Tech Tip: Create a Wikipedia Account

Wikipedia is a project created by literally thousands and thousands of people all over the world. For this tip, you will learn how to create a Wikipedia account. Right now, you probably use Wikipedia without logging in to an account, but there are some good reasons to create a Wikipedia account. For this Tech Tip, you will create an account at Wikipedia; if you already have an account, log in to your account (if you have not done so recently). Then, you can write up a quick blog post to finish the tip.

Reasons to have a Wikipedia account:

* you can correct little errors you might find and keep track of the changes you've made to articles

* you can add content to articles: that might be just a link or a sentence or two, or whole paragraphs

* you can create new articles and you can write content for articles that are stubs (placeholders)

* you can contribute photographs and other multimedia to Wikimedia Commons

* you can add pages to a "watchlist" to follow; you will be notified of editing changes to those pages

* skins: under "preferences" you will find options to change the appearance of Wikipedia when you're logged in

* gadgets: under "preferences" you will find a long list of Wikipedia gadgets and tools you can turn on

* beta features: also under "preferences" you can activate beta features, like the new video player

You can find out more here: Reasons to have a Wikipedia account. This page gives an overview of all the options you can choose in Preferences.

Blog post. Write up a blog post with some thoughts about this assignment: do you use Wikipedia a lot? for what purposes? did you have a Wikipedia account already? what account feature(s) do you think you are most likely to use? If you already had a Wikipedia account: why did you create your account, and what do you use it for?

To finish up, make sure to include the phrase "Tech Tip: Wikipedia Account" in your blog post title and use "Tech Tip" as the label on the post; then you can do the Declaration.