Wikipedia:Why create an account?

Creating an account is fast, easy, and completely free of charge. You don't need to be registered to contribute, but registering and using an account on Wikipedia to contribute provides many benefits, including the ability to:

• Choose an appropriate username, which will be reserved just for you on Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects.
• Create your own user page to share information about yourself.
• Practice editing and publishing in your own sandbox.
• Communicate with other editors via your own user talk page. You can also opt in to exchanging emails with other users.
• Get automatic notifications that alert you when someone has {{ping}}ed you, or wikilinked your user ID in a message or edit summary.
• Use custom preferences to change the look and behavior of Wikipedia and how it works for you.
• Use your unified login to work on Wikimedia's other projects, such as Wiktionary and Wikimedia Commons.
• Use more advanced editing tools.

Once you have had an account for 4 days and made 10 edits, you can:

• Edit semi-protected pages, which display a gray lock on the top-right corner of the article. IP address users and non-confirmed users cannot edit pages with this protection level.
• Create new articles, rename pages and upload files.

And once you have had an account for 30 days, and have made more than 500 edits, you can:

• Edit extended protected pages, which display a blue lock .