Wikipedia:Why create an account?

Creating a Wikipedia account is easy, fast, and free of charge. You are not required to create or use an account to read, edit, or contribute to Wikipedia. However, if you edit Wikipedia without being logged in to a registered account, your edits will be associated with a temporary account instead. Using a registered account to edit Wikipedia provides many benefits.

No obligation

Readers and editors are not required to create or use an account. Although creating an account is encouraged, it is completely voluntary, and anyone can do so later at any time.^{[note 1]} So long as the relevant articles or pages are not protected from editing, anyone can modify and save changes to them without an account. This reflects one of Wikipedia's founding principles and is central to its mission to be a completely open project that anyone can edit, update, improve, or fix.

Summary of benefits

Using a registered account to contribute to Wikipedia provides several benefits, including the ability to:

Have a consistent identity across your Wikipedia contributions. Temporary accounts expire after at most 90 days and are not shared across different devices or browsers.
Edit articles from most IP addresses that are currently blocked from editing Wikipedia.
Choose a username that will identify your contributions and distinguish your account from others. This unified login will work on Wikimedia's other projects, such as Wiktionary and Wikimedia Commons.
Create your own user page to share appropriate information.^{[note 2]} Since registered accounts do not expire like temporary accounts, you can continue using this page over time.
Practice editing in your own sandbox.
Users with temporary accounts can have user talk pages, but they receive notifications only while their temporary account is active. Registered users continue receiving notifications even after long periods of inactivity and can also opt in to email communication with other users.
Use custom preferences to change the look and behavior of Wikipedia and how it works for you. Temporary accounts can only change certain basic display settings.
Use more advanced editing tools.

Once your account is at least 4 days old and you have made 10 edits, you automatically become an "autoconfirmed" user and can:

Edit semi-protected pages, which display a gray lock on the top-right corner of the article. Only users with registered accounts that are autoconfirmed can edit pages with this protection level.
Create new articles, move pages and upload files. Users with temporary accounts and registered users who are not autoconfirmed cannot create or move pages or upload files.

Once your account is at least 30 days old and you have made more than 500 edits, you automatically become an "extended confirmed" user and can:

Edit extended protected pages, which display a blue lock .^{[note 3]} Users with temporary accounts and registered users who are not extended confirmed cannot edit pages with this protection level.
Use the content translation tool. Users with temporary accounts and registered users who are not extended confirmed cannot use this tool.

Username and privacy

When you create a Wikipedia account, you'll choose an appropriate username, provided it is available and not already in use. Edits you make while logged in will be associated with the username of your registered account instead of one or more temporary accounts.

You will have a permanent user page where you can write about yourself. While Wikipedia is not a homepage provider, you can use this to display a few freely licensed pictures, write about your hobbies, etc. Many users use their user page to maintain a list of the articles they are most proud of, or to list other valuable information they've collected from Wikipedia.

You will also have a permanent user talk page that you can use to communicate with other users. As with temporary accounts, you will be notified whenever someone writes a message on your talk page. If you choose to provide and confirm an email address with your registered account, other users can contact you by email if you enable this feature. This feature is anonymous; the user who emails you will not know your email address unless you respond to them using your email address.

Using a registered account generally provides more privacy than using a temporary account (so long as you avoid disclosing personally identifiable information about yourself anywhere on Wikipedia, including within your username). A registered account's IP address can only be viewed by a small number of users under limited circumstances, whereas temporary accounts' IP addresses can be viewed by a larger number of users and with fewer limitations. You might want to consider privacy and the possibility of offline harassment when deciding what personal information to disclose.

Reputation, communication, and collaboration

Using a registered account gives you a fixed identity on Wikipedia that other users will recognize. While we welcome contributions from unregistered editors, using an account lets you build trust and respect through a history of constructive edits. It also makes it easier for other users to assume good faith, communicate and collaborate, and identify your contributions. Both human editors and bots can mistake even perfectly good edits made in good faith for vandalism, purely because they were made by a temporary account. For these reasons, edits made by accounts with an established history may be easier for other users to evaluate and accept. Building an editing history encourages more responsible editing and more civil discourse.

Users who are not autoconfirmed, including unregistered users, are sometimes prevented from editing pages that are common targets of vandalism (just as this page is protected; only users with registered accounts that are autoconfirmed can edit it).

A registered account is required to participate in some Wikipedia processes, such as voting for new administrators or new bureaucrats. As your reputation builds, it is possible to gain additional privileges such as rollback, administrator, and others. An unregistered editor cannot be granted additional user rights.

Your account may also receive recognition for good work such as Barnstars, Project Awards, Personal User Awards, or nomination for voted accolades like Editor of the Week. Registered contributors are more likely to receive this kind of recognition over time.

User preferences

As a registered user, you can customize the way pages are displayed by changing your preferences. In the Appearance tab of your user preferences page, you can change the following display settings:

Under Skin: various options as to the appearance of the website
Under Math: how mathematical formulas are displayed
Under Files: how large image thumbnails should be

You can also customize various editing preferences:

How your username signature appears on talk pages
How pages should be displayed in recent changes
Many other editing preferences

Open research

People with registered accounts can gain access to valuable sources via The Wikipedia Library.

Blocked?

Shared IP addresses such as school and enterprise networks or proxy servers are frequently blocked for vandalism, which may also affect innocent editors on the same network. However, registered users in good standing can request existing blocks on their IP address be modified to affect only unregistered editors so that they can continue contributing to Wikipedia. If you are currently unable to create an account because of a block, you can try one of the following options:

Try again after the block on your IP address expires. Go to my contributions and follow the Block log link at the top of that page to find the length of the block. If no block appears, go to Special:BlockList and copy the IP address that appears at the top of Special:MyPage into the box next to "IP address for username:".
Request an account by following the instructions at Wikipedia:Request an account.
If your IP address is globally blocked, request an account by following the instructions at Wikipedia:Request an account, and request global IP block exemption.

See the Blocking policy for details.

Create an account

To create an account, click on the "Create an account now" link and fill out the required fields. Your account creation will be recorded in the account creation log, and your account will be created and then be ready to use.

Notes

^ So long as the person is not currently blocked, banned, or subject to any other relevant sanctions or editing restrictions, and does not violate Wikipedia's sockpuppetry policies.
^ Users should limit the content on their user pages to information that is relevant to Wikipedia. All users are strongly discouraged from adding any personal information about themselves anywhere on Wikipedia, because such information could be used to locate or identify them, or to harass or doxx them. See this page and this page for more information about these risks.
^ Users who do not meet the 30-day registration and 500 edit rule are prohibited from editing content that falls under certain contentious topics even in articles that are otherwise open for editing (because the majority of the article does not fall under the contentious topic). Users who do not qualify to edit such content could get their edits reverted (even if useful), and repeatedly editing content that falls under such contentious topics could result in blocking.

A page that knows where it met you.