Help:Recommendations for editors

Set up your watch lists and notifications

1. Go to your preferences page and add your email.
2. Configure your account so that pages you create automatically get added to your watchlist, and that notifications will go to your email.
3. Check the list of Special:UnwatchedPages. Is it zero length? Otherwise something is wrong. Are any of your pages on there? Add them to your watch list.
4. Feel very free to nag other people to watch pages. Unwatched pages rot and we do not want that.

Set up your user page correctly

If you use the examples and templates provided, this is a breeze.

Get yourself a nice portrait image, format it very carefully according to the portrait image requirements below, before uploading it to the wiki.

Use an example page (e.g: for application experts or systems experts), as the templates on there will quickly and easily get most things right. Feel free to look at examples if you are unsure (for example: User:Joel Hedlund (NSC)). If you choose not to use the templates, make sure you pick through the page examples and templates and get everything right manually instead, or you will look silly in the dynamically generated parts.

Also, remember to create your talk page (also called Discussion page, see tab on top of your page). Add something inviting on there so that people will feel encouraged to talk to you, or just rip off someone else who said something nice. Remember that your talk page will likely be your primary form of contact for members of the general public who chance upon the wiki.

Note that we do not promote providing your direct email address here, and especially not using email type properties (e.g: [[email::user@server.net]], do not use!), because no obfuscation is applied, and email addresses advertised in this manner are easily harvested by bots using the semantic mediawiki search interfaces.

Portrait image requirements

All experts are highly encouraged to upload a small portrait image to the wiki, and due to implementational restrictions, there are a number of quite specific requirements that your image needs to conform to (it will be displayed as-is in dynamically generated content, and you will look silly if yours does not conform). So fire up your GIMP and go to work!

Size

Your image must be precisely XxY pixels in size (width x height)

Background

Your image should show a lot of face and little else.

Colours and levels

You should adjust white balance, brightness, contrast and whatever other levels you can find so that your photo does not look weird next to everyone else's photo. As a first step, try "Auto levels". That should do the trick.