Editing Help:User contributions (section)

==Other user contributions topics==
===Adding your own contributions to Wikipedia===
{{Main|Wikipedia:Tutorial|Wikipedia:New contributors' help page}} 

You can build your own contributions list simply by editing existing pages (click the <kbd>Edit</kbd> tab on a page you're interested in contributing to) or creating new pages (for example via the [[WP:WIZ|Article Wizard]]). You must [[WP:SIGNUP|register an account and be logged in]] in order to create new pages, but you can contribute to existing pages to build a list under your device's IP address. 

Note that if you have an account but edit a page while you're not logged in, that edit will be added to the contributions list of the IP address of the device you used to make that contribution.

===Deletion===
Users in general cannot request deletion of their contributions record. In some circumstances, they may request the deletion of an article they have created (by adding <code>{{tl|db-author}}</code> to it) or a page they have created in their own [[WP:USERSPACE|user space]] (by adding <code>{{tl|db-userreq}}</code> to the page). They may also be able to make use of the usual [[WP:DELETION|deletion processes]]. In some circumstances, they may be able to [[WP:CHU|change their username]] to dissociate themselves from their contributions while maintaining their access levels.

In some limited circumstances individual contributions (that is, specific edits) may be removed from public view by [[WP:ADMIN|administrators]] using [[WP:REVDEL|Revision Deletion]]; such edits remain visible to administrators. In even more limited circumstances, edits may be [[WP:OVERSIGHT|suppressed]], remaining visible only to the handful of users with the Oversight permission.

===Total edit count===
Your [[m:Help:Preferences#User_profile|Preferences page's User profile tab]] shows the total number of edits you have made in its <kbd>Basic information</kbd> section. The number is based upon an [[WP:Edit count|edit count]] that is stored for each user, incremented each time the user makes an edit, but not decremented when a user's edit is deleted. Therefore, the count includes deleted edits. It does not include [[Wikipedia:Moving a page|page moves]] from one title to another.

To find another user's edit count (for named users only, not IP addresses), type the following URL into your browser's address bar, replacing "XXX" with the name of the user:
*<code><nowiki>https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=XXX&usprop=editcount</nowiki></code>

You can see copious editing statistics for any user or IP address at:
*[[xtools:ec]]
For named users, this is available from the "Edit statistics" link at the bottom of the user's contributions page.
A similar tool which displays only the edit count is:
*[[xtools:sc]]
These are among the tools at [[m:Toolforge|Toolforge]]. Some others of the tools there are also linked from the box at the bottom of a user's contributions page.

For a summary of a user's activity on [[Wikipedia:Languages|other language Wikipedias]] and [[Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects|other Wikimedia projects]], type the following URL (replacing "XXX" with the name of the user):
*<code><nowiki>https://tools.wmflabs.org/quentinv57-tools/tools/sulinfo.php?username=XXX</nowiki></code> (not working, 2021-10-13)

===URLs and links===
A user contributions page's [[Help:URL|URL]] looks like this:

{{code|
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Contributions|target=XX}}
}}

or (for this wiki):
{{code|
{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Contributions/XX}}
}}

where {{code|XX}} is the user name or IP address.

Change the [[domain name]] to view your contributions on that particular wiki (by language and project): ru.wikipedia.org, meta.wikimedia.org, etc.

To internally link to a user contributions page you can also use this shorter form: [[Special:Contributions/XX]].

Interwiki links work as normal e.g. [[:ru:Special:Contributions/XX]].

You can choose to view edits from only one namespace, using the drop-down namespace selection box. Also, each namespace has an associated number, and restricting to one namespace can be done by tweaking the long form contributions URL; for namespace number four, you could search XX's contributions through <code>{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Contributions|target=XX&namespace=4}}</code>.

You can manually add <code>&offset=X</code> or <code>&limit=Y</code> or both to the URL, where X is a timestamp and Y is a number, to fetch Y contributions before a given time X. This might be useful if you want to link to a particular set of contribution history.

===First edit===
When using the user contributions page to determine when a user started editing on a wiki, note that edits may have been made on another wiki, where later the page has been [[help:import|imported]].

Also, until ca. 2004 there was a bug, which has been fixed but not retroactively, as follows:

{{blockquote|If a moved page was moved back, the edit history of the page with the intermediate title shows the latest move only, with the corresponding user name, but with the date and time of the first move.}}

Therefore, if the oldest entries in the user contributions list are moves, they most likely do not represent any activity of the user on the stated dates.

===User styles===
The page body has selector <code>body.page-Special_Contributions</code>, so we can, e.g., use the [[CSS]] <syntaxhighlight inline lang=css>body.page-Special_Contributions ul { list-style: decimal }</syntaxhighlight> to number the backlinks.

===Public access and privacy levels===
Remember that any user contributions page, including your own, can be viewed by anyone else. 

Also, you cannot modify your edit summary, nor the revision diff it links to that records your modifications, once you click the Publish changes button (even if by accident). You can replace the current page with a newly modified version, but the older version and its edit summary will remain visible to anyone via such tools as the [[Help:Page history|page's history]] and your own User contributions page. 

These privacy levels are some of the reasons for the standard editing notice that begins, "By publishing changes, you agree to the [[wmf:Terms of Use|Terms of Use]]..." See [[#Deletion|§&nbsp;Deletion]] for the rare exceptions.