Help:User preferences

From Scholarpedia

The preferences dialog allows you to personalize some aspects of a your Scholarpedia preferences. They will apply only when you are logged in. Most of the preference menus are self-explanatory.

User data

• Your e-mail: You may optionally register your e-mail address (it will not be shown publicly on the site or shared with any third party). This will enable you to reset your password by clicking the "Mail me a new password" box on the log in screen, if you forget it. Additionally, it will enable other registered users to send e-mail to you from the "E-mail this user" link on your user page unless you've checked the disable box (see below). If you are a curator, you must provide a legitimate email address.
• Name, Affiliation: Please provide your real name (first name, then last name) and your current affiliation. This line will be put at the top of every page that you curate.
• Disable e-mail from other users: If you check this, users will not be able to send you e-mail by way of the "E-mail this user" feature.

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.)

• Remember password across sessions. Enabling this feature will place an HTTP cookie in your browser's cache, which will allow Scholarpedia to recognize you each time you visit the page. You will not have to log in each time you visit.

If you want to use remember my password you have to change your password if it was generated by Scholarpedia and emailed to you. This is a security feature but very often causes trouble for new users.

Interface language

One can specify an interface language. It shows the default messages, not those in the Scholarpedia namespace. 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.

My reviews

This section provides the list of all articles reviewed by the user, and the scholar index for each article.

My articles

This section provides the list of all articles curated by the user, and the number of times each article was viewed

My watchlist

This section links to the ‘my watchlist’ menu, where the user can change his preferences.

Invite a scholar

A user can invite another scholar to become a curator of Scholarpedia. There is a limited number of invitations, which the user can share. Once a scholar is invited, he cannot be uninvited.

Become a scholar

A reviewer can become a curator when it is invited by curators or his scholar index reaches a threshold.

Skin

A MediaWiki (the wiki engine that runs Scholarpedia) 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. It is best that you do not change the settings in this menu.

Rendering math

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

• Always render PNG: Always make a PNG image from the TeX code.
• HTML if very simple or else PNG: If the TeX code is very simple, like "x = 3", render it as HTML. For more complex code, render as PNG.
• HTML if possible or else PNG: This option tries really hard to use HTML, but if it's too complicated, then it renders it as PNG. This option does not show a^{b^c} correctly! It shows the c at base level, which is not just a matter of being ugly, but it makes formulas wrong!. A workaround is to add "\,\!": a^{b^{\,\!2+2}}. With the current settings you get and
• Leave it as TeX: Don't convert the TeX code, just show it. This is primarily for text-based browsers like Lynx.
• Recommended for modern browsers. If you use a web browser that was released in the past year or so, use this option.

Files

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.

Date format

Time zone

• Time diff. This is the number of hours to be added or subtracted from UTC to find your time zone. This time zone is used when calculating displayed page update timestamps. 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.) Look at this link or add and subtract a few hours as needed.

Keep this in mind when copying an excerpt from Recent Changes, a revision history listing, etc. 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.

Editing

• Rows, Columns. Here you can set up your preferred dimensions for the textbox used for editing page text.
• Edit box has full width. If this box is checked, the edit box (when you click "Edit this page") will be the width of the browser window, minus the quickbar width.
• Show edit toolbar. In compatible browsers, a toolbar with editing buttons can be displayed.
• Show preview on first edit - when pressing the edit button or otherwise following a link to an edit page, show not only the edit box but also the rendered page, just like after pressing "Show preview". This is especially useful when viewing a template, because even just viewing, not editing, typically requires both.
• Show preview before edit box and not after it. If you select this option, the preview will be displayed above the edit box when you click the "Show preview" button while editing a page.
• Add pages you edit to your watchlist. If this option is selected, any pages that you create or modify will be automatically added to your watchlist.
• Mark all edits minor by default. This option automatically selects the "This is a minor edit" checkbox when you edit pages.
• Use external editor by default. Changes editing from online version to external program. See External editors.
• Use external diff by default. Changes diffing from online version to external program. See External editors.

Recent changes and stub display

• Hide minor edits in recent changes. Registered users may choose to mark edits as being minor (meaning fixes too trivial for trusting users to check up on).
• Enhanced recent changes (not for all browsers). Group recent changes per day by article, display the titles of the changed articles in order from new to old latest change, or in the case of hiding minor edits, latest major change. This feature applies also to Related Changes, but not to the watchlist.
• Threshold for stub display

Search

• Hits to show per page: You may choose the number of results returned on each page of search results.
• Lines to show per hit is somewhat cryptic; specifying a number n means: "do not show any context if the search term occurs beyond line n in the page"; here a paragraph, as well as the blank line between two paragraphs, each count as one "line"; line breaks in the source, even when not affecting the lay-out of the page (and even when not directly visible in the edit box of the article), affect the line count. Setting the parameter to 5000 or more gives context for every occurrence.
• Characters of context per line: the number of characters of context per occurrence; however, the context is anyway restricted to the "line" (see above) it occurs in. To get the whole line, put a large number like 5000.
• Search in these namespaces by default: shows a list of all namespaces allowing one to select which ones are searched by default.

Misc settings

• 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.
• Format broken links 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: The weather in London?. 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: the weather in London. 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.
• Edit pages on double click. If this box is checked, you can double-click on a page to edit it. This option requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser.
• 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.