page in whatever format you wish to use. Think of it as a 'profile' page. It's a feature that's in the wiki for the purpose of helping other people know who a contributor is and of bringing the online community closer together. You might like to mention where you are from and what your job is. You can also state what your main areas of interest are in relation to the topic of the wiki and describe contributions you have made or areas where you are interested in contributing. You can put a picture of yourself on your user page after the photo has been vetted for copyright issues. Userboxes

Many users share with others their language skills and/or other interests by displaying &lt;a href="Userbox"&gt;boxes&lt;/a&gt; on their user page. === User scratchpad/development area === You can use your user page as a scratchpad or an area for developing ideas without cluttering the main namespace. Create &lt;a href="Special:Mypage/Sandbox"&gt;your own user sandbox&lt;/a&gt;. You may find it useful as a working area you can use before making edits to articles in the &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:Main namespace"&gt;main namespace&lt;/a&gt;. You can also &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:About the Sandbox"&gt;use&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;a _fcknotitle="true" href="FamilySearch Wiki:Sandbox"&gt;FamilySearch Wiki:Sandbox&lt;/a&gt; page for quick (non-permanent) wiki experimentation. === Helping others find you ===

If you are involved in a community where individuals know your full name and would like to help others find your user page by searching on your name, you can &lt;a href="Help:Creating a page"&gt;create a new page&lt;/a&gt; with the title of your full name, then &lt;a href="Help:Redirects"&gt;create a redirect&lt;/a&gt; to your user page. This will bring your user page up first in the search results if other users search on your name. == Other people's user pages == As mentioned above, you will see links to other people's user pages in various places throughout the wiki. === User Contributions === When viewing another person's user page, an additional link, "user contributions", appears in the 'toolbox' area (bottom right). This takes you to a list of all of this user's wiki edits. Use this to get an idea of how prolific a contributor somebody is or to track down edits made by a user who is causing trouble making bad wiki edits. === Editing someone else's page === It's generally considered poor &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:Etiquette Guidelines"&gt;etiquette&lt;/a&gt; to rewrite or reword another person's user page. Editing is not disallowed, but you should avoid adding information (or especially opinions) which might be misinterpreted as coming from that user in situations where this could potentially cause a problem. Some types of edits are widely acceptable and unlikely to cause any problems: *Fixing wiki links when a page has been &lt;a href="Help:Renaming a page"&gt;moved&lt;/a&gt; or deleted *Fixing broken external links *Categorizing or fixing categories of user pages. == User talk pages == Every user page has an associated talk page; a "user talk page". This is a special kind of talk page for leaving messages directed to a particular user. See &lt;a href="Help:Talk pages"&gt;User Talk pages&lt;/a&gt;. == See also == *&lt;a _fcknotitle="true" href="FamilySearch Wiki:User page"&gt;FamilySearch Wiki:User page&lt;/a&gt; - user page guidelines

&lt;a href="Category:Help"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;