Help:Email confirmation
Wikimedia help page
Wikipedia requires that users confirm their email addresses before they can use email features such as emailing users, receiving email notifications, and the ability to reset your password. This helps to prevent problems with bad addresses or spam. You only need to confirm email addresses to use the email system; you can log in and edit pages without confirming your address. You are not even required to enter an email address to register; it is optional. (However, administrators are expected to have a confirmed email address.)
Confirmation
Status
You can check your address confirmation status in your preferences. If your account was registered prior to March 2, 2006 (when confirmation was enforced), your existing address (if any) has not been automatically confirmed. If you change your email address, you will automatically be sent a new confirmation email.
How to confirm
From your preferences, go to the section entitled User profile, and scroll down to Email options, if desired check the box next to Enable email from other users.
Click the button in that section; an email will be sent to your email address with a confirmation link. If you see no link, go to Special:ConfirmEmail.
“Help:Email confirmation” enters the record as wikimedia help page. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Help, Email and confirmation can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Help:Email confirmation” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Help, Email and confirmation provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q8614953. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Help:Email confirmation”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Help:Email confirmation primary sources, Help:Email confirmation archive and Help research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Help:Email confirmation”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Help:Email confirmation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.