Personal tools

Personal tools are a set of links provided in the most popular MediaWiki skins, including Vector, Monobook, Cologne Blue, Simple, Modern, and others.

Default set
The most default set of links provided is to give users access to their...


 * User page (Special:MyPage)
 * User talk (Special:MyTalk)
 * Preferences (Special:Preferences)
 * Watchlist (Special:Watchlist)
 * Contributions (Special:Contributions)
 * User authentication (Special:UserLogin/Special:UserLogout)

Other extensions or gadgets which add to personal tools

 * LiquidThreads adds news messages
 * Echo adds notifications (not currently used in production, but planned)
 * Extension:Education Program adds courses
 * Some large Wikipedias (such as the English Wikipedia) include a "My sandbox" link to Special:MyPage/sandbox
 * Others?

Copy
Other than the header for personal tools, nearly all skins retain the  possessive form, e.g. "My talk", "My watchlist".

Use of possessives
The use of possessive clearly denotes that these pages are related to your account, but may actually be deceptive, since you do not actually own or have exclusive rights to edit anything except your preferences. The possessive form also takes up extra space. See bug 41672 about whether the possessive form should be removed.

Related research:
 * http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns.wiki/index.php?title=Your_vs._My
 * http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/4348/your-vs-my-in-user-interfaces
 * http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/core/yourvmy.html

Proposal
Drop the possessives from the copy, and to avoid confusion wrap the link to Special:MyTalk in parentheses:


 * Example (talk) Preferences Watchlist New messages (2) Contributions Log out