Zelda Wiki:User Accounts

Zelda Wiki.org requires that people to set up an account to be able to edit pages. There are numerous aspects to Zelda Wiki.org's user accounts. These are described below.

Activating Accounts
Accounts are activated simply by confirming an email that would be sent to the email address that was entered on the signup form. Once activated, the account is open indefinitely no matter how much time goes by.

Deactivating Accounts
Accounts cannot be deleted or removed from the wiki; due to the nature of the database, deleting an account would cause database errors. However, an account may be disabled from use upon request by the account holder. Administrators have the ability upon request to reset and randomize the password of a user's account, making it inaccessible and effectively disabled.

Emails
It is important that users have legitimate email addresses tied to their accounts. Not only is this needed to activate them, but it allows users to recover their passwords if they forget it. Should the option be enabled in the user preferences, it also allows semi-anonymous emails between two users. So it is important to have real email addresses tied to accounts rather than a temporary email address. Zelda Wiki.org WILL NOT spam in-boxes.

Renaming Accounts
It is entirely possible to rename accounts here. To do so it is simply a matter of requesting it from an active bureaucrat. It is recommended that this be done sparingly. As it is a load on the server to change a name. It also turns your existing user pages into redirects as it moves them to the new name.

Account Rights
Depending on the user's actions, he or she may acquire further access to actions and rights on the wiki. The most that the average user can expect to obtain is auto-confirmed rights.

Banning Accounts
There are a number of reasons why an account will be banned. The amount of time of the ban is based upon the reason for banning. Common reasons for banning include:
 * Inserting false information
 * Deliberately inserting a large amount of information that is completely false.
 * Removing content from pages 
 * Removing a large amount of content from pages.
 * Spamming links to external sites
 * Inserting links to external sites for purposes of advertising it.
 * Inserting nonsense/gibberish into pages
 * Inserting random content into pages for purposes of causing disruption.
 * Intimidating behavior/harassment
 * Harassing another user, defiance of the wiki's rules, unacceptable attitude.
 * Abusing multiple accounts
 * Registering under more than one account to evade a block, vandalize, or other illicit purposes.
 * Unacceptable username
 * The username contained illegal characters or was simply too long. Users blocked under this reason will be asked to register under a different, more appropriate username.
 * Vandalism
 * Overall destructive behavior with obvious intent to cause chaos.

User Gender
A newly introduced feature allows users to assign a gender to their accounts. In the future, this will be used to have the correct pronouns in userboxes, messages, and other things. As of right now the feature is not used enough to do this. It is highly encouraged that users set their gender on the user preferences.