Help:Why create an account?

This page is a help page It is meant to detail processes or procedures of some aspect or aspects of K6ka's Wiki's norms and practices. It is not a policy page.

Welcome to K6ka's Wiki! We are a wiki, a collaboratively-developed website that anyone is free to read and edit. You don't need to have an account or be logged in to contribute. However, if you have an account, you can do so much more with the wiki.

Summary of benefits

Username and privacy

If you contribute while logged out, your IP address will be used to mark your edits. For many people, having their IP address shown publicly to other users is a serious privacy concern; IP addresses can reveal, at most, the city and the country that you live in, along with your Internet service provider. However, if you contribute while logged in, a username that you choose will be used to mark your edits, and your IP address will be hidden from everybody. This is more secure than using an IP address to identify yourself. For example, if you chose the username "John", people cannot use this username to find out where you live, nor can they actually be sure that your real name is John.

Having a username of your own offers many other benefits. For example, people's IP addresses usually change over time, which means that you may occasionally find yourself using someone else's old IP address on the wiki, which can lead other people to think you are someone else. If you use a username, your username stays the same, and people will always be able to know that it is you behind that username. Also, if you have a username, you can create your own user page on the wiki. You can use this page to introduce yourself to the community, however briefly or descriptively as you like, or even just use it to do something wacky and awesome, like this user page on Wikipedia!

Reputation and communication

Having an account will give you a fixed identity that other users will be able to recognize. This means that you can build trust and respect through a history of good edits to the wiki. Having a fixed identity also opens the door to friendships and connections, as people will be able to recognize your name and know who you are: a helpful user! People are generally more comfortable editing with someone who has a username than someone who is editing while logged out.

All users on the wiki have a user talk page that is used by others to leave messages for them. If you are not logged in, your user talk page will consist of your IP address. Since IP addresses may change over time, it is not uncommon for users who are not logged in to find themselves having talk page messages that were intended for another user. If you have an account, however, your user talk page is unique to your account and will always point to you, meaning that you will never miss any messages, and you will never get messages that were intended for somebody else.

Personalization and preferences

If you have an account, you can customize the appearance of the wiki to suit your preferences and tastes. For example, you can change the skin of the wiki to get a different layout, or configure your preferences if you want to enable or disable certain features. Having an account also allows you to keep a watchlist, which is a list of pages that you want to monitor for changes. You can use this feature to keep a list of your favourite pages, and stay up to date with any changes to them.

When you use talk pages to communicate with other users, you normally need to sign your posts by typing in four tildes (~~~~) after your comments, which will automatically produce your signature when you publish your changes. If you are not logged in, this signature will show your IP address and cannot be changed. Users with an account, however, can customize and style their signature however they please, subject to certain limitations.

Ready to get started?

We are excited to have you join our wiki community! If you would like to create an account to get started, click here to access the signup form. It's free, and will only take two minutes of your time.